Past Initiatives

Our 2018 Initiative

Board of Elections Failed to Uphold Our Rights

In 2018, we submitted more than 12,000 valid signatures to Columbus City Council, for review to submit to Franklin County Board of Elections (FC BOE) to place our Columbus Community Bill of Rights ordinance on the November 2018 city ballot. Approximately 9,000 valid signatures were required, which means we exceeded the requirement by more than 130%. After their statutory review, city council handed our initiative to Franklin County Board of Elections.

More than 30 city residents attended the meeting when the FC BOE voted to keep our initiative off of the ballot. The spokesperson for the four voting members of the FC BOE at the meeting, Brad Sinnott, is a partner and attorney for Vorys, a part of one of the nation’s largest law firms. Vorys has a history of representing clients hostile to community bill of rights legislations. Mr. Sinnott stated that since HB 463 was enacted, the Ohio bill passed in 2017 that allows boards of elections to overstep their bounds into the area of deciding on subjective content of citizen ballot initiatives, the board is ill-equipped to handle our initiative. Therefore, he basically recommended the other Republican and two Democrats on the board to vote our community bill of rights down. Our attorney, Terry Lodge, argued that the statute still allows latitude for the board to make their own decision. Unfortunately, Mr. Lodge was not allowed the opportunity at the meeting to make his case until after the vote was cast.

Mr. Sinnott gave supporters of the initiative who attended the meeting a lame attempt at appeasement by stating that “if I were a judge, I would hold the statutes [HB 463] unconstitutional, but I’m here today neither as a legislator or as a judge…” Vorys, the firm Mr. Sinnott was an attorney with and named as Vorys, Sater, Seymour & Pease, LLP, represented Bass Energy, Inc., against MADION (Mothers Against Drilling In Our Neighborhoods) in the 2016 appeal to uphold the Broadview Heights Community Bill of Rights article to the city charter that was overwhelmingly passed by voters in 2012.

More recently, in March 2020, Vorys has demanded more than $293,000 from the City of Toledo, as the firm represented an attack against the city’s Lake Erie Bill of Rights local legislation.

Ohio Supreme Court Failed to Uphold Our Rights

We appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, who sided with FC BOE. Two residents of Franklin County are now included as plaintiffs in an ongoing federal law suit to overturn the Ohio SC decisions against the rights of voters in counties of Portage, Medina, Franklin, Athens, Mahoning, Lucas and Meigs.

In April, 2020, the federal judge dismissed the case, and resident plaintiffs are formulating the next steps to ensure that Ohio-state-constitutionally-mandated rights-of-initiative for all residents are upheld and asserted.

Click HERE  to read our October 2018 letter to supporters.