OBJECTION OVERRULED

You’d be hard-pressed to find a topic that Cleveland law director Robert Triozzi is more eager to discuss than home rule. The provision to the state constitution was created here in Cleveland a century ago, at the desk of his famed predecessor, Newton Baker, lawyer to legendary ex-Mayor Tom Johnson. It’s a source of hometown pride and, increasingly, frustration.

“[Baker] was the one that pushed this amendment because he believed
in democracy at its roots,” explains Triozzi. “At the time, there was a
lot of good, progressive local government, and they were able to put
this provision into the Ohio Constitution. Now, a century later, we
still have that fight. Even though we won that fight a century ago,
we’re still fighting.”

He refers to the growing number of issues in which the state
legislature has taken away cities’ rights to regulate matters within
their own borders, usually at the request of business interests.

Cleveland’s ahead-of-its-time predatory-lending law was the first of
several city charter amendments to fall prey — in that case,
after lobbying by the banking industry. “Upon passage, special
interests convened in Columbus and convinced legislators to pass a law
to prevent municipalities from having laws like that,” says Triozzi.
“That simple.”

That’s just one example. In this young century alone, a succession
of legislative changes has nullified Cleveland’s ability to legislate
against carrying a concealed weapon, against cable companies running
through town willy-nilly, against gas drilling. About 100 other charter
cities have had similar laws stripped away.

The latest battle: The Ohio Supreme Court recently unheld the
legislature’s 2005 ban of a residency requirements for city employees.
“This is a classic example of public involvement being trumped by
special interests,” complains Triozzi. “The entire community here at
the ballot box stepped up and said, ‘This is a rule, we want employees
living here,’ and it passes by a large margin.”

But that didn’t matter. Same with concealed carry, which makes no
distinctions between cities like Cleveland and Pepper Pike.

“When a local community wants to run at a problem and figure out how
to make their streets safer,” says Triozzi, “and then they come up with
laws that are not in violation of the Second Amendment or a burden to
gun owners, then what they have is special-interest groups off to
Columbus, not to pass better weapon-safety laws, but to pass a law that
keeps cities from passing any law that seeks to make neighborhoods
safer.

“It’s extraordinarily anti-democratic. You build up this system of
government based on local participation, and what lobbyists find is
that coming to communities is too big a burden. They find it easier to
go to the legislature, [which is] disengaged from local issues and fed
by campaign contributions, and convince them that they ought to tie our
hands.”

It’s pissing off mayors all over the place. Here’s Akron mayor Don
Plusquellic in a statement about the residency requirement that his
city also lost last month: “This is another attempt by the leadership
in this state to usurp cities’ authority and quiet the voice of the
people.”

The really frustrating part? It’s not just suburban Republicans
ramming these measures through the state legislature. Democrats from
Cleveland are helping them.

In spring, Cleveland councilman Roosevelt Coats announced suddenly
that he was ready to retire. Mayor Frank Jackson called 34-year-old
Ohio state representative Eugene Miller and asked him to come home and
take Coats’ place in council. In an election year. Miller agreed.

“When I went to the Statehouse, people said, ‘You’re crazy because
of Republican rule,'” says Miller. “Now they’re saying, ‘You’re going
on the Titanic while it’s sinking?’ But the city of Cleveland is …
cleaning up its act, and it will, to me, be the second-most powerful
institution in the state once it turns around.”

If the state doesn’t turn Cleveland around first. The whiplash of a
sudden move from state-to city-level politics gives Miller a new
perspective on the tensions between the two.

Miller is quick to point out that he served 100,000 people in the
state House’s 10th District, which, like all others in the Republican
gerrymandered state, is mixed with as many suburban elements as the
number-crunchers could allow. And he wasn’t around in 2006 when the
residency requirement was nixed.

He says he was on the phone a lot in Columbus, mostly talking with
lobbyists who were far better versed in particular issues than he could
ever be. He learned from them, he said; several helped him craft good
legislation. But he admits to feeling burnt out on the influence
peddling, with interests competing in Columbus to the detriment of
those with the least resources, like municipalities.

For the cable anti-franchising bill pushed by the TimeWarners of the
state, Miller got onboard, over the objections of Jackson and council.
He said lobbyists convinced him that it was the right thing to do to
streamline their operations and hopefully drive down costs.

“The cable bill taught me a lot of lessons,” he says. “You gotta
have courage to say, ‘Of course I’m here for Cleveland.’ But at the
Statehouse, we have to look out for other interests too.” So you end up
listening to the loudest and most persuasive voices throwing words at
you, he says. Term limits make matters worse, he adds. By the time
you’re getting comfortable with issues and procedures, “you’re
gone.”

Cleveland councilman Kevin Kelley agrees that the state house and
senate’s eight-years-and-out rule — approved by voters in 1992
— exacerbates the problem. “It just seems that now, with term
limits, that the special interests know more than legislators,” he
says.

But Kelley and colleague Kevin Conwell have had it with Democratic
candidates for state legislature who beg for dough and volunteers in
Cleveland to get elected, then disappear down I-77 come January 1 and
vote against many of their constituents’ best interests.

“We would work to knock them out if they were Republicans,” says
Kelley. “But if they’re Democrats and they take what I consider to be a
very violent action against the city, oftentimes we give them a free
ride. That’s not acceptable. We need to judge our legislators on how
they legislate for and against the city. There haven’t been
consequences. That’s one thing that gets me angry. People can legislate
in ways that are detrimental to the city, and we keep sending them back
to the Statehouse.”

As blogger Bill Callahan (callahansclevelanddiary.com)
recently noted, “In 2008, all those Cleveland legislators who voted to
strip the city of its cable oversight authority, and then ran for
re-election, won easy primaries without significant opposition.”

It’s a touchy issue; Miller was the only member of Cleveland’s state
delegation to return Scene’s calls. But could Dems really start
turning on fellow Dems? These are desperate times, and the stakes are
high.

“This is a forerunner of taking away our rights on taxes,” says
Cleveland councilman Mike Polensek. “They will strip us of our local
authority, and they’ll be the ones to impose taxes on us. That’s what’s
coming. Give us the ability to be able to deal with our issues, our
problems. Don’t strip us of revenue and rights and expect urban areas
to remain viable.”

Polensek points to the battle that brings him the most shame, how
Cleveland went after predatory lenders with a vengeance and were told
they couldn’t by state lawmakers of various denominations, while across
the border in Pennsylvania, where those laws were passed, urban cores
sustained much less serious blows.

“Why didn’t we see the meltdown across the border?” he asks.
“Because they had laws in place. These guys [in the Ohio legislature]
got pimped by the real-estate and banking industries, and they like
getting pimped. In Ohio, they served the public up on a platter like
they didn’t even care. It was Monty Hall, Let’s Make a Deal. They stood up for the Bernie Madoffs of the world, against the people
and all the Third Federals of the world who were trying to do the right
thing.”

dharkins@clevescene.com

This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2009.