CLEVELAND STATE REPRESENTATIVES AGAINST HOME RULE -- MILLER, WOODARD, YUKO
I was in Columbus today, so I went to the State Capitol and picked up a copy of the House Journal for Wednesday's session. The following State Reps whose districts include parts of Cleveland voted for Senate Bill 82, prohibiting local governments and voters from imposing local residency requirements on any permanent full-time municipal employee:
Dale MillerRepresentatives Mike Skindell, Annie Key, Shirley Smith, Michael DeBose and Lance Mason voted against Senate Bill 82, choosing to preserve home rule and local democracy.
Claudette Woodard
Kenny Yuko
Since so much attention is on the police and firefighters whose unions led the campaign for this anti-urban, anti-democratic measure, let me point out that safety forces are only a small part of the municipal workforces which will be affected if SB 82 holds up in court.
At one end of the spectrum, the many Ohio villages who require their hired village managers to live locally, or even in the same county, will no longer be allowed to do so.
At the other end, in Cleveland, all of the City's more than 7,000 civil service employees -- only 2,800 of whom are uniformed police, fire and EMS -- will be "free to flee", despite the fact that they accepted their jobs knowing city residency was part of the deal. This includes the white-collar managers and professionals (up to the level of Commissioner) who actually run the city's services and utilities, and who can now spend their days at City Hall and their evenings and weekends in the suburbs, nicely insulated from the consequences of their performance.
Will political appointees like department directors -- or even mayors and council members -- be freed from residency rules, too? It depends on the courts' interpretation of the word "permanent", in the section of SB 82 which allows residency rules for "volunteers"... defined to include employees who are paid but not on a "permanent, full-time" basis. Are mayors, councilmen and cabinet members "volunteers" under the new law? Or are they covered employees, free to live anywhere they want while running the city? What an interesting approach to regionalism.
Unless the courts just throw SB 82 out -- which is quite possible, and devoutly to be wished -- it's going to create a mess that we've only begun to imagine.
Don't forget to thank Reps. Miller, Yuko and Woodard -- along with Senators Brady and Prentiss -- when that mess appears.