The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Charter 1991-92: What did happen?
Politics killed chance for reform, advocates say
In November 1991, Lorain voters said yes to forming a Charter
Commission to write new rules about city government.
A year later in November 1992, voters turned down the document that the Charter Commission proposed.
The reason: Lorain politics, said the city’s former Charter Commission chairman and vice chairwoman of that time.
On Nov. 3, Lorain voters will consider Issue 25, the question: Shall a commission be chosen to frame a charter?
Then there are 35 names for voters to select up to 15 people to fill the 15 seats of the Charter Commission.
If voters approve the commission, that board would begin meeting to examine Lorain’s city government and write new rules for how it operates — and maybe change its form altogether.
That hasn’t happened in almost 30 years.
City history
For decades, Lorain has operated as a statutory city, meaning Ohio law sets the rules for city elected offices and their job duties.
In 1991, a movement began for Lorain to reorganize its city government.
Some saw it as an attack against then-Mayor Alex M. “Kiki” Olejko, who died in 2009.
Attorney Kenneth Stumphauzer was Lorain’s law director in 1991.
“When I was the law director, I got involved in situations where the mayor at the time, God rest his soul, just didn’t know how to control some staff of the city,” Stumphauzer said.
“Consequently, the city missed out on a lot of development.
“That’s probably the best I can say. And had we had a charter, and we had a city administrator, I think that person would have worked very effectively with Ford Motor Company and a lot of other companies that left the city of Lorain. But, unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”
Olejko was not the only issue.
Morning Journal reports from the time indicated the city was languishing under double-digit unemployment.
Meanwhile, the same faces continued running for office.
Directly or indirectly, other elected officials had conflicts with each other within City Hall, another potential reason to re-examine the rules.
On the ballot
On Nov. 5, 1991, voters said yes to the Charter Commission.
The final official was 9,230 votes in favor and 5,356 against, or more than 63 percent of voters approving the Charter Commission, according to the Lorain County Board of Elections.
Stumphauzer did not seek re-election as law director, but ran for a seat on the Charter Commission, and won; he would be voted commission chairman.
Mary Jo Cook, a respected city councilwoman who some suggested should challenge Olejko, was the top vote-getter in winning a Charter Commission seat.
Cook would be elected commission vice chairwoman and she stepped down from City Council.
Lorain attorney Anthony Giardini won a Charter Commission seat.
Giardini would become a negotiator for a split commission and an occasional public commenter on the proceedings that started after the election.
Larry Keller, a Cleveland State University professor who consulted with city governments on charters, ventured to Lorain to help the Charter Commission rewrite the rules of city government.
In the process
The Charter Commission met Dec. 14, 1991, and scheduled its first visiting speaker for a meeting on Jan. 9, 1992.
“It was an interesting experience,” Cook said. “It was a lot of fun. I felt like I was one of the founding fathers, or mothers, writing the constitution.
“But it was pretty much doomed from the start, I think, because there was so much political opposition to it.”
Keller began his foray into Lorain politics.
“It was my first experience with a true political machine,” said Keller, now associate professor emeritus in the Public Administration Program of CSU’s Levin College of Urban Affairs.
He and Cook praised Stumphauzer’s commission leadership at that time.
Keller also recalled a member resigning for health reasons, setting up a 7-7 split between those who wanted to change the city government and those who were “totally part of the machine.”
“It was a seven-seven split, very contentious meetings,” he said. “Some of the people didn’t act professionally.”
The Charter Commission’s meetings became a series lasting for months with discussions on city government.
Topics included reducing the power of the mayor, decreasing the size of City Council and adding a city administrator.
Negotiations boiled down to two-person teams, with Stumphauzer and Cook representing those wanting a massive overhaul, and Giardini and Steve Bansek, then Lorain’s clerk of courts, advocating for a strong mayor government.
As time went on, news reports indicated opposition arose over issues ranging from the mayor’s salary to effects on minorities.
Satisfying none
In 2020, Keller, Stumphauzer and Giardini all used variations on compromise to describe Lorain’s 1992 charter.
They came up with “something that I don’t think we were all happy with, but something a majority of us could agree to,” Giardini said.
That government was “as close as, at least from my viewpoint, of an unworkable form of government that I ever created,” Keller said.
He noted the final version gutted an ethics provision by which the city could have promulgated and enforced rules for its leaders.
In November 1992, voters said no.
The charter failed 15,508 to 11,008, or more than 58 percent against.
“I say it turned out to be a complete waste of time because the voters overwhelmingly rejected the charter that was come up with,” Giardini said.
It was “pretty bipartisan,” but got “slaughtered” at the polls, and both the Democratic Party and Republican Party chairmen opposed it, he said.
“They felt like it was taking too many rights and powers of voters away from them,” Giardini said.
Cook bristled at the phrase “waste of time.”
“It is never a waste of time for citizens to try to improve upon the state of their municipal government,” she said. “Let’s be honest — the forces who defeated the charter proposal were the very folks who stood to lose political power.”
Powers that be
Keller and Stumphauzer also suggested the charter failed due to the power structure in the city, not necessarily powers of voters.
“What happens is — it happened in Lorain for certain — is that charters can change who has power,” Keller said. “Therefore, they tend to shake up the current power structure, and when you’ve got a political machine going, people are not in favor of that.
“There’s a large segment that actually don’t like change.”
“Of course, it was disappointing,” Stumphauzer said. “And the reason it was defeated was because the charter at that time, was going to eliminate a lot of political influence in the city, and of course, there were a lot people that did not want their political influence diminished.”