After passing in the Ohio Senate, State Senator Jerry Cirino’s anti-participatory budgeting bill is trending toward committee approval in the Ohio House.
Since introducing Senate Bill 158, which would prohibit residents from voting on the allocation or appropriation of public funds, Cirino has been open about intentions to stop Cleveland from adopting the People’s Budget Cleveland (PB CLE). The charter amendment would give residents the opportunity to vote on how Cleveland spends two percent of its general fund, if it passes on the ballot in November.
“Timely passage of this legislation will specifically safeguard the city of Cleveland’s financial stability as they are facing an initiative on the ballot to deprive the city of at least two percent of its annual operating budget,” said Cirino, whose district does not include Cleveland.
However, even if Cleveland votes to approve PB CLE before the bill is passed, S.B. 158 would void PB CLE and any future legislation it contradicts. When asked why his bill has an emergency clause to rush its passage, Cirino said that passing S.B. 158 in advance of the November 7 election would, “send a message.”
State Rep. Michael Skindell thinks it’s a broad overstep of home rule.
“Their effort to get it through to the election does not impact whether this is on the ballot or not, whether people can vote for it or not, whether it becomes effective or not. They just want to send a message to Clevelanders that, ‘Hey, we as a general assembly, or majority Republicans, don’t like this and we want to vote on this to send you a message that we don’t like this,’” Skindell told Scene.
Regardless of whether the bill passes as an emergency matter, Clevelanders will still be able vote on Issue 38, with the potential for legal challenges in court under home rule.
Testifying in a House Government Oversight Committee meeting, Cirino raised legislative oversight concerns over a provision in the charter amendment that would exempt winning PB CLE contracts from requiring mayoral and council approval.
The amendment reads:
“Since residents themselves approve this spending, contracts for winning projects are exempt from approval by the City Council and the Mayor. Eligible projects voted on by residents must comply with all legal requirements of the funding source, which may include capital expenses and/or time-bound, programmatic expenses.”
The stipulation was originally included to prevent City Council from blocking projects that Cleveland voters elected by refusing approval, according to PB CLE campaign manager Molly Martin.
“We’re confident that if the city is legally complying with the charter and running a process where citizens can give input on how that money is spent in their neighborhoods that council members will honor that,” Martin said. “But I think it technically means that, like anything that’s a contract that has to go before Council, they could push back on anything that goes before them, I think that that is a possibility.”
To assuage legislative oversight concerns and stop Cirino’s bill from preempting Issue 38 and any future participatory budgeting legislation entirely, Skindell is drafting a compromise amendment, though it’s unclear what hope there is for it being adopted.
Skindell believes that S.B. 158 is on track to pass in the House, but hopes that the fact that plans for his amendment weren’t “shut down right away” and garnered some interest could signal success.
“I’m trying to talk to one of the key policy legislators right now. I sent the amendment over…Basically what it would do is it would nullify [the legislative contracting provision] and then apply the legislative contract authority,” Skindell said. It would essentially restore legislative oversight.
The state legislature has something of a history with preemption. In 2006, Ohio passed a law barring municipalities from enacting stricter gun regulation and in 2016 the state passed legislation to stop a Cleveland ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and legislation prohibiting the city from requiring or incentivizing contractors to hire a minimum number of local residents.
“[Cirino] wants the corporate Chamber of Commerces to control municipal budgets, particularly in large municipalities rather than citizens…It’s a power grab,” said Skindell. “There’s been a whole slew of these efforts to say that, ‘Oh, they know better in Columbus than little citizens.’”
Cirino also took particular issue with PB CLE’s allowance of 16-year-olds to serve on its steering committee and 13-year-olds to vote on proposals, which he called, “ludicrous.”
“They refer to this as the People’s Budget, which sounds like something that would be enacted in South America, perhaps, in one of their countries,” said Cirino.
Although local opposition to the charter amendment from city leaders and unions has centered around concerns about the health of the city’s general fund and public safety budgets, Cirino also cited issues with how Clevelanders would choose to allocate the money.
“It’s not just the dollars. It’s also setting the priorities,” said Cirino. “Public safety, we all know, is our number one responsibility as government officials. And there’s no question that there have been lots of discussions–some of them are very anecdotal–about reducing safety forces in Cleveland.”
Skindell believes that these concerns are hypocritical, citing JobsOhio, a non-profit corporation created in 2011 through the diversion of liquor revenue and given the power to lease Ohio’s liquor franchise.
“What they’re complaining about, what this charter amendment does, which says, ‘Okay, we’re going to set aside a certain amount of money and we’re going to have this process to allocate those monies for projects that we want locally,’” said Skindell.
“The Republican General Assembly did that already in JobsOhio. They took state revenue, put it into JobsOhio and created a board that, by the way, does not have to comply with open meetings and public records [regulations], can meet privately and then disperse hundreds of millions of dollars without legislative oversight,” Skindell said. “They allowed corporate Ohio to get those dollars that way, but they don’t want citizens to do it.”
For its part, PB CLE supports Skindell’s proposed amendment on the grounds that it gives Issue 38 more, “viability.”
“It’s been our goal all along to collaborate with City Council and the mayor so, even if that guardrail is reinstalled in the charter amendment that requires legislative approval, we would just hope that, if Issue 38 passes, council and the mayor would honor the process,” said Martin.
But if Cirino’s bill passes without the amendment, the door will remain open for potential legal challenges. Under the Ohio State Constitution, home rule allows municipal corporations to reserve power over local self-government, ownership and operation of public utilities and some police powers. However, a brief on home rule provided to members of the Ohio General Assembly acknowledges that it isn’t always “consistently applied” in judicial interpretation.
“My political analysis is that as long as we have the Supreme Court…that’s GOP majority, I don’t think that they’re going to undo a home rule case so I’m not totally sure if we would fight it but I can’t say that definitively because we’re waiting on a legal analysis from our lawyer on the existing preemption bill and what that means,” Martin said.
PB CLE is encouraging Clevelanders to vote on Issue 38 in November’s general election whether or not the bill passes to establish a record of support.
“Our stance that we see value in passing Issue 38 still so that the citizen-led initiative can be seen through because, if it does pass, that means there could be a future legal challenge that’s possible from the city’s side or from citizens,” said Martin.
The bill will still need to be reported by the House General Oversight Committee before it can be put to a vote in the House. A representative for Governor Mike DeWine declined to comment on whether DeWine would sign the bill, but told Scene he was reviewing it.
Ahead of Tuesday’s committee meeting, PB CLE organizers are asking supporters to submit written testimony opposing the bill online and released a statement:
“When the Ohio state legislature mobilizes to change state law to stop you, there’s a good chance you’re on the ground fighting for more democracy. Just like the August 8th special election, this latest anti-democratic effort in Columbus attempts to undermine citizen-led ballot initiatives. People’s Budget Cleveland is pushing to pass Issue 38 in Cleveland and we are also mobilizing people to tell their House representatives to vote NO on SB 158 so that Clevelanders can preserve their right to decide on Issue 38 themselves.”
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