Youngstown citizen-based charter amendments need at least 10 percent of those who voted in last general election to get on ballot

By David Skolnick | July 6, 2016 at 12:05a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

The city’s law department has determined that citizen-initiative charter-amendment proposals need the valid signatures of at least 10 percent of those who voted in the last general election.

The law department was unsure whether the correct percentage was 3 percent or 10 percent because the city charter states: “the number of electors necessary for an initiative petition shall be [3] percent.”

In a legal opinion to Mayor John A. McNally, who requested it, Law Director Martin Hume and Deputy Law Director Rebecca M. Gerson wrote the 10-percent minimum is in the Ohio Constitution and the city charter cannot modify or change the constitution.

“If the amendment procedures in a municipal charter conflict with the Ohio Constitution, the constitution provisions shall prevail,” Hume and Gerson wrote in the legal opinion.

“The city charter can modify state statutes, but not the constitution,” Hume said Tuesday.

Leaders of two citizen-led charter proposals seeking to get on the Nov. 8 election ballot have said all along that they were collecting signatures based on the need to get at least 10 percent of city voters who cast ballots in the November 2015 election.

That 10-percent amount is 1,259 valid signatures compared with 378 if 3 percent was the threshold.

The Youngstown Community Bill of Rights Committee, backing an anti-fracking charter amendment, collected 2,489 signatures. Voters have rejected similar ballot proposals five different times from the group.

Also, a proposal to give part-time workers increased rights such as health care benefits and equal hourly wages as full-timers turned in petitions with 3,935 signatures. The signatures were collected by a firm that primarily used paid out-of-state workers.

Bob Goodrich, a Grand Rapids, Mich., businessman, is spearheading that effort.

City council is expected to consider a vote at its July 13 meeting to have the Mahoning County Board of Elections count the number of signatures on the two proposals to see if they have enough, Hume said.

There also is talk of a possible proposal to increase the minimum wage in Youngstown, but petitions haven’t been filed.