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Petitions swamp boards in Valley
Extra workers needed to verify 37,680 signatures
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County Board of Elections will hire four temporary employees and postpone its office relocation because of the record number of signatures it must verify on petitions to repeal Senate Bill 5.
Those wanting to repeal the bill that restricts collective-bargaining for public employees submitted petitions Wednesday to the Ohio secretary of state with 1,298,301 signatures. To get the referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot, 231,149 signatures need to be validated.
The secretary of state plans to ship those petitions to boards of elections in the state’s 88 counties no later than next Thursday.
But with a record number of signatures to verify, two Mahoning County Board of Elections officials will drive Tuesday to the secretary of state’s office in Columbus to pick up 37 boxes of petitions, said Joyce Kale-Pesta, the board’s deputy director.
The board wants to get a head start on verifying Mahoning County signatures as this is, by far, the largest number of signatures on a statewide petition that it has had to handle, Kale-Pesta said.
There are 37,680 signatures from Mahoning County residents on the petitions, according to We Are Ohio, the group leading the SB 5 repeal effort.
Before SB 5, the most signatures Mahoning County had to count was about 20,000 for a 2006 ban on smoking in most public places, Kale-Pesta said.
“We have to bring in extra staff with experience to be sure they’re checked carefully,” she said.
Four temporary employees will join 10 members of the board’s regular staff to review the petitions, she said.
The work also means the board won’t move its office from the county’s South Side Annex on Market Street to Oakhill Renaissance Place on Oak Hill Avenue, until after the Aug. 2 special election, Kale-Pesta said.
“We were moving in before the election, but we have to verify many signatures and get ready for the [Aug. 2] election, and there are a few little items that need to be addressed” at the Oakhill location that will delay the move, she said.
Officials with the boards of election in Trumbull and Columbiana counties say they’ll wait for the secretary of state to mail the petitions to start counting.
Boards of elections have until July 26 to verify signatures on the petitions.
The nearly 1.3 million signatures on the proposed referendum easily exceeds the old record of 812,978 for a failed 2008 casino initiative.
In Trumbull County, there are 27,846 signatures in 31 boxes to verify.
“This is the most we’ve ever had,” said Kelly Pallante, director of the county board of elections. “All 12 of our full-time employees will check the signatures.”
In Columbiana County, there are 8,482 signatures in 12 boxes. The board’s three clerks will verify them.
We Are Ohio is pleased with the success of the petition drive in Mahoning and Trumbull counties, a spokeswoman said. Those are two of the most Democratic counties in Ohio.
The top five counties in signatures collected are, in order, Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Lucas and Summit.
The signatures “represent the hard work of our volunteers who have worked tirelessly over the last few months to make a citizens’ veto of SB5 a reality,” said Melissa Fazekas, spokeswoman for the group. “This historic achievement would not be possible without their enthusiasm and support.”
Mahoning County Democratic Chairman David Betras is proud of the number of Valley signatures and remains critical of Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-led General Assembly for approving the bill.
“You don’t take out a sledgehammer to kill a fly,” Betras said. “You use a fly swatter. Changes needed to be made, but this is an attack on teachers, police officers and other public employees.”