THE TREACHERY OF FRIENDS: The comments on yesterday's post on SB 82, the bill passed by the Ohio Senate in June to ban residency requirements for municipal employees, show that further explanation of the issue (and my anger) is required.

The Ohio Municipal League, which opposes SB 82, says the following: The cities of Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, and Dayton have charter provisions requiring virtually all their employees to live in the city. The fact that these requirements are in city charters means that they were adopted by popular vote (the Cleveland rule was adopted by the voters in 1982.) In addition, Youngstown has a City Council ordinance requiring residence in the city, and Cincinnati has one extending the rule to Hamilton County. Canton recently repealed a similar ordinance as part of a collective bargaining agreement.

All told, the OML has identified 125 Ohio cities and 13 villages which have some kind of residency requirements in their charters, i.e. adopted by a vote of their citizens. Many simply require city managers to live in the cities they serve.

Senate Bill 82 would unilaterally repeal all these local, democratically adopted requirements unless they include their entire counties, plus all adjacent counties, in their permissible "residency zones".

Some mayoral candidates (Draper, Nelson) have said they support gentler versions of the Cleveland residency rule, e.g. allowing city workers to live elsewhere after some years of service. Under current law, such changes can be adopted like any other charter amendment, by popular vote. Under SB 82, any version of local residency requirement that doesn't include all of the county, plus Lorain, Medina, Summit, Portage, Geauga and Lake Counties, would be illegal. The preferences of local citizens, including candidates for mayor, would be immaterial.

As you can probably tell from my previous post, I'm furious at my Senator, C.J. Prentiss, and my old friend Dan Brady for their role in passing this thing. As I said, I think ending the residency rule will inflict a major blow on Cleveland's housing market and on neighborhood development efforts, which are already facing a serious new problem on the commercial side from Steelyard Commons. But that's not why I'm furious.

I'm furious because our two Democratic State Senators -- people who've built their careers posturing as small-d democrats, fighting to empower urban poor and working people against the special interests -- are helping the police unions and suburban Republicans to strip the people of Cleveland, including me, of our power to decide this local governance issue through the local democratic process.

I heard Frank Jackson at a campaign event last night where he was asked about SB 82. Jackson said that he opposes the bill for two reasons:

first, because whether you like the city's residency rule or not, it was put in the City Charter by a vote of the people 23 years ago, and everyone who's taken a city job since then has known what they were getting into;

and second, because SB 82 is another serious attack by the General Assembly on the city's basic home rule rights -- the guarantee enshrined in Article 18 of the Ohio Constitution that "Municipalities shall have authority to exercise all powers of local self-government". (I listed some of the other recent Statehouse moves to thwart or eliminate Ohio cities' self-governing powers in this May 27 post.)

I think Jackson nailed it. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that his opponent Mayor Campbell, on this issue, would agree with him completely. I'm very sure that most Cleveland voters would; why else would the FOP and its friends keep trying to eliminate the residency rule through a top-down imposition from Columbus, rather than a democratic process here? Polling results, that's why.

If Senators Brady and Prentiss think Cleveland's residency rule is unfair, they had every right to circulate petitions, try to put a Charter change on the ballot and campaign for its passage. I would have disagreed, but I wouldn't have thought they were doing something vicious or slimy -- just misguided. If they persuaded a majority of voters to agree with their view, well, that's the way democracy bounces.

But what they've done by supporting SB 82, quietly conspiring with the GOP to take away the democratic rights of the people they're supposed to represent, is vicious and slimy. The appropriate word is probably "treacherous". Unless they find a way to undo it, this treachery should be a cloud over Prentiss' and Brady's (and Dann's and Fedor's) heads for the rest of their political lives.

Perhaps the most important lesson is this: With all the talk about new "progressive" leadership in Ohio's Democratic party (like here, here and here), ordinary Democrats in Cleveland and other cities need to start asking "What's in this for us?" The specific question we should be asking today is, do "progressive Democrats" actually believe in grassroots democracy and self-government? Are they committed to preserving the state's hundred-year-old principle of local home rule against corporate/GOP efforts to take it away? Or are they ready, like "progressives" Brady and Prentiss, to toss that principle aside when it's convenient -- like, to make the police unions happy?

Voltaire: "Lord, protect me from my friends. I can take care of my enemies."