BY LUCY MAY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Broadway Commons supporter Amy Gallaher of Over-the-Rhine expresses her opinion with a sign at a meeting Monday of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
(Glenn Hartong photo)
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Hamilton County's board of elections just threw Bob Taft a curveball. The Republican secretary of state and candidate for governor will have to decide whether voters can tell county commissioners where to put a new baseball stadium.
The board of elections deadlocked 2-2 Monday on whether petitions to force a vote on the stadium site were valid. Democrats said the question should go on the ballot; Republicans disagreed. In cases of a tie, Mr. Taft steps in.
Bob Taft
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In the sport of politics, observers see it as a lose-lose situation. But no matter what Mr. Taft decides, the matter likely will land in court.
And while the debate rages, Hamilton County commissioners are going about the business of designing a new Reds ballpark on the riverfront because that's what a tentative stadium deal between the county and team requires.
"I think we're seeing the beginning of a legal swamp, and who knows what's going to come out of it," Hamilton County Commissioner Bob Bedinghaus said. "We are hiring an architect and a construction manager and are moving forward with Baseball on Main as we've agreed with the Cincinnati Reds."
Backers of the rival Broadway Commons stadium site pushing to get the question on the ballot said moving forward on the riverfront site, also known as the "Wedge," does not change anything for them.
"If they want to continue to waste the public's money on a river site, nothing that happened today or will happen in the months leading up to the election will keep them from wasting money on the river site," said Cincinnati City Councilman Todd Portune, a leader of the Broadway group.
The tie vote Monday keeps a ballpark site in limbo, more than two years after voters passed a sales tax increase to build new homes for the Reds and Bengals. The Bengals' stadium is under construction and is scheduled to open in August 2000.
The board did certify the validity of 27,477 petition signatures with another 5,306 signatures that haven't been counted yet. The group collected nearly 45,000 signatures and needed 26,389 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.
The proposed ballot language would prevent Hamilton County commissioners from spending tax dollars on a new Reds ballpark on any site other than Broadway Commons, at Broadway and Reading Road.
If passed, the measure would accomplish that by creating a county charter that proponents say would change nothing else about county government.
But opponents of the measure say the very creation of a county charter -- however limited it appears to be -- could lead to dramatic changes in the structure and powers of county government.
Lawyer Bill Seitz, an opponent of the measure and chairman of the Green Township Board of Trustees, argues that such a charter could ultimately destroy the independence of municipalities and townships within Hamilton County.
"Once you have let the horse out of the barn, you don't know where the horse is going to run," Mr. Seitz said.
He and lawyers Joe Trauth and Robert Kreidler spoke against the petition effort Monday, saying the Broadway Commons petition was an illegal referendum on the stadium issue disguised as a charter.
Mr. Seitz showed his own petitions, signed by elected officials in more than a dozen suburban townships and municipalities in Hamilton County, saying the "confusing and misleading initiative, if passed, opens a Pandora's box of troubles." Those arguments convinced the two Republican members of the elections board: Eugene Ruehlmann, former chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party, and Mike Allen, current party chairman.
"This has nothing to do with whether or not we want the public to have a right to vote," Mr. Ruehlmann said.
"As a lawyer, I don't think the statutory requirements have been met," he said after the vote. "We try here to validate whenever possible. But these details are so flagrant, I don't think you can overlook them."
But Donald Mooney, a lawyer representing the Broadway Commons petitioners, argued that the language in the petitions met the requirements of the law without a lengthy explanation of the county's current form of government, which opponents said was necessary. Tim Burke, chairman of the board of elections and chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, said his reading of the petition and state laws agreed with Mr. Mooney's. Mr. Burke said the law had few requirements of such charter efforts, and the Broadway petitions had met those requirements.
Daniel Radford, executive secretary-treasurer of the Greater Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council and the other Democrat on the elections board, agreed and cast his vote with Mr. Burke.
Observers of the process -- and voters who signed the petitions -- were not surprised by the tie vote.
"The vote was predictable," said Hamilton County Commissioner John Dowlin, the only one of the three Republican commissioners who favors the Broadway site.
"The big guns of the Republican Party certainly seem to be in favor of the Wedge. I think you should let the voters decide."
But Mr. Trauth said he thought the Democrats' votes were predictable because "the Democratic majority of city council has already spoken on this." Council endorsed Broadway Commons last year. Tina Fails, a West End resident who signed the Broadway Commons petitions, said she thinks big-money interests in town are making the petition effort more complicated than it needs to be. "They say money talks . . . ," she said. "A lot of times that's the way it works."
While the issue will soon be in the hands of Mr. Taft, that's not where Mr. Trauth and Mr. Seitz think it belongs.
They argue that, under state law governing the adoption of county charters, Mr. Taft does not have the authority to break the tie. Mr. Trauth said a court probably will have to do that.
But lawyers in the secretary of state's office think Mr. Taft must make the next call.
"This is something that we have to decide," said Jon Allison, communications director for the secretary of state's office. "That doesn't mean that after a tie vote is broken or a protest is decided that someone might not say, "No, Bob Taft. You're wrong, and we're going to try to find a court to prove it.' "
Mr. Allison acknowledged that the political pressure on Mr. Taft, a Cincinnati native, will be heavy. "Most of these tie votes are along party lines, and he has consistently sided with the law deciding these things," Mr. Allison said. "This is obviously important to the folks of Hamilton County, but we have the law as our guide."
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