Residency fight goes beyond what city workers want to what is best for the city

Residency fight goes beyond what city workers want
to what is best for the city

Warren Mayor Michael O’Brien is standing up for the majority of the city’s residents and taxpayers in continuing the good fight against dismantling the city’s residency requirement for municipal employees.

His veto of an ordinance that would drop the city’s residency requirement rather than join other cities in fighting a wrong-headed state law comes at the right time. A state court of appeals has ruled in favor of cities that are seeking to overturn the law that imposed the will and presumed wisdom of the General Assembly on every city in Ohio.

An important win

While it is true that the appeals court ruling came in the 3rd District and so directly affects only the northwestern part of the state, it is the first time that an appeals court has ruled in favor of the cities and it strengthens the case for all cities when the case ends up, as it will, before the Ohio Supreme Court.

In many cases city residency requirements are not just acts of the city council, they are ballot or charter provisions specifically voted on by the residents. It is also important to note that city employees hired under residency requirements knew before they took the job that residency was required.

They were free to not take the job, and they are free to leave the job if they have come to feel that residency is an intolerable burden. But instead, the state’s municipal employee unions lobbied legislators in Columbus to overrule the collective will of the citizens in every city, village or township that has a residency requirement for its employees.

Those employees were perfectly free to go to their citizens and ask them to drop a residency requirement. But they knew they would lose. Instead, they managed to push a bill through the Legislature, knowing that it would place the cost of fighting to retain residency on local taxpayers and hoping that some cities, like Warren, would drop residency rather than fight.

The legislation approved by the General Assembly in 2006 was the result of an odd coalition of conservative Republicans listening to a libertarian muse and Democrats who were beholden to public employee unions — with a few individual-rights Democrats and bought-and-paid-for Republicans sprinkled in.

Long-term issue

Warren residents should applaud O’Brien and support him in his effort to support the will of Warren taxpayers and fight for the long-term health of the city.

If the residency requirement is dropped, several things, none of them good for the city, will happen over time.

Increasing numbers of city employees will move out of the city, simply because they can afford to. Municipal employees are paid above the city’s average household income.

As these employees move away, the quality of city services will suffer because, in some cases, the employees will live too far away to respond quickly to emergency calls for fire, police, street and utility workers.

And finally, as city employees and city residents become further estranged, residents will be less inclined to support tax increase that will be used to pay employees who are no longer neighbors.

It is a downward cycle that is eventually a disservice to both city residents and city employees.

That’s what O’Brien is fighting to avoid. And no member of council should surrender now to the special interests of city employees or be too timid to fund a fight that will determine the city’s future for generations.