City of Columbus has stymied democratic process surrounding Issue 7
While we, volunteers of the Columbus Community Bill of Rights (Columbusbillofrights.org) oppose Columbus’ Proposed Ordinance – Issue 7 – on the Nov. 2 ballot, we have this comment:
This is the first Columbus citizen petition for an ordinance or charter amendment that has made it on the ballot in recent memory.
Our experience is that the City of Columbus has stymied this democratic process at every opportunity.
The City restricted the length of time to one year for signatures to be gathered, when no other city in Ohio has such a limit.
When COVID struck, and our group stopped gathering signatures for everyone’s safety, City Council could have, but refused to extend the time so that we had a full year to gather signatures when it was deemed safe. Also, they could have voted to put our charter amendment on the ballot, but refused to do so, even though this possibility is in the City Charter.
While Issue 7 is a poor example of a citizen initiative, it should not influence Columbus citizens to believe that future initiative petitions are all bad. This one has murky sponsors with no current known addresses. It has no spokesperson to answer questions and its financial proposals are shadowy.
Other petitions may propose solutions to problems that the City leadership refuse to acknowledge. So, please, do not “pitch the baby with the bath water”. Educate yourself on each issue, and always support our hard-won right for citizen-led ballot initiatives and referendums.
Bob Krasen, Columbus; Sandy Bolzenius, Columbus; Carolyn Harding, Bexley; Bill Lyons, Columbus; Charlotte Owens, Lithopolis; Greg Pace, Columbus; Jaime Andres Pardo, Dublin; Will M. Perkins, Columbus