In 2020, per our Charter, the Mayor selected, and Council confirmed, 7 citizens to serve on our Charter Review Commission. While the process started out slowly because of the Corona virus, it also started out with some hiccups and accusations of the Charter Review Commission that somehow Council was trying to prevent Charter Review from meeting. This was absolutely not true and Council along with many other Boards and Commissions were all adapting and meeting virtually while Charter Review had not discussed doing such. After Charter Review worked out their issues, they began meeting virtually on May 27, 2020.
Council also received an unsolicited legal opinion from the law department in which the law department also included the Charter Review Commission on. After the initial opinion provided by the law department, they went on to provide additional legal opinions that escalated to the point of the law department threatening Council that if they did not follow the advice provided by the law department that the law department would sue us each individually and no longer represent us. Council then received notice on July 28, 2020 that the Charter Review Commission scheduled a meeting on August 7, 2020 for the sole agenda item of discussion “Imminent Court Action”. This meeting was scheduled PRIOR to Council ever voting on a single recommendation of the Charter Review Commission. After the email from the Law Department and preemptive meeting by Charter Review, I took steps that I felt were necessary to make sure that Council had adequate representation in case a lawsuit would be filed by Ms. Syx and the Charter Review Commission.
At our August 6, 2020 Committee of the Whole Meeting Council reviewed the recommendations from Charter Review Commission, and in reviewing such made several amendments to the legislation. The majority of the amendments made to legislation by Council were immaterial to the actual recommendations and were made to fix factual and legislative errors in the legislation provided by the law department. At this time during our meeting Ms. Syx was very vocal in trying to tell Council that we could not make such changes. While I respect Ms. Syx providing her opinion to Council, the reality is we are at a Council meeting and Council has the right to take action that they feel is appropriate. Ms. Syx had made her opinion very clear over the past several months as to what she felt was a “duty” on Council to pass on every Charter Review recommendation as is, with no changes, and that we only had the authority to vote on such as to their “form”. Majority of Council disagreed with Ms. Syx’s opinion and the majority read the Charter to give permission to Council to review such recommendations, make amendments as they see fit, and then, if 2/3 of Council approved of the recommendations, in either original or amended form, then pass such items on to the voters for review.
The amended versions of all 9 recommendations made it to the Council agenda the same evening, however, because three Council members abstained from voting on the amendments, none of the items received the necessary 2/3 approval to move on to the ballot. Council’s actions related to the Charter Review recommendations was not to take the power away from voters, as Mayor Pribonic and Ms. Syx have suggested, instead Council’s actions were to defend the rights of this Council and to protect future Council’s from being bullied into giving up such rights.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and in looking back at the actions of the Charter Review Commission and the administration, it is clear that they were TRYING to create recommendations that they knew Council would reject. The Charter Review Commission made statements in their meetings that the Charter is a sacred document like a constitution and should not be “tinkered with”, and blamed prior Councils for rushing through amendments to change it. Yet, even after such statements, Charter Review rushed in their review of the Charter and made 9 recommendations for change in just a roughly two and half month period. Additionally, Charter Review didn’t even provide such recommendations to Council in time for Council to give 3 readings, asking Council to rush them through as emergency legislation in one meeting. Council rejected this and took the time to review the recommendations, albeit on a tighter timeline than should have occurred. Ultimately, there was political motivation behind these actions by some members of the Charter Review Commission to create charter amendments that benefit those currently in office and to create a dispute with current Council members to have it reflect poorly on them. It is disappointing that the law department let this happen, and clearly allowed Charter Review to include a recommendation that is in direct violation of the Ohio Constitution.
While many have made this issue personal and politically driven, the reality for me was this was a factual issue on the interpretation of our Charter and the Ohio Constitution. I believed that the interpretation of the law department of the Charter and the Ohio Constitution was inaccurate and that the case law they provided was not on point to the issue at hand. Sadly, the law department was unwavering on the issue, would not discuss an alternative point of view an even chastised Council for wishing to seek an independent legal opinion. Ultimately, a majority of other Council members also felt that the opinion was not an accurate interpretation of the law and voted in a similar manner to how I voted.
After action by Council to hire outside legal counsel for representation since the law department clearly had advised Council it would represent Charter Review, and not City Council, Ms. Syx went on to criticize the action of Council and the qualifications of the representation chosen by Council. The administration also took steps to block the process of Council hiring such outside counsel, stating Council did not follow the proper process of hiring outside legal counsel, even though other similar hires of outside counsel followed a similar path taken by counsel. The Mayor, who has repeatedly tried to state he is independent of Charter Review, also refused to sign the legislation pass by Council for representation in a tactic to delay Council being adequately represented should a lawsuit be filed. In addition, the Mayor actually did not sign the contract for Council to have representation until August 31, 2020, the date that Council had to file an answer with the Supreme Court.
Ms. Syx also waited over 3 weeks from Council’s actions on the recommendations to file a lawsuit on the matter, even though she notified Council on July 28th that she would file suit if such items did not make the ballot. The date Ms. Syx filed such request for a writ of mandamus with the Supreme Court was the very last day that such action could even be filed, and even after filing such suit on Friday August 28, 2020, Ms. Syx FAILED to notify Council of such action until Sunday August 30, 2020, clearly knowing Council had to file an answer by 5 PM on Monday August 31, 2020. This delay by Ms. Syx to provide notification she filed was in contradiction to the Supreme Court Rules for expedited election cases and was clearly meant to harm Council by limiting their time to ensure representation and a response. The Supreme Court DID agree with Council that Ms. Syx had no valid reason for waiting for 3 weeks and that ultimately, under the legal doctrine of laches, the Supreme Court could have just rejected the issue in its entirety. Ms. Syx’s delay almost cost us the ability to have this question answered by the Supreme Court once and for all, while still costing the tax payers thousands of dollars of legal defense.
Thankfully, the Supreme Court did go on to answer the question of interpretation related to Charter Review recommendations and sided with Council that ultimately COUNCIL, as the legislative body of the City, is the only authority to place Charter Amendments on the ballot for voters. The authority to place Charter Amendments in front of the people is defined under the Ohio Constitution, and our Charter cannot give Charter Review the authority to “force” things through Council without violating the Ohio Constitution. The Court agreed that Ms. Syx was unable to show a “legal duty” that under our Charter that Council is some how obligated to pass such recommendations on.
I am disappointed in how this process went and that Council had to acquire outside legal representation because of the actions of the Charter Review Commission and Ms. Syx. The actions taken by Charter Review Commission and Ms. Syx ultimately resulted in spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money on this issue instead of working collaboratively on the issue. The upside to this is that the Court did ultimately decide the 40 year long debate and that going forward there should be no uncertainty as to the legal duties of Council and Charter Review Commission.