Issue 16 is a proposed Maple Heights charter change that would empower Maple Heights City Council to “change the salaries of all elected officials at any time, including during the elected officials’ term, or terms, or any part thereof.” It appears on city voters’ May 2 primary ballot.
As most who read those words will readily note, the proposed amendment to Article IV of the Maple Heights City Charter would give a City Council majority virtually unlimited powers to punish council dissidents or the mayor by maliciously cutting their pay, or to aggrandize themselves through reckless pay increases during their own terms.
Whether Maple Heights City Council is actually motivated by such destructive and irresponsible motives in proposing this charter change -- and it does not appear that’s the case -- is beside the point.
What matters is what the charter change says -- and what it would empower future councils in Maple Heights to do. And that has all sorts of negative potential.
Issue 16 does appear to trace to a generous-minded impulse by council to find a way to raise future council salaries without penalizing council members serving staggered terms, who would then be stuck at the old rate of pay while other council salaries went up.
A 2021 City of Maple Heights Charter Review Commission debated over how best to fix this. Should all of council go back to serving the same term, undoing a 2017 charter change aimed at creating greater continuity of experience on council?
But raising the pay for everyone, including current council members in the middle of their terms, was barred by Maple Heights’ then-charter language in Article IV that required salaries to be set at least 120 days before municipal elections for the following Jan. 1 term, and further, that those salaries “shall not thereafter be changed in respect to any such term of any part thereof.”
So, the charter review commission zeroed in on the charter language barring in-term salary changes in Maple Heights.
Was there anything in Ohio law that prohibited a municipality with home-rule rights from raising elected officals’ pay during their term of office?
An 1851 provision of the Ohio Constitution bars the Ohio General Assembly from changing “the salary of any officer during his existing term, unless the office be abolished,” and a 1981 state law provides that, “The salary of any officer of a city shall not be increased or diminished during the term for which he was elected or appointed.”
However, according to minutes of an April 22, 2021, Maple Heights charter review commission meeting, city Law Director Frank Consolo offered “his opinion that such in-term salary increases were permissible under Ohio law if provided for by a validly enacted ordinance.” Consolo also noted that “previous Ohio Attorney General Opinions have concluded that where a City Charter conferred full authority on the Council to fix the compensation of municipal officers, that authority may be exercised without regard to the provisions” of the 1981 law.
If the charter review commission wanted to allow in-term salary changes, Consolo then recommended it propose amending Article IV to eliminate the 120-day limitation and the language that said such a salary “could not thereafter be changed” during “any such term, terms or any part thereof.”
The charter review commission voted 7-0 to do so, and the language aimed at achieving that end appeared as Maple Heights Issue 42 on the Nov. 2, 2021 ballot, passing overwhelmingly.
City Council President Ron Jackson told our editorial board that, before that vote, there was broad discussion with voters in different parts of the city about what motivated that proposed charter change and what it would do.
But now questions have arisen as to whether the Issue 42 charter change actually gives council the right to change salaries during council terms. Hence, Issue 16 on the May 2 ballot, so baldly giving council unlimited “power to change the salaries of all elected officials at any time.”
Now it’s up to Maple Heights voters to consider whether it’s wise to upend all checks on council salary-setting just to make sure all council members are paid the same.
Our view: It’s not worth it. Trouble lies ahead for Maple Heights if voters give City Council such open-ended salary-setting power.
We urge Maple Heights voters to reject Issue 16 in the May 2 primary. Early voting has begun.
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Other resources for voters:
League of Women Voters vote411.org voters’ guide.
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