By Bill Bush on May 11, 2022 in The Columbus Dispatch.
A group that has unsuccessfully tried four times to get a citizen initiative on the Columbus ballot to ban injection wells from fracking within the city limits says it learned long ago that the city’s rules discourage putting such issues directly before voters.
At a public hearing Tuesday evening at City Hall, several members of the group said the city’s Charter Review Commission, the five-member panel charged with making recommendations for changes to the city’s charter, has been effectively hijacked by city officials.
The anti-fracking group accuses the city of never letting a good crisis go to waste in using Issue 7 to further tighten already tight rules.
The hearing was the first opportunity that the general public has had to address the commission after working since January with staffers answering to city elected leaders.
Of the numerous changes being proposed for the review commission, the main one was aimed at measures like Issue 7, the controversial proposal put forward by ProEnergy Ohio to give it control of tens of millions of tax dollars with few strings attached. The money purportedly would be used to run a vaguely defined green-energy program, while collecting undefined and open-ended management fees.
Issue 7 was soundly defeated last November, but the group behind the effort is proposing another initiative for less money.
Ballot access: Anti-fracking group wary of additional limits
City Attorney Zach Klein said Tuesday that if there’s a way to balance ballot access against “initiative petitions that fleece taxpayers out of millions of dollars into someone’s personal pocket, which is what the heart of Issue 7 was,” then he supports it. He noted that whatever gets recommended, voters ultimately have the final say in any charter changes.
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