EAST LIVERPOOL State rep seeks help for entities being sued

East Liverpool claims a law that reduced its funds is unconstitutional.
By NORMAN LEIGH
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
LISBON -- State Rep. Charles Blasdel is seeking the Ohio attorney general's involvement in a court challenge mounted by East Liverpool over a law used to strip the city of much of its government funding.
Blasdel, of East Liverpool, R-1st, said Wednesday that he had just sent a letter to Larry Householder, the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.
The letter asks Householder to request that Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro intervene in the East Liverpool lawsuit on behalf of the entities being sued by the city. They include the county, the county budget commission and most of the county's city, village and township governments.
The county and the other entities, many with tight budgets, need help defending themselves in a matter stemming from a challenge to an Ohio law, Blasdel said in his letter.
At issue is a lawsuit East Liverpool filed in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court earlier this month.
Seeks overturning of law
The lawsuit seeks to scrap a 2002 Ohio law sponsored by Blasdel. The county budget commission, made up of the county prosecutor, auditor and treasurer, used the law to drastically reduce East Liverpool's annual share of thousands of dollars in state tax dollars known as local government funds.
The law is unconstitutional, the city's lawsuit declares. East Liverpool is asking the court to make that same declaration and forbid the county from distributing nearly $4.8 million in 2003 local government funds according to a formula adopted using the new law.
The county budget commission -- urged on by area cities, villages and townships -- used the law in August 2002 to alter the formula and trim East Liverpool's share from 27 percent to little more than 4 percent.
The new formula provides a larger share of the annually distributed funds to other communities.
In the past, East Liverpool had used its veto power as the county's largest city to scuttle efforts to reduce its portion.
But Blasdel's new law wiped out the city's veto power. That enabled the budget commission to adopt the new formula that slashed East Liverpool's share.
Blasdel said the state and the General Assembly should take an interest in the case.
"The lawsuit is a direct affront to the authority of the General Assembly to control state funds and set policy for this state," Blasdel wrote in his letter to Householder.