LaRose will serve as tie-breaker

Secretary of State will make call on city’s candidate issue

The issues stem from conflicting information on (Julie A.) Belich’s initial petition filing with the board of elections.

The Ohio Secretary of State will serve as a tie-breaker in determining which seat a Willoughby Hills city council candidate is seeking in the Nov. 2 general election.

The issues are being handed over to Secretary of State Frank LaRose after the fourmember Lake County Elections Board split along party lines on a pair of motions regarding the candidacy of Julie A. Belich.

The issues stem from conflicting information on Belich’s initial petition filing with the board of elections. Belich wrote under the “Statement of Candidacy” section she is seeking election to the “council-at-large I” seat. Two lines below that, she wrote that the four-year term commences on Jan. 2, however the council-at-large I seat commences Jan. 1. The council-at-large II seat commences Jan. 2.

Later on that same page under the “Nominating Petition” section, Belich wrote that she was seeking the “Council-At-Large” seat, but did not specify which seat. She wrote Jan. 2 for the commencement date. Belich currently serves on that seat in Willoughby Hills City Council.

Willoughby Hills has four council-at-large seats. All four are up for election Nov. 2. Three are four-year terms and the other is a two-year term. In the city’s charter, the four seats are split between three commencement dates. Councilat-large I and council-atlarge IV (the two-year term) have Jan. 1 commencement dates. Council-at-large II has a commencement date of Jan. 2 and council-atlarge III has a Jan. 3 commencement.

Belich submitted her petition to the Lake County Elections Board Aug. 3. Belich’s petition included 59 signatures and 55 were valid. Thirty valid signatures were needed.

Assistant Lake County Prosecutor Michael DeLeone said that after Belich filed, Willoughby Hills Law Director Michael Lucas found there was a defect in the petition. Lucas said the city’s charter allows for a 10-day window to correct the defect.

“And in this case the petitioner, Julie Belich, did refile petitions in accordance with the charter,” DeLeone said. “And when those petitions came in, Mr. Lucas as law director requested copies of those petitions, which were forwarded to him. Mr. Lucas entered a subsequent opinion…in which he found the charter provisions were complied with the process and that the amended petitions complied with the process and are eligible under the charter now to proceed.”

Belich, in her resubmitted filing, again wrote under the Statement of Candidacy Section she was seeking to be a candidate for the council-at-large I seat. This time she filled in that the four-year term had a commencement date of Jan. 1. Under the Nominating Petition section, Belich wrote that she was seeking the council-at-large I seat with a Jan. 1 first commencement date. In the second filing, Belich submitted 76 signatures and 75 were valid.

DeLeone recommended to the board Aug. 16 that Belich’s first petitions be rejected, consistent with the Willoughby Hills law director’s opinion. He also recommended that the amended petitions be accepted.

Motions were ultimately made to that effect, but there was a 2-2 split on each vote. There are two Democrats and two Republicans serving on the board of elections. Democrats Thomas A. Tagliamonte and Linda Hlebak voted “yes” on the motions, consistent with DeLeone’s recommendations. Republicans David A. Vitaz and Lake County Elections Board Chairman Dale Fellows voted no to both. Fellows’ wife Nancy Fellows currently serves in the council-at-large II seat in Willoughby Hills, though she is not seeking reelection in November.

Fellow said his issue is with “process and procedure.” He said he resents when he’s told a “law director has ultimate authority over election laws.”

“There’s one hundred years of knowledge, experience on elections at this table,” Fellows said during discussion at the Aug. 16 board meeting prior to the votes. “I’m not sure how much experience a particular law director — any particular law director — might have. And I reject the idea, the concept, that a law director can supersede elections law and elections process. Because when you take this situation into the nth degree, you could have a situation where you want to put defects into your petitions so that you could choose after the filing deadline, which (seat) did you really want to go for.”

Fellows also said, “we all know that if you poll three different law directors on the same issue, you get three different opinions.”

“That makes me concerned when it deals with election law and the integrity of the elections process, which is certainly under scrutiny a lot these days,” Fellows said. “How do you rectify that? I’m not trying to be argumentative, I’m trying to just sort through what is proper and right without abdicating our responsibility too. I think that we can be held responsible if we abdicate our responsibility to a law director. At that point it’s like we’ll just give the whole elections process to the law director.”

DeLeone said that only the law director and the courts can interpret the charter.

“So if there’s a question about wording in (section) 8.32 (of the Willoughby Hills charter), there is one law director, so therefore only one source that can interpret it,” DeLeone said. “Notice that I didn’t say the law director and the prosecuting attorney and the courts. I said the law director and the courts because that is how the law works. While we may agree or disagree in a philosophical sense, the voters spoke. The voters passed this (charter amendment) and specifically passed this wording in ‘08. And the law director has interpreted it and when you’re doing what’s right… the right thing to do is to defer to the law director’s interpretation of the charter and to follow that opinion.”

Lake County Prosecutor Charles Coulson also spoke at the meeting and said, “I really don’t think this is that complicated.”

“She complied with what the charter said to fix it,” Coulson said. “If that is the case, then I really don’t see any room — that this board can do anything — but say she corrected the petitions and they’re valid petitions. The signatures are checked, the signatures are valid. The signatures were valid the first time. She wouldn’t have had the ability to correct it if the signatures hadn’t been valid the first time. (If) the signatures hadn’t been valid, you wouldn’t have to give the 10-day notice. She would have just been out. Since they were valid, the charter gives the candidate the right to correct it. And (she) did that.”

Lake County Elections Board Director Ross McDonald said that because of the tie votes, a notice will be sent to the secretary of state’s office. It’s the secretary of state’s statutory requirement to break the tied vote. The issue must be submitted to the secretary of state’s office within 14 days. The secretary of state “shall summarily decide the question and that decision is final,” according to state law.

Belich said in an Aug. 17 phone interview that it was always her intention to run for the council-at-large I seat. She was appointed to the seat in May of this year. When she was interviewed to fill the vacant seat she said she was asked if she would be running for election for the position in November if selected. She said she would.

“I am following through with what I spoke aloud during the interview process,” she said.

She said this was her first time pulling petitions from the elections board. The discrepancy between office sought and commencement date comes from what she said she believes was an honest mistake from a Lake County Elections Board staff member. She came to the office with two other people seeking to run for Willoughby Hills City Council on the day she pulled petitions. The three of them were seeking different seats, she said. The staff member went line by line with them on what to write on the petition, she said. When it got to the commencement date, she said she was told to write Jan. 2.

“I did not realize there were different commencement dates until that day,” she said. “And when he said that I asked, ‘we all have different commencement dates?’ and his answer to me was ‘based on your charter and the way it was written and that’s just how it works’ and kind of gave a very simple overview. So when he said that to me, I didn’t question (it). I was not one that thought ‘I’m council-at-large I, so I should start Jan. 1. That didn’t come to mind.”

In addition to the three prospective candidates, new Lake County Elections Board Deputy Director Dante Lewis was also present to watch and learn about the process. Belich said the number of people present could have been a factor in the error.

“There was a lot of conversation,” she said.”

The Lake County Elections Board certified the rest of the candidates running for office in the Nov. 2 general election during the Aug. 16 board meeting. With Belich’s status still up in the air, her name does not yet appear on the certified list for either the atlarge I or at-large II seat. There is currently one certified candidate running for the council-at-large I seat: Armen Tovmasyan. For council-at-large II, two candidates are certified: Brian Belohlavek and Joseph Jarmuszkiewicz.

According to an Aug. 17 email, council-at-large I candidate Tovmasyan told elections board members that he is protesting Belich’s petitions.

“The only two reasonable findings on Belich’s petitions is that she substantially complied with all form requirements to run for the Council-AtLarge II seat with the term commencement date that matches the two entries of January 2, 2022 on her petitions, or that the defect on her petitions is that the first entry of the office title is incorrect and pursuant to Section 8.32 of the Charter, she may recirculate petitions with either ‘Council-At-Large’ to match the other entry or ‘Council-atLarge II,’ either of which would then make the first entry of the office title consistent with the January 2, 2022 term commencement date,” Tovmasyan argued in the email.