Tuesday, March 02, 1999
Voters face blitz on mayor-reform plan
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Now that Build Cincinnati apparently has the six votes on city council it needs to put its direct mayoral election plan on the May ballot, the hard part begins.
Backers have just two months to convince Cincinnati voters their city government is broken and needs fixing.
“We've been so focused on getting a plan we could get on the ballot, we haven't had time to think about putting together a campaign,” said Jeff Berding, one of the organizers of Build Cincinnati, a bipartisan group that has been working for more than a year on a reform plan for city government.
With the decision of Democrat Todd Portune to go along, it appears Build Cincinnati has the required six votes on council to get the issue on the ballot.
It is a version of the “strong mayor” plan Build Cincinnati put forward a year ago, whittled down so the group could get Republicans, Democrats and Charterites on board.
If passed by voters, it would set up a direct election system for the mayor's office in 2001, with the top two finishers in a nonpartisan primary facing off for the mayor's office in the fall election.
The plan would also create something Cincinnati has not had for more than 70 years — a mayor with real political and legislative clout.
The mayor no longer would be a figurehead. He or she would not be a voting member of council, but would have power to appoint the vice mayor and council committee chairmen, as well as veto council legislation. The veto could be overridden by six council members. The mayor would also hire and fire the city manager, with the consent of council.
The task for Build Cincinnati when the campaign begins will be to motivate people to go to the polls when there is little else on the ballot. The only other item on the ballot for Cincinnati voters will be a countywide police communications levy.
The message, Mr. Berding said, will be the same as it has been since Build Cincinnati started its push for reform. It will argue Cincinnati needs a directly elected mayor with enhanced powers “so there will be some political accountability at City Hall.”
“We'll have to make the case that the present system, with nobody in charge, is costing this city,” Mr. Berding said.
With no candidate races on the ballot, it will be, in effect, a special election. And special election turnout tends to be far lower than that for a general election.
In August 1995, the Cincinnati Business Committee spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a special election campaign to sell its “strong mayor” plan, a system that would have given even more power to the mayor than the Build Cincinnati plan does.
Only 26.5 percent of the city's voters went to the polls in that election; 64 percent of them voted to reject the plan. November council elections draw considerably more voters. Nearly 40 percent voted in the 1997 council election, while 51 percent voted in November 1995.
Build Cincinnati organizers say political party support will be crucial to their chances for success.
The Hamilton County Republican Party is solidly behind the ballot issue and can be depended on to get the message out to its core voters. Cincinnati's Charter Committee signed on to the Build Cincinnati plan after Charter leaders were convinced it would preserve the council-manager form of government Charter created more than 70 years ago.
The Democratic Party in Cincinnati, however, is badly split over the issue, and is unlikely to play much of a role in getting the issue passed.
Mr. Berding said he expects Build Cincinnati to run a “traditional campaign” with everything from yard signs to direct mail to paid media advertising.
“We'll be going after the diehard regular voters, the people who show up at the polls no matter what,” Mr. Berding said. “Hard-core Republicans, hard-core Democrats, hard-core Charterites. That's who shows up when there"s nothing else on the ballot.”
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