Submitting CCBOR petition signatures to city clerk on June 18th, 2020
L to R: Sandy Bolzenius, Will Perkins, Bill Lyons. Photo taken by Greg Pace.
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An eventful June for CCBOR
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The week of June 15th was eventful for Columbus Community Bill of Rights:
- CCBOR filed suit against the City of Columbus requesting a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction (TRO/PI) against the city's one-year signature deadline for citizen initiatives
- Judge Graham, of the Ohio Southern District Federal Court, held a telephone hearing regarding our lawsuit with the city's legal team and ours.
- CCBOR submitted petitions, having collected almost 9,000 signatures during our 9 months of campaigning, to the city clerk of Columbus on June 18th just prior to our one-year deadline because the judge had not yet ruled on our request for a TRO/PI.
- Judge Graham denied our motion for a TRO/PI to toll our one-year deadline due to COVID-19 disruptions of our democratic initiative process in the city.
- Franklin County Board of Elections reported that we collected 6420 valid signatures from 8,911 total. Although short of the required amount of signatures, this gave us an exemplary validation rate of 72% for our hard work!!
What we gleaned from Judge Graham's call with legal teams and his decision (from Bill Lyons' notes on the call):
According to the Columbus City Attorney's office:
- Our proposal "does not belong in a city's charter."
The charter is the constitution for the City of Columbus and of course the people have the authority to propose changes to the charter through a vote of the people. Also, is the city attorney saying the people do NOT have the right to clean water, air and soil? Because that is what the amendment is all about.
- Because protests have been happening almost nonstop at the statehouse since Dr. Amy Acton first started issuing statewide health orders, and since the state and the city did not interfere with first amendment protected activity, we could have circulated our petition.
In other words, we should have been willing to risk our health and the public's health for our constitutional democratic right of initiative even though it was the governor himself who said "people should not have to choose between their health and their democratic rights!"
We were simply asking the city and the court to let us make up the time we missed due to COVID-19, and finish the three months we lost when it is safe again to do in-person signature gathering.
The state had no problem halting the primary election, extending deadlines to file taxes, renew driver's licenses, renew dog licenses, ... but for democracy by the people, no exceptions can be made.
The city and the court have now for the 4th time kept the voters of Columbus silenced with their decision.
All Columbus voters need to ask why the government is so afraid to let them have a voice in protecting their water, air and community, when no one else is protecting it?
CCBOR decided that it was unsafe to circulate in public during the COVID-19 pandemic for both volunteers and the public at large, and consider this decision by the Federal Court, which is supported by the city, an unjust and outrageous punishment for our responsible decision. In order for participatory democracy to thrive in Columbus, the City of Columbus must rescind their arbitrary and distinctive one-year signature gathering deadline for local citizen-based initiatives.
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PLEASE SIGN IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY!!
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THIS PETITION IS NOT THE SAME ONE THAT WE HAVE BEEN CIRCULATING IN COLUMBUS TO PLACE OUR INITIATIVE ON THE BALLOT!!
We are asking everyone, even those who reside outside of Columbus Ohio, to please sign our online petition as an endorsement of the public for Columbus City Council to put our community bill of rights charter amendment on the Columbus city ballot in November 2020.
Please consider an online donation!
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Letter: People Have Right
to Local Control Over Environment
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Click HERE or on the above image to read our Kathy McGlone's letter-to-the-editor in the Columbus Dispatch.
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Ohio Community Rights Network Newsletter
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TOPICS:
- Courage to speak, act, listen
- Columbus Community Bill of Rights (CCBOR) needs your help
- HB 545 - Brine as a Commodity bill
- Support the efforts of OHCRN
Click HERE or on logo above to read the full newsletter |
Concerns Raised About Proposed
Powerplant on OSU Campus
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[Excerpt:]
"This is a university that had done a lot of research that has demonstrated how destructive and concerning climate change is to everyone, [with] some of the leading researchers in the world," Waggoner adds, "and it is making an institutional decision to build a gas plant that will pollute the air and contribute to climate change?"
Waggoner also makes the point that the technology needed to transition the plant to a cleaner source of fuel does not yet exist, and he worries that a new natural gas plant would actually lock in demand for the fossil fuel for the foreseeable future.
Click HERE or on above image to read full article in the Columbus Underground.
CCBOR's Kathy McGlone was among those who testified on June 30, 2020, at the virtual Ohio Power Siting Board hearing. Kathy's testimony is attached to this newsletter email as a pdf file.
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Ohio Cracker Plant Update June, 2020 from
Concerned Ohio River Residents
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Citing a years-long trend of declining profit margins, greatly increased competition from new facilities in the Gulf Coast and China, and softening demand due to the economic slowdown and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and plastics pollution, the group explains that returns on investment are no longer sufficient to justify the risk investors would have to assume in order to construct more major petrochemical projects like the one currently under construction in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. As evidence they point to the recent postponement of a final investment decision on the PTTG-Daelim ethane cracker plant proposed for Belmont County, Ohio.
Read the letter here and see the media coverage of the letter here.
We have known that the industry's outlook was shaky since the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis published an eye-opening study in March of this year. This expert-backed letter only strengthens our arguments that we need to diversify our economy and look to other projects for economic prosperity.
One of the signers, a professor and director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at the West Virginia University College of Law spoke with a local radio talk show host on "The Watchdog" radio show about the reasons for signing the letter and need for the region to transition off of fossil fuels, not invest more in them. Click here to listen to the podcast.
Click logo to visit their Facebook page
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Chesapeake Bancrupcy Seen as a
Turning Point for Oil Industry
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Workers at a Chesapeake Energy natural gas drilling site in Bradford County,
Pennsylvania. Photograph: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty
[Excerpt:]
Jeanne Martin, the campaign manager at ShareAction, said the Chesapeake bankruptcy should serve as a "wake-up call" for banks including Barclays, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and HSBC, which had continued to fund the fracking industry despite knowldge of their contribution to the climate crisis.
Click HERE or on the above image to read the full article in 'The Guardian'.
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Vatican urges Catholics to
drop investments in fossil fuels, arms
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FILE PHOTO: People walk on St. Peter's Square after the Vatican reports its
first case of coronavirus, at the Vatican, March 6, 2020. REUTERS/Yara Nardi
[Excerpt:]
Called 'Journeying Towards Care For Our Common Home', one action point called on Catholics to "shun companies that are harmful to human or social ecology, such as abortion and armaments, and to the environment, such as fossil fuels".
Click HERE or on the image above to read the full article in Reuters.
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GrassRootOhio - Every Friday
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Listen to Carolyn Harding interview guests about Ohio issues that affect all of us in the state.
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Other Great Resources Online
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LC Concerned Citizens newsletter.
To subscribe, click HERE and follow the instructions on their website, located in the right-hand sidebar to email them and ask to subscribe.
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Click on the image above to watch our video 'We're All Downstream'
Please share this video by copying this link and sending:
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Remember, this is OUR
Participatory Representative Democracy
If we don't use it, we lose it
Toxic Radioactive Waste Doesn’t Belong Here
Protect our Home, our Families, our Rights!
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