CLEVELAND, OH – Personal self-motivation is one thing. Abusing a public office under the “color of law” to enrich oneself right in front of the public and other officials like everyone is stupid is another.
What’s not “off” the ballot for March 17, 2020 is an Issue 6 pay raise for Cleveland city council that’s tied to the highest percentage municipal legislators vote to give the city’s public employee “unions.” Democracy at its “anarchist” finest. Budget-protecting lawmakers so greedy they’ve created a motivation for employee unions to demand even more money from negotiating mayors in wages for more senior employees, layoffs for younger workers, service cuts and tax and fee increases. Vote No on that Issue 6 bullshit.
What’s “allegedly” off the ballot “the color of law co-conspirators think” are the Issue 3 and 4 initiatives to reduce the number of council members from 17 to 9; and shrink wages to $58,000 and terms to two years. Clevelanders will vote but the votes won’t be counted.
All this is from an individual operating outside the authority of an elections official named Mike West. He claims the following is a ruling from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that is not in the records of any public meeting.
“The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has been officially notified by the City of Cleveland that the parties who placed Issues 3 and 4 of the March 17, 2020 Presidential Primary ballot have withdrawn their proposed Charter Amendments.”
If he were performing an election official’s duties West would know his first sentence is a lie since individuals circulating intitiative petitions have no authority to ask the legislative authority of a municipal corporation to withdraw them. West and the board’s duty was to ensure Ritter and Cleveland’s legislative authority did not obstruct R.C. 3519.08(A) and the petition committee’s duty to direct their request to the Secretary of State.
“Notwithstanding division (I)(2) of section 3501.38 of the Revised Code, at any time prior to the seventieth day before the day of an election at which an initiative or referendum is scheduled to appear on the ballot, a majority of the members of the committee named to represent the petitioners in the petition proposing that initiative or referendum under section 3519.02 of the Revised Code may withdraw the petition by giving written notice of the withdrawal to the secretary of state.“
West should have known from the language in his own news release that what he was falsely claiming was an official announcement from the city of Cleveland was really an act of criminal obstruction of the performance of the Secretary of State’s duties. Reminding himself to perform only the duties of the office would have instructed him that he was engaged in “misconduct” with the officials who’d instructed him to write the news release. As a board employee West would have been directed by director Anthony Perlatta to craft the conspiratorial and criminally-obstructive false public announcement.
What’s publicly-known is that Bill Ritter failed to give written notice to the Secretary of State prior to the 70th day before the March 17, 2020 primary election. If the petition circulator intended to comply with R.C. 3519.08(A) he would have withdrawn with a written request to the state elections official prior to January 7, 2020 as required by general election laws for municipal corporations found in R.C. 731.
Section 15 of Cleveland’s charter clearly affirms that in addition to its instructions, the general laws of the state apply when it comes to local elections. Two sections of Ohio law guide municipal elections. R.C. 731 and Title 35. Section 15’s language is below and readers should observe the last sentence’s instructions to council is to enact ordinances “against corrupt practices.”
“All elections provided for by this Charter, whether for the choice of officers or the submission of questions to the voters, shall be conducted by the election authorities prescribed by general law of the State; and the provisions of the general election laws of the State shall apply to all the elections except as provision is otherwise made by this Charter, and except further that the Council may, by ordinance, provide measures to promote and insure the purity and integrity of the ballot, and against corrupt practices in elections. (Effective November 4, 2008) “
At some point a story written by Cleveland Scene’s Sam Allard reveals Ritter appears to have learned he’d failed to perform the duties of a petition circulator when he missed the prior to the 70th day before the election withdrawal deadline by 24 days. Instead of living within the limits of R.C. 3519.08(A), Ritter appears to have held secret meetings with Kelly and others to concoct a scheme to obstruct it.
On February 7, 2020 Kelly, a “think he slick” criminal, introduced Resolution 197-2020 as an “emergency ordinance” to “repeal Ord. No. 41-2020 passed January 6, 2020 authorizing submission to the electors of the City of Cleveland of an initiative petition proposing to amend the Charter of the City of Cleveland by amending Section 27, relating to salary and attendance of Council members; and to repeal Ordinance No. 42-2020, passed January 6, 2020, authorizing the submission to the electors of the City of Cleveland of an initiative petition proposing to amend the Charter of the City of Cleveland by amending Sections 25 and 25-1, relating to dividing the City into wards and reapportionment of wards.”
The problems with Kelly’s “single emergency ordinance” are numerous. He should have enacted two separate ordinances to deal with each charter issue as “one subject” separate. Clevelanders would think Kelly’s years on council, as president, as an attorney advised by well-paid “consultants” he’d know not to violate R.C. 731.19. “Subject and admendments of bylaws, ordinances and resolutions.” He must have earned his degree in crime from “How to Get Busted in Politics 101.”
“No ordinance, resolution, or bylaw shall contain more than one subject, which shall be clearly expressed in its title. No bylaw or ordinance, or section thereof, shall be revived or amended, unless the new bylaw or ordinance contains the entire bylaw, ordinance, or section revived or amended, and the bylaw, ordinance, or section so amended shall be repealed. Each such bylaw, resolution, and ordinance shall be adopted or passed by a separate vote of the legislative authority of a municipal corporation and the yeas and nays shall be entered upon the journal.”
This omission is just further evidence of a corrupt practice in violation of Section 15 of the Charter. What it really does is show Kelly’s in a hurry “color of law” criminal state of mind. It also drags election board officials into felony “Misconduct” violations of R.C. 3599.16.
Misconduct of member, director, or employee of board of elections – dismissal. No member, director, or employee of a board of elections shall: (A) Willfully or negligently violate or neglect to perform any duty imposed upon him by law, or willfully perform or neglect to perform it in such a way as to hinder the objects of the law, or willfully disobey any law incumbent upon him so to do; (B) Willfully or knowingly report as genuine a false or fraudulent signature on a petition or registration form, or willfully or knowingly report as false or fraudulent any such genuine signature; (C) Willfully add to or subtract from the votes actually cast at an election in any official returns, or add to or take away or attempt to add to or take away any ballot from those legally polled at such election; (D) Carry away, destroy, or mutilate any registration cards or forms, pollbooks, or other records of any election; (E) Act as an election official in any capacity in an election, except as specifically authorized in his official capacity; (F) In any other way willfully and knowingly or unlawfully violate or seek to prevent the enforcement of any other provisions of the election laws. Whoever violates this section shall be dismissed from his position as a member or employee of the board and is guilty of a felony of the fourth degree. Effective Date: 01-01-1983 .
Kelly misused the authority of the council president to introduce his emergency ordinance as a special “white privilege” to Ritters’ unlawful and obstructive request to the legislative authority instead of the Secretary of State on February 7, 2020, but the City Record didn’t show it being passed on February 7th. West’s announcement from a “statutory elections authority under Ohio laws” is dated February 11th.
The legislative authority of the municipal corporation of Cleveland doesn’t have a “regular” meeting scheduled for February 17th. The election board’s next meeting is February 19th. It’s last meeting was January 22nd and nine days before Ritter’s “planned” withdrawal request announcement.
So there can be no official communication from Cleveland to the elections board that an ordinance which hasn’t been voted on might be voted on if the next regular meeting is February 24th; and could still be pulled from consideration after a legal review.
Even if a council meeting is scheduled for February 24th, and if Kelly’s legislation passes, it still conflicts with West’s February 11th announcement that council or some official “officially” withdrew the petitions. Mayor Frank Jackson would still retain veto authority. Voters still have a 30-day window for a referendum to overturn any legislation a city council on all legislation any council enacts by law.
In order for Kelly’s emergency withdrawal ordinance to be the “sure deal” West’s news release implies means a lot of officials are ignoring the duties of the public offices they hold. All this for one dumb deadline-missing white male who thinks he deserves a special privilege.
The emergency legislation might pass and it might not; and it really should not if council obeys Section 36 of the charter and its instructions on what constitutes an emergency and what does not.
“Emergency Measures. An emergency measure is an ordinance or resolution for the immediate preservation of the public peace, property, health, or safety, or providing for the usual daily operation of a Municipal department, in which the emergency is set forth and defined in a preamble. … no measure making a grant, renewal or extension of a franchise or other special privilege, or regulating the rate to be charged for its services by any public utility, shall ever be so passed. (Effective November 4, 2008)”
Emergency ordinances are for “the people’s” benefit and not a criminal co-conspiring scumbag like Ritter looking for a special privilege. The emergency has to be defined in one of the categories above and it can’t be for the purpose of criminally obstructing an election that’s going to affect council’s wages, benefits and terms in office. 99 percent of the emergency ordinances council enacts violate the charter and Ohio laws. More Kelly obstruction.
There’s another general law nuance Kelly opens with his, Ritter and the election board’s criminal scheme. Even if council withdraws the ordinance Cleveland voters have a right to a referendum on council’s withdrawal to keep the election on the ballot. That’s in addition to a legal challenge on whether or not the language of Kelly’s ordinance constitute’s an emergency.
Ohio’s courts have consistently instructed the state’s elections board that council’s or legislative authority’s must obey emergency ordinance enactment laws in elections. West’s “criminal tool” news release claims the elections board’s decision is based on an ordinance that hasn’t even passed. .
There is no connection to Ritter’s request and “the public peace, health or safety” that would give Cleveland electors “a meaningful opportunity to determine” whether “their representatives did have valid reasons for the necessity of declaring that the ordinance was an emergency.” State ex rel. Moore v. Abrams, 62 Ohio St.3d 130, 580 N.E.2d 11 (1991),
How, also, did West get information that’s inconsistent with the most current public records between two public agencies, but through some “secret” and “backdoor” communication in violation of laws declaring the public’s business is required to be conducted in open meetings?
What open meeting process, as West has claimed, did the elections board rule on a matter that its public records don’t show a meeting was scheduled to discuss between the January 31st date of Ritter’s news conference and the February 11th date of the election official’s news release?
These are the convolution of general laws and conflicts the state resolved with general law R.C. 3519.08(A) that instructed Ritter to send his written request to the secretary of state prior to the 70th day before the election. If Kelly’s culpable state of mind wasn’t with criminal intent his “lawyer mind” might tell him to look at the other side of his intended and now demonstratedly-proven criminal acts.
It’s already been well-settled by the Supreme Court of Ohio that, “Section 7, Article XVIII of the Ohio Constitution authorizes municipal corporations to adopt and amend a homerule charter. Sections 8 and 9 of Article XVIII prescribe the procedures for adopting and amending a charter. State ex rel. Semik v. Cuyahoga Cty. Bd. of Elections (1993), 67 Ohio St.3d 334, 336, 617 N.E.2d 1120, 1122.”
It is clear from the plain words of the Constitution, the cases applying the Constitution, and the statutes that the policy of the law is to favor the right of citizens to amend the charters of the municipalities in which they live. For that reason, the law does not, among other things, give a city
council the right to act as a quasi-judicial body and substantively attack citizens’ rights to place charter amendments on the ballot.
On petition of ten percent of the electors, the legislative authority of the city must “forthwith” authorize by ordinance an election on the proposed charter amendment. In a unanimous opinion we recently followed well-established law and held that the authority of a city council in determining the sufficiency of a petition is limited to the form of the petition and does not include substantive matters. Morris v. Macedonia City Council (1994), 71 Ohio St.3d 52, 641 N.E.2d 1075; see State ex rel. Polcyn v. Burkhart (1973), 33 Ohio St.2d 7, 62 O.O.2d 202, 292 N.E.2d 883.”
What Kelly cannot do is identify the specific section of Cleveland’s Charter or Title 35 of Ohio’s Revised Code that authorizes the legislative authority of a municipal corporation and not the Secretary of State to remove the two issues from the ballot and using a statutory “emergency ordinance enactment” process to do so.
The “substantive matter” on whether or not George’s puppet, Ritter, has the legal authority to misdirect a request to remove the petition to council instead of the Secretary of State of Ohio isn’t a matter at all. City council can’t use an ordinance to repeal an initiative that criminally obstructs the authority of the Secretary of State to extend Ritter a “white special privilege” because of his legal stupidity instead of referring him for prosecution for obstruction.
Any legal action a citizen files to prevent the obstruction would name the Secretary of State as a party of interest; and he’d be forced to direct Ohio’s Attorney General to protect his statutory right and prosecute the offenders. All of them; including the county’s election officials.
West’s “news release” identifies acts of “neglect of duty, malfeasance, misfeance, or nonfeasonce in office, on the part of the board and its employees; and it identifies willful violations of Title 35. Pursuant to R.C. 3501.16 on the surface of his news release alone, and the implications of criminal acts it reveals, the Secretary of State may remove or suspend “any member of the board of elections, the director, deputy director, or any other employee of the board” for what it clearly affirms are Title 35 violations of law.
“The secretary of state may summarily remove or suspend any member of a board of elections, or the director, deputy director, or any other employee of the board, for neglect of duty, malfeasance, misfeasance, or nonfeasance in office, for any willful violation of Title XXXV of the Revised Code, or for any other good and sufficient cause. Except as otherwise provided in section 3501.161 of the Revised Code, vacancies in the office of chairperson, director, or deputy director shall be filled in the same manner as original selections are made, from persons belonging to the same political party as that to which the outgoing officer belonged. If those vacancies cannot be filled in that manner, they shall be filled by the secretary of state.”
In this case removing all of the criminal officials obstructing elections and misapplying laws at the Cuyahoga County board of Elections would be a blessing to the voters of Cuyahoga county. Cleveland voters will get to deal with the vote-obstructing criminals on the council in 2021.
