COLUMBIANA COUNTY Zone challenge will be evaluated

A lawsuit is connected with plans to build a power plant in the county.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LISBON -- Columbiana County commissioners will check with legal counsel to determine if a lawsuit will force them to re-create resolutions passed last year that helped provide tax abatements for a proposed $600 million power plant, commissioner Dave Cranmer said Thursday.
The inquiry will be in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this week in county common pleas court by Donald Cox, 48739 Lakeview Circle, East Liverpool.
The lawsuit alleges commissioners violated a meeting notification provision of Ohio law in adopting enterprise zones last year for Center and Salem townships.
The townships contain the primary and secondary sites proposed for the plant.
Cox is asking that the court declare the enterprise zone measures invalid because they were adopted without the meeting notification requirement's being met.
Abatements: The zones provide 10-year 100 percent tax abatements for the power plant proposed by Cogentrix Energy Inc. of Charlotte, N.C.
The tax abatements were intended as incentive for the company to build the plant in the county.
The facility is expected to provide about 300 construction jobs during the nearly two years it would take to build it. Cogentrix wants to start construction this year.
Nearly 30 people would work full-time at the plant once it's finished.
A Cogentrix spokesman was unavailable Thursday to comment on the lawsuit and its potential impact.
The lawsuit states that when the enterprise zone legislation was passed by commissioners at meetings Dec. 20, 2000, Jan. 17, 2001, and May 9, 2001, the commissioners did not have in effect a meeting notification rule that Ohio's Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to have in place.
The rule establishes that anyone can ask for and receive advance notification of a public body's meetings.
Invalid: Because the rule wasn't adopted by commissioners until after the enterprise zones were created, the zones are invalid, the lawsuit argues.
Cranmer said no one had requested advance notification for the meetings at which the enterprise zones were created.
Cranmer and Commissioner Jim Hoppel said they were unaware of the rule requirement until late 2001, when the county prosecutor's office told them to enact one.
Commissioners adopted the rule at a Dec. 19 meeting.
The prosecutor's advice came after a Dec. 12 decision by Judge David Tobin of county common pleas court.
Invalid: Judge Tobin ruled that action by the county water district to take private land for a water treatment plant was invalid because the water district did not have an advance meeting notification rule in place.
Commissioners said they don't know Cox. Cox was unavailable for comment.
His attorney, Jim Hartford, a former assistant county prosecutor, from East Palestine, would say only that Cox is a concerned resident and is employed farming land in the Wellsville area.