NELSONVILLE, Ohio — At a special meeting of Nelsonville City Council Monday night, the city’s auditor and law director warned that an initiative to abolish the city charter could create more problems than it solves.
The meeting’s purpose was to answer questions and discuss the issue with the public. Although there were a few questions from the public, most of the meeting involved presentations by City Auditor Taylor Sappington and City Law Director Jonathan Robe.
Arguably, it ended with more questions than answers.
In the meeting, Robe explained that the issue simply asks voters whether to abolish or retain the charter. It does not specify a particular city government structure to replace the charter, other than “the same form of government as it had prior to and up to January 1, 1995.”
The problem is that state statutes around municipal governments “have been changed multiple times since then by the General Assembly,” Robe told the Independent on Thursday.
On Monday night, Robe explained that the state allows three different statutory forms of government, “one of which has a city manager, so it’s not a question of whether to have a mayor or a city manager,” Robe said.
If the charter is abolished, the city will have to re-create its system of government. The ballot issue sets a deadline of Jan. 1, 2026, for a new city government to start. New officials would be elected “during the municipal elections of 2025.”
The 2025 general election will be held Nov. 4. Nominating petitions for the new offices would be due on Aug. 4, 2025. So the city would have less than nine months to set up a new government.
“If [Issue 23] passes … that transition period is going to require a massive, massive amount of work by council,” Robe said at Monday’s meeting. That could involve “going through, systematically, the code of ordinances” as well as establishing salaries for elected officials.
Sappington noted that the city faces “incoming budget constraints in the years of 2025 through the years 2027,” due to raises and union contracts. He said he’s worried about the city dealing with budget issues “in the midst of abolishing itself and remaking itself.”
“It gives me very serious concern about what anything the council or the administration, including myself, can do in the year and-a-half — and take on these financial issues and really serve the taxpayers, so that they don’t lose services, as well the city employees who work hard for the city,” Sappington said.
Councilman Tony Dunfee expressed concern about the city losing services such as fire and policing during the upheaval of a transition if the charter is abolished.
And then there are the current and potential legal hurdles around the charter issue itself.
A lawsuit about placing the issue on the ballot in the first place is pending before the Fourth District Court of Appeals. Council member Cory Taylor asked Robe what would happen to the charter issue if the appeals court rules in favor of the city, which argues that the charter cannot govern the placement of an initiative to abolish the charter on the ballot.
“It is conceivable the courts could declare [the issue] invalid,” Robe said. “I actually have a pretty deep concern about that possibility, just to be transparent to the people.”
More concerning to Robe, though, is language that was added to the ballot issue stating “Shall the proposed ordinance to abolish the charter and return to the same form of government as it had prior be adopted?”
Athens County Board of Elections Deputy Director Tony Brooks said in an email that the addition is required language from the secretary of state.
That phrasing opens the ballot issue to a post-election challenge, Robe told the Independent on Thursday.
“An ordinance can’t abolish the charter,” he said. “The charter is the city’s constitution, and just like Congress can’t abolish the Constitution by passing a law, the city council can’t pass an ordinance abolishing the charter.”
Anyone — a Nelsonville resident, the city council, even the state of Ohio — could use that language to challenge the issue after the election, Robe said.
“My concern is there is a possibility that the state might file a post-election lawsuit to invalidate,” Robe told council on Monday. “The city can’t stop the state from doing that.”
If that happens, “this would be stuck in court for a very long time,” Robe told the Independent on Thursday. He noted that the state’s challenge of Athens’ plastic bag ban took eight months to reach the trial court; that case is headed to the Fourth District Court of Appeals.
If the issue passes and is challenged in court, “the likelihood of its making it to the Ohio Supreme Court is very high,” Robe predicted. “We’re talking almost three years of having this issue hung up in the courts.”
And that legal limbo itself could pose problems because of the hard deadlines in the issue language, he said.
Council President Gregg Clement noted that the council will have two more meetings before the election, where the public is welcome to address the charter ballot initiative further.
Election Day is Nov. 5. Early voting is currently underway. For more information on voting, see the Athens County Board of Elections website.
Disclosure: Robe completed and filed incorporation papers for Southeast Ohio Independent News, the nonprofit that publishes the Athens County Independent. He also has provided the Independent with legal advice.
