7-district plan to change Lorain County government proposed again (UPDATED)

This story has been updated to reflect in which districts Elyria Ward 7 and Carlisle Township would fall. That information was not made clear by the Citizens For Equal Representation in its June 30 presentation. A group calling itself the Citizens for Equal Representation for Lorain County is making another push to reformat county government, eliminating the three-member, at-large Lorain County Board of Commissioners in favor of a seven-member county council. Group members Brian Hoagland and Homer Taft presented the group's plan to the board at its meeting Friday. It is the group's fourth attempt at changing Lorain County government since 2014. Hoagland said he has advocated "for many years" for district-based representation in county government, as opposed to the three commissioners elected at-large. On Friday, he and Taft asked commissioners to put the issue on the ballot for the November general election. Hoagland claimed word-of-mouth feedback he received was that Lorain County voters favor a change in the form of county government. Citizens for Equal Representation proposed similar changes in 2014, 2015 and 2017. All three proposals failed to make it to the ballot. Instead of three at-large commissioners, the plan proposes seven elected county council members, one from each of seven districts representing about 45,000 residents. This "guarantees residents have someone from each of their districts" representing them on a county council, and "fosters communication" between county government and residents, Hoagland said. He said it is very expensive to campaign to more than 300,000 Lorain County residents as opposed to a district in which a candidate lives with only 45,000 residents. No other elected positions would be changed, eliminated or made into appointed positions, Hoagland said. Ohio law allows for the proposal to be put to voters on the ballot as long as two-thirds of the board of commissioners votes to do so. A self-described "semi-retired" attorney and former Libertarian candidate for Ohio state Senate in 2018, Taft said the proposal is governed by Ohio Revised Code section 302.03. The seven members of a county council would each be paid $56,000 per year for what Hoagland and Taft said would be a "part-time" elected position. That's $392,000 total for the seven-member council, more than the total salary of all three current county commissioners. Hoagland said the group wants a salary "that is attractive and provides for excellent candidates" but one that won't burden the county with too much of an expense and a workload comparable to a city council member. The $56,000 figure was reached because it is approximately 60 percent of the salary of each of the current county commissioners. "The idea is to attract qualified people and to add to their regular pay as this is a part-time job," Hoagland said. Citizens for Equal Representation said they were willing to present the board with experts including Dr. Mark Sailing, a senior fellow and research associate in the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University, who helped the group design its proposal. The districts would be: All of Amherst; wards 4 and 8 of Lorain; all of Brownhelm Township including the portion of Vermilion in Lorain County; Amherst Township excluding the portion of the township within South Amherst; and all of Elyria Township "except the portion not contiguous with and entirely surrounded by the city of Elyria." All of Oberlin and the villages of Wellington, South Amherst, Kipton, Rochester, LaGrange, and Grafton and Henrietta, New Russia, Camden, Pittsfield, LaGrange, Grafton, Brighton, Wellington, Penfield, Rochester and Huntington townships. Elyria Ward 3; North Ridgeville Ward 3 and precincts 4A, B, C, F, and G in North Ridgeville; Camden Township excluding the Ward 5 extension of the city of Elyria; Eaton Township excluding any portion of the village of Grafton; Carlisle and Columbia townships. Elyria wards 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and the portion of Elyria Township entirely contained within and surrounded by the city; All of Avon and wards 1, 2 and precincts 4D and 4E of North Ridgeville; All of Avon Lake, Sheffield Lake, Sheffield and Lorain Ward 1; and All of wards 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of Lorain and all of Sheffield Township. Taft said his group believes a map of "roughly equal districts" it provided to the board on Friday complies with all the requirements of the law for equal proportion of representation. This new form of government, Taft said, will be "a very dedicated part-time job for good people ... and you're going to want to make sure they're going to want to spend the amount of time necessary to do that." Commissioner David Moore, a Republican who in 2014 and 2015 was the spokesman for Citizens for Equal Representation and backed its failed plans to bring the charter form of government to the voters, said Friday the board would take the matter back up at its meeting on July 11 after he, commissioners Michelle Hung and Jeff Riddell and their legal counsel had time to review the proposal. "I believe the public, the citizens of Lorain County should have a choice on whether or not to keep this style or go to the alternative form of government," Moore said. He invited Lorain County residents to watch the July 11 meeting online at the board's YouTube channel or attend the meeting at 5 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Lorain County Administration Building at 226 Middle Ave. in Elyria on that date. "I think it will be a historic debate, conversation, and step one to allow the public of this county to have a choice. And that's the main thing: To allow people the ability to choose," Moore said. Hung said Friday that she hadn't received all the documents she needed to review. "I will thoroughly read and review, as the residents expect their elected officials to do, before I make a decision," she said. Messages seeking comment on the plan were left for Riddell on Friday. Criticism Initial public reaction to the Citizens for Equal Representation plan was not favorable. During one of two public comment periods at Friday's board meeting, Brian Baker of Brownhelm Township said he was "puzzled" how Citizens for Equal Representation could say Lorain County residents aren't represented by their government. Lorain County was formed in 1824, and "for 200 years we've been using this system" of a three-member board of commissioners, Baker said. "We have mayors, township trustees, villages and I think the process has always been used," he said. When a township resident has a concern and if they can't go straight to their commissioners, they go to their township trustees who bring it to the commissioners. "If we say there isn't representation, I guess we're saying the elected officials in those lower offices don't communicate with the commissioners," Baker said. Baker said during a decade and a half working in Washington, D.C., he kept hearing people say "'We need less government.'" He questioned why the drive is now to create more government. Baker asked the commissioners to have Budget Director KC Saunders at the July 11 meeting to discuss how the proposed seven-district plan would affect the county budget. "Let's put everything on the table," he said. "A notification in the paper, not just a resolution. Let's do a public hearing." Aden Fogel of Sheffield Lake, a frequent critic of commissioners Moore and Riddell, questioned the board as to what kind of candidates for public office would want a part-time, $56,000 per year job with no health benefits. "If your little current clique wasn't pathetic enough, what would a group of part-time $56,000-a-year commissioners consist of? This is just ridiculous in my opinion," Fogel said, calling it a "pipe dream" and accusing Riddell of being Moore's "puppet." Background Citizens for Equal Representation for Lorain County tried in 2014, 2015 and 2017 to get the issue on the ballot. Moore, who was involved with the volunteer signature collection drives by Citizens for Equal Representation for Lorain County, declined to tell The Chronicle in July 2015 how many signatures the group had collected either that year or the previous year. In an interview with the newspaper in July 2014, Moore said "the only people who he's encountered opposed to reform in Lorain County are those invested in the status quo," according to Chronicle archives. "Good government scares a lot of people who are in government," Moore told the newspaper at the time. The 2014 and 2015 proposals also called for replacing the three at-large commissioners with a seven-member board elected from districts around the county, according to Chronicle-Telegram archives. It would have eliminated the county recorder, treasurer and coroner, as elected positions, and given the elected county council the power to appoint all three. It also would have created an appointed county executive position with powers similar to that of the current county administrator position. The offices of county auditor, prosecutor and sheriff would have remained elected positions under the plan. Citizens for Equal Representation was billed as nonpartisan, but The Chronicle reported at the time that most county Democrats were critical of the proposal, arguing it would have favored the Lorain County Republican Party based on how the districts were drawn. Cuyahoga and Summit counties in Northeastern Ohio are the only two of Ohio's 88 counties with anything other than a three-member board of commissioners form of government. Both have county councils and a county executive — 11 council members and an elected executive in Summit County, since 1981, and the same in Cuyahoga County since voters approved a new county charter form of government in 2009 in reaction to a massive public corruption scandal. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @DaveOBrienCT.