Streetcar foes start petition drive to block spending
By Barry M. Horstman • bhorstman@enquirer.com • January 19, 2011
Setting the stage for a second ballot showdown over the Cincinnati streetcar, opponents have started circulating petitions for a proposed charter amendment to block City Hall from spending any money on the $128 million-plus project for the next 10 years.
The courts, however, may have the first say on the measure, a decision that could determine whether voters have theirs later this year - by which time construction of the Downtown-to-Uptown line could be under way.
The essential question posed by that prospective and potentially messy scenario is whether the streetcar project could be halted midstream, perhaps leaving half-built tracks to become a modern equivalent of Cincinnati's unfinished subway tunnels from the early 1900s.
On that key point, the two sides are diametrically opposed.
The proposed city charter amendment, being pushed by the local NAACP and a coalition of neighborhood organizations and other groups, would prohibit the city from spending "any money from any source whatsoever ... on the design, engineering, construction or operation of a streetcar system" until Dec. 31, 2020.
Assuming streetcar opponents gather the roughly 8,700 signatures of registered city voters needed to qualify it for the ballot - an effort that began Wednesday night in College Hill - the charter amendment could go before voters between May and November, depending on when they turn in the petitions.
While taking a different tact, the amendment shares the objective of a defeated 2009 ballot measure that would have killed the streetcar plan by requiring voters’ approval on all future passenger rail proposals.
Fifteen months after that vote, the streetcar continues to provoke contentious debate, with proponents hailing it as a means to rejuvenate neighborhoods along its inner-city route and opponents castigating it as an ill-timed initiative for a city just forced to cut $55 million from its budget.
"We've never said no way, no how, no time to this," said Christopher Smitherman, president of the local NAACP. "What we have said is that this particular plan makes absolutely no sense right now. And if citizens are asked, I think they'll feel the same way."
Some streetcar backers, who effectively cast the 2009 measure as an overly broad and potentially costly impediment to major transit projects, concede a straight up-or-down vote on the streetcar could tap lingering public disenchantment with the plan.
"I'd say streetcar supporters would have the tougher selling job," said Gene Beaupre, a Xavier University political science instructor who has analyzed Cincinnati politics for nearly four decades. "It would take a massive educational campaign to get across why the issue is larger and offers more benefits than just a streetcar running along a certain track. If voters know only what they know now, the streetcar loses."
First, however, streetcar opponents might have to win in court.
City officials question the legality of a second ballot challenge, noting that City Council approved the project last summer when it voted to accept state and federal grants and to issue $64 million in local bonds to finance it.
Those actions, City Solicitor John Curp said, may preclude any new attempt to use the ballot to "undo the votes that already have been taken."
"Once money is appropriated, you can't unspend the money," Curp said. "It's already done."
Chris Finney, a lawyer and founder of the anti-tax group Citizens Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes, has a completely opposite interpretation. "Citizens can stop almost anything government does, almost any time," he said. "If we have to litigate to make that point, we will."
Under Ohio law, charter amendments must be placed on the ballot within 60 to 120 days after petitions are certified by the city. If streetcar opponents gather the required signatures within the next month - a timetable Smitherman calls "difficult but achievable" - that would clear the way for a vote as early as May.
For opponents, a May election offers the strategic advantage of coming before substantial streetcar construction has been completed, perhaps before work has even begun.
But it also has a significant downside, because with no other major issues on the spring ballot, it could cost Cincinnati about $400,000 to put a measure before voters then, according to Sally Krisel, director of the Hamilton County Board of Elections.
Waiting until November, however, would give city leaders an additional six months to make a sizable initial expenditure and lock in construction contracts, reinforcing their argument that a second ballot effort would be a disruptive waste of money and effort.
"It would be reckless on their part to go ahead," Smitherman counters. "But if they do and this is stopped in November, anything that's incomplete or wasted would be incomplete or wasted because they consciously chose to rush ahead before voters made their decision."
Like other streetcar supporters, Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory insists voters already made their decision - in 2009.
"This battle has already been fought," Mallory said. "They're opposed to wasting money, right? Well, we'll have spent a lot of money by May and a lot more by November. So if they want to waste a lot of money, the best way to do that is by putting this on the ballot a second time."
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