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Ohio’s Supreme Court has dismissed the Nelsonville council’s request to remove candidates from the ballot
By: David Forster
Posted on:
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — The Nelsonville City Council’s request that certain candidates for office be removed from the ballot was dismissed Tuesday by the Ohio Supreme Court.
The city is expected to soon file a motion asking the court to reconsider.
The request to remove candidates from the ballot in the upcoming November election was filed last week after the City Council voted to repeal Issue 23. This is a citizen initiative passed by voters last November that calls for a change in the city’s form of government.
The council wanted the Supreme Court to order the Athens County Board of Elections remove all candidates running for office under Issue 23. The council went to court after the elections board discussed the repeal of Issue 23 last week and decided to allow candidates to continue running until the courts settled the matter.
A lawsuit is expected to be filed any day now in the Athens County Court of Common Pleas challenging the repeal itself. A document filed with the Supreme Court by one of the Nelsonville candidates may offer a preview of what the lawsuit will argue.
On Monday, Andrea Nicole Thompson-Hashman, who is running for auditor, filed a motion asking to join the Supreme Court case on the grounds that the council’s request directly affected her as a candidate.
Her motion argued the City Council did not have the authority to repeal Issue 23, which would abolish Nelsonville’s charter government at the end of this year and return the city to the form of government it had before the charter was adopted 31 years ago. The city then was run by a council and an independent, elected mayor.
The council previously tried to eliminate Issue 23 by putting a proposed charter amendment on the ballot in May that included language to repeal the initiative. It did not pass. Since then, the city has been moving forward under Issue 23, planning for the transition to the new government that would take over on Jan. 1.
But at its meeting last week, the council abruptly changed course and voted to repeal the initiative, saying it had the power to do so under the charter.
Thompson-Hashman’s motion cites a similar case in Zanesville from the late 1970s in which voters approved a citizen initiative to abolish the city’s charter. Three months later, another group of citizens put an initiative on the ballot to repeal the first initiative. It also passed.
This ended up in court, with a decision by a state appeals court that the second initiative was unconstitutional.
The court said when the first initiative passed, the charter was, for legal purposes, abolished at that point. It didn’t matter that the charter would remain in effect until the end of the following year as the city transitioned to a new government.
So the charter could not simply be restored by repealing the initiative that repealed it, the court said. Instead, the only way to get a charter back was to go through the process spelled out in the state constitution for adopting a new charter.
That decision was by the 5th District Court of Appeal. Nelsonville is in the 4th District, so the decision is not legally binding on courts in this district. However, an Athens County judge looking for guidance on how to resolve this dispute would likely take a look at the Zanesville case.
But until a lawsuit challenging the repeal of Issue 23 is filed and works its way through the courts, and unless the Supreme Court changes its mind about dismissing the council’s request, the city remains in a paradoxical situation in which the council believes Issue 23 is repealed but candidates continue to run for office to carry out the initiative’s intent.