Ohio lawmakers are ready to help cigarette makers at the expense of Ohio's children, the latest evidence of how broken our Statehouse is. Should we make reforming state government part of our newsroom advocacy in 2024? (Josh Gunter, The Plain Dealer)

Anyone paying attention to Ohio politics in recent years knows our government is broken, and a new drive by Statehouse legislators to override a veto by Gov. Mike DeWine makes that point clear.

Earlier this year, lawmakers tucked into the state budget bill a clause prohibiting any municipality from regulating tobacco. Several cities had done so, to block sales of flavored tobacco products that appeal to youths. DeWine vetoed the prohibition. He doesn’t want more kids using tobacco.

Legislators said last week they plan to override the veto. The reason: Lobbyists have been calling. One legislator said he hasn’t received so many calls from lobbyists on any other issue.

They don’t care about constituents. They certainly don’t care about the children. They care about the tobacco companies. Lawmakers are just fine with more kids using tobacco. They are fine with more people becoming addicted to nicotine. They are fine with more lung cancer deaths. They plan to override DeWine’s veto because lobbyists told them to.

I bring this up here because our newsroom is mapping out the next year’s advocacy agenda. Separate from our just-the-facts news coverage, we pride ourselves on the impact we have on improving our community.

This year, we used our firepower on Issue 1 in August, which I’ve called the sleaziest initiative ever perpetrated on Ohio by our lawmakers. They wanted to take away our power to change the Ohio constitution and campaigned on the false premise that it was in our best interest. Lawmakers wanted to concentrate their power. They had to convince you to give up yours. You roundly slammed that idea.

What made the effort more sinister was that lawmakers put it on the August ballot in a special election just months after they had outlawed August special elections. Why? Too few people vote in them, meaning policy was made by tiny percentages of the electorate. But that is exactly what lawmakers were counting on with Issue 1 in August. They hoped to slip it by you.

We refused to let that happen. We began sounding the alarm as soon as they voted to put it on the ballot, and we did not stop. Readers implored us to spread the word. We published 67 news stories, 7 editorials, 18 opinion columns and nearly daily letters to the editor. It was the first topic we discussed on more than 30 episodes of Today in Ohio, our news discussion podcast. On 11 days, it was the subject of a text message I send to subscribers each weekday. (joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.)  It was the subject of an Ask Me Anything, hosted by chief politics writer Andrew Tobias on Reddit. And we published ballot applications online and in The Plain Dealer repeatedly.

It worked. Our clarion call got the momentum started, with many groups joining the battle, and by special Election Day so many people were aware of the issue that voters exceeded turnout predictions by huge percentages. We have received hundreds of emails and notes from readers thanking us for taking the lead in spreading the word. I’m still getting them. Our readers recognize the value of our advocacy. 

As we plan for 2024, should we use that firepower to reform state government, to get lawmakers who prioritize us over the lobbyists who bankroll them? We think the solution might be open primaries, reducing the influence of political parties that have so effectively corrupted our system. 

Think about this: Roughly two thirds of us are registered as independents in this state, meaning we don’t have a say on which candidates make the November ballot.

What if we had an open primary, where anyone could vote, with the top two finishers moving on to November? Yes, I know. Anyone can ask for a party primary ballot in Ohio. Doing so, however, registers you in that party, and two thirds of us have no interest in that. We don’t want to be identified with organizations that wreck our state with their increasingly fringe ideas. Most Ohioans are centrists. The parties do not represent them anymore.

We could spend 2024 publishing stories about open primaries, how they have worked elsewhere and what people think about them. We could solicit opinion columns from experts. We could publish a series of editorials advocating for them, possibly leading to a constitutional amendment to adopt them in Ohio.

Rest assured, we will fully support and publicize an amendment heading to next November’s ballot to oust elected officials from legislative map drawing. Ohioans thought they had reformed that system -- to end gerrymandering -- but elected leaders refused to follow the law we approved. These officials swore oaths to uphold our constitution and then brazenly violated it, drawing gerrymandered maps that violated the constitution.

Ending gerrymandering is not enough, though. Until all of us have a say on the candidates who make the November ballot, the fringe members of the parties will choose them. That’s not working. If Republican or Democratic candidates knew they had to appeal to a broad spectrum of Ohioans, they’d hew much closer to the middle. That’s what we need.

Let’s go in another direction. Instead of open primaries, should we focus on Cuyahoga County? Voters thought we reformed county government a dozen years ago, exchanging a commissioner system for an executive and a council, aiming to run the county more professionally. Wow, did we whiff on that one.

What we have is a county council that won’t do its job. Despite five years of scandal, they have not fixed the jail. They have not solved the problem of juveniles sleeping in county office buildings. Their lethargy will keep early voting in March primary in the same, inconvenient setting instead of one that is more accessible. And they squandered $66 million in tax dollars on slush funds, to spend as they please.

People from all walks of life have told us they are disgusted with this government. They want change. They keep asking us to lead it.

Should voters abandon the charter and return to the county commission form? We had a lot of top-quality county commissioners and only one who was corrupt, in Jimmy Dimora. But think about who else we elected: Jim Petro, Tim Hagan, Jane Campbell, Tim McCormack, Peter Lawson Jones, Lee Weingart. Good folks, all. And they had the best interests of this county at heart. They certainly did not create slush funds for themselves.

Or, do we change the council from representing wards to being elected at large, countywide, so they stop thinking parochially? We don’t need ward council members. We are all represented by city, village or township councils already. County government is supposed to be about the large view. It doesn’t. Council members think small.

I offer open primaries and county government reform as possibilities, to enlist your help. 

We want to know what you think. We have limited resources, so we can focus only on one or two issues at a time. We aim to take on projects that will have the greatest impact on making the region and state a better place to live. If it’s not open primaries or county reform, what is it?

In 2024, where would you like us to focus?

I’m at cquinn@cleveland.com.

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