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Jeff Goodman remains on ballot as independent candidate for Warren law director
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Jeff Goodman will remain on the Nov. 3 ballot as an independent candidate for Warren law director after a decision Monday by the Trumbull County Board of Elections.
The board went into executive session to discuss testimony from an Aug. 12 hearing and emerged to issue its decision, voting 4-0 to reject a challenge from two Warren residents who said Goodman should be removed from the ballot because he changed his voting address just before he submitted his nominating petitions to the elections board in May.
He changed his voting address from a building on West Market Street where he has an office and residence to a residence on North Park Avenue. The two locations are close to each other, both on Courthouse Square downtown.
But the board said the change did not make his petitions invalid or misleading to the people who signed them, said Kathi Creed, chairman of the elections board.
Goodman also was qualified to be a candidate at the time he circulated his petitions, and the board also ruled against the accusation that Goodman was ineligible to run as an independent because of his connections to the Trumbull County Democratic Party.
Goodman said he never doubted that the board would rule in his favor and called the Aug. 12 hearing that resulted from the challenge a “distraction that didn’t benefit anyone.”
Goodman said he is looking forward to talking to voters about issues, including what he called “hundreds of thousands of dollars” the city currently pays for outside attorneys to handle legal matters for the city “that should be handled by the law department.”
Goodman faces longtime incumbent law director Greg Hicks, a Democrat, in November.
Hicks said Goodman’s comments are “blatantly untrue” because Goodman “doesn’t know how to read a budget” and is counting things such as the cost of bond counsel, who handled the sale of bonds for the city to refinance debt and buy a building.
He said the city also had to hire outside counsel to combat an effort by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the amount of total dissolved solids that wastewater treatment plants could allow to enter the Mahoning River, which could have “shut down GM” Lordstown if it had been implemented, Hicks said.
The board also ruled that Newton Falls voters will see a referendum on their ballot in November to allow them to decide whether to reverse a decision by the village council that removed a tax credit that will cost certain Newton Falls residents money through the village income tax.
The credit allowed people living in Newton Falls to avoid paying the village’s 1 percent income tax if they already pay 1 percent or more in the place where they work. The elections board acted to place the referendum on the ballot after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled last week in favor of Newton Falls resident Werner Lange, who sought to have the referendum on the ballot.