Getting real about home rule

Henry Gomez reports that City Council members like Kevin Kelley and Kevin Conwell “fired a warning shot Thursday at [local] state legislators” who voted for the state anti-residency law that the Supreme Court upheld yesterday:

Their message: Start looking out for the best interests of our constituents — or look elsewhere when you need political support in our wards come re-election time.

The tough talk came at a special council caucus, one day after the Ohio Supreme Court upheld a 2006 law that bans Cleveland and other cities from enforcing residency requirements.

“I hope in the future we hold these people accountable,” said Councilman Kevin Kelley.

This is exactly the right way to look at the situation, as I pointed out when another big anti-city, anti-Home Rule measure passed in 2007 over the City of Cleveland’s strenuous opposition — but with the votes of 100% of Cleveland’s state legislators:

The end of local cable franchising is not quite law in Ohio, not yet. The Ohio Senate must accept the House’s changes to SB 117, or a conference committee must reconcile the two versions, and the Governor must sign the final product. But this will all happen in a matter of days. The argument is over, the deal has gone down. Time to move on.

I think there are two take-aways for Cleveland community leaders and citizens who actually give a crap about what will happen to the city’s ability to govern itself and survive through the next couple of decades.

Take-away one: Nobody in the Columbus power structure — including the people we send there to represent us in the General Assembly, and the people we’ve supported for statewide office with our votes — gives a rat’s tookus for that quaint old concept known as municipal home rule. Nobody. It just doesn’t matter to them, when weighed in the political scales against anything desired by an industry, a moderate-sized labor organization, or fifteen random guys on suburban barstools.

The reason is simple and self-evident: Voting to take away another piece of Ohio communities’ self-governing power has no political cost, even when it’s your own community. Oh, the mayor might make a speech, and city council might pass a resolution, and the local paper might even write an editorial calling on you (not by name) to preserve municipal prerogatives. You might be forced to explain to a few voters how deeply you believe in home rule and how agonizing it is to balance that deep belief with the other concerns you’re called upon to address. But in the end, you can safely cast your political lot with the check-writers — the police and fire unions, the gas drillers. the gun lobby, the phone company, the cable company, the phone company’s union — against your own community, knowing that nobody will remember at election time.

If Frank Jackson and Cleveland City Council members really want to preserve a shred of home rule for this city, some Democratic Representative from Cleveland must lose his or her primary election in 2008 for voting against it. Otherwise, stop whining.

What happened? 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.This includes Barbara Boyd, who represents most of Conwell’s Ward 9; Sandra Miller, whose District includes Kelley’s Ward 16;  and Eugene Miller, just welcomed by the whole Council to fill the Ward 10 seat vacated by Roosevelt Coats.

What did they and their colleagues learn from this experience about the depth of City leaders’ commitment to defend the home rule principle that they had all just trampled? What do you think they learned?

Well, that was then, this is now. If our angry Councilmembers are at all serious this time, there’s a way for them (and the Mayor, and the Plain Dealer) to demonstrate it.

Remember, the Supreme Court did not outlaw residency rules as somehow unconstitutional,  It simply upheld an act of the General Assembly forbidding cities and villages to enforce them.  “Cable franchise reform” was another such act.  So were the legislature’s pre-emptions of municipal authority over gas drilling, carrying guns in public parks, predatory lending practices, etc.

What the General Assembly does, the General Assembly can undo. And unlike 2006, Democrats now control the Ohio House. So here’s my modest proposal to our angry Councilmen and equally unhappy Mayor:

1) Demand an emergency meeting on The Home Rule Crisis (as the PD should headline it) with all legislators representing parts of Cleveland including House Speaker Budish. Invite the mayors and councils of other Cuyahoga cities and expand the legislator list accordingly. Make it regional… reach out to Akron, Youngstown, Lorain, Mentor.

2) Use the meeting to deliver a clear, unambiguous message: Municipal leaders are fed up with the never-endinglegislative attacks on community authority. You want to work with your representatives on legislation to reverse this trend, repair some of the worst damage of the last decade, and strengthen municipal fiscal, planning and regulatory authority in key areas (e.g. environmental, consumer and neighborhood protection).  You want this CommunityRights Bill to go to the top of the Democratic Caucus legislative agenda in the House, you want it sponsored by every legislator who represents any of your cities, and you want to work together on a serious effort to make it law.

3) Explain that if these things are not actually happening by early next year, you will make it your business to see that uncooperative legislators of either party have serious, well-funded opponents in their primaries.

4) And then start visibly organizing — raising money, prescreening candidates, etc. — to keep that promise if necessary.

Oh, and one more thing… make sure this all happens with reporters and TV cameras in the room. Maybe even a few bloggers.