Mendocino County, CA. Makes History and Passes Law Establishing Local Self-Governance

November 5, 2014

Ohio Supreme Court Rules Against Secretary Of State

Decides in favor of communities’ right to initiative; bars chief elections officer from keeping duly qualified initiatives off the ballot – even those involving fracking

COLUMBUS, OH:  Today, the people’s constitutional right to vote on local County Charter initiatives was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court. The Court ruled that Ohio Secretary of State John Husted – who claimed “unfettered authority” to keep Home Rule county charter initiatives off the ballot – has no such prerogative.

On August 13th, Mr. Husted blocked citizens from voting on Home Rule Charter initiatives in three counties, declaring, “I find nothing to materially limit the scope of my legal review,” including ruling on the substance of the initiatives. The measures included provisions on fracking infrastructure development, alarming the oil and gas industry. Mr. Husted handed them a victory in his decision to remove the measures from the ballot. In doing so, he trampled on the rights of the people.

The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) filed a lawsuit against the Ohio Secretary of State on behalf of community members in Athens, Medina, and Fulton Counties, seeking to restore the initiatives to the November ballot.

In addition to barring Mr. Husted from keeping community measures off the ballot based on substantive review of the content, the Court also ruled that, because the charter initiatives did not create a new form of government, they cannot be on the ballot this November. Communities had kept the existing governmental structure intact, while adding initiative and referendum powers to residents.

CELDF community organizer Tish O’Dell stated, “Athens, Medina, and Fulton Counties have triumphed against a government official claiming ‘unfettered authority’ to rule on the content of the people’s initiatives – a dangerous threat to democracy. The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled on behalf of the people, safeguarding their inalienable right to advance and vote on their own initiatives.”

Dick McGinn, Athens County Board member of the Ohio Community Rights Network – a partner organization of CELDF – added,“The Ohio Supreme Court – rather than being influenced by the oil and gas industry – stood by the people’s rights. Communities across the state are celebrating this decision, and are ready to get to work to draft Home Rule county charter initiatives that meet the Supreme Court’s requirements.”

Added Kathie Jones of Sustainable Medina County, “We’re also fully prepared for attempts by the Secretary of State and the oil and gas industry to try and find other reasons to keep future measures off the ballot. But, the people will not quit fighting for their inalienable right to local self-government and the right to protect their health, safety and welfare, even if that means amending the state constitution itself.”

By Emelyn Lybarger

Putting corporate power in perspective

Before America’s colonists declared themselves independent from British domination in 1776, the motherland’s corporations dominated their trade. It took a revolution to end British control and the settlers’ fear of corporate power. Ever since, corporations have played a major role in business, but they could not influence elections.

As the states began curbing big government, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively for activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly if laws were violated.

Corporations could pursue only the activities needed to fulfill their chartered purpose. They could not own stock in other corporations or own property not essential to their chartered purpose. Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm. Owners and managers of corporations were held responsible for criminal acts they committed on the job. Corporations were not allowed to make political or charitable contributions nor could they spend money to influence legislation.

For a century after the American Revolution, legislatures maintained tight control of the process of chartering corporations. Early on, lawmakers granted few corporate charters, and that only after extensive debate. Not only Congress but also state law set rules governing corporations. Incorporated businesses were not allowed to take any action that legislators had not specifically allowed.

The rules for incorporation limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes even profits. They also limited the number of years corporate charters could be held. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved, and its assets were divided among shareholders. Some state laws provided that a company had to turn over its accounting books to the legislature upon its request.

In Europe, charters protected corporate directors and stockholders from liability for debts they may have caused. American legislators explicitly rejected this corporate shield. In the case of Dartmouth College versus Woodward in 1819, the U.S. Supreme Court tried to strip states of their sovereignty by overruling a lower court’s decision that allowed New Hampshire to revoke a charter granted to Dartmouth College by King George III. The court claimed that since the charter contained no revocation clause, it could not be withdrawn.

This decision so outraged the public that new amendments were passed in state constitutions to circumvent the Dartmouth College ruling. Starting in 1844, nineteen states amended their constitutions to make corporate charters subject to alteration or revocation by their legislatures. By1855, the Supreme Court ruled in Dodge versus Woolsey to reaffirm state power over “artificial bodies.” The leaders of corporations, however, pressed on. Arguments over the content of charters turned into battles to control labor and resources, and political power began flowing to absentee owners.

The industrial age forced many Americans — heretofore a nation of farmers—to become wage earners. Becoming unemployed turned into a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose, and blacklisting of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired organizers to keep employees in line. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion in their favor. Corporations began buying state legislators and sometimes denounced them as corrupt.

Government spending during the Civil War brought corporations immense wealth. Corporate executives paid “operators” to bribe elected and appointed officials alike. They managed to obtain large amounts of funding from all levels of government. Legislators also gave corporations limited liability, decreased their authority over them, and extended the length of their charters.

The courts made the protection of corporations a part of constitutional law. While corporations grew in strength, legislators and the courts succumbed to the wishes of corporations. They freely reinterpreted common and constitutional law to give them more power.

One of the strongest reversals to the authority of voters and legislators arose out of the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County versus Southern Pacific Railroad. While the court did not employ the phrase “corporate personhood,” its decision was used to consider a corporation a “natural person.” From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War to protect the rights of freed slaves, was used to grant corporations constitutional “personhood.” Armed with this “right,” corporations have since increased their influence over resources, labor, politicians, even judges and the law.

A Congressional committee concluded in 1941 that “The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter.”

Many U.S.-based corporations are now transnational, but the powers in their charters remain the legal basis for their existence.

Wolf Fuhrig of Jacksonvill has a doctorate in public law and government from Columbia University.

Your View: Kudos from the other end of the LNG pipe

From the State of Colorado, we would like to take this time to thank you for your coverage of the people fighting for community rights, and against the dangerous and inherently undemocratic Jordan Cove LNG facility. We write this as people in daily struggle with the production side of this issue, which here in Colorado has become widely known as a statewide battle against fracking. We see your efforts to protect your communities as an extension of our own, and would like to extend our gratitude and support in every way.

The latest communications Oregon press and government may have received from politicians and industry representatives in Colorado do not convey the sentiment of our people fighting the fossil fuel industry. And because all congratulations you receive on the Jordan Cove facility can be tied to oil and gas money, we would advise you regard these words with the credibility of any infomercial.

Here in Colorado we know what it means to fight an industry with seemingly all power, politicians and legal privilege on its side. Our conflict with the fossil fuel industry is drawn along parallel lines as your own. Communities, faced with a nonstop assault of oil and gas drilling have produced heroic efforts to protect our people and environment. We have democratically passed local measures that have delayed or prohibited drilling next to our homes, schools and communities alongside a news media that routinely describes the latest spill, fire, explosion and other industrial accidents and catastrophes. We have watched our politicians line up with the big dollars and power of the Colorado Oil and Gas Association at it sues to overturn our local laws against fracking. We see the never-ending barrage of industry commercials and talking points, and have experienced the threats of international drilling corporations as they come to strip us of our health, welfare and basic, fundamental rights. This is done to gain access to the fossil fuels and the profits they represent.

We would like to conclude by thanking you specifically for not shrinking from the larger fight against the very corporate legal privilege the fossil fuel industry will try to threaten you with. In Colorado it has become exceedingly clear that the real battle is over more than just fracking itself. Rather, it is about who makes decisions for our communities. The oil and gas industry knows that they cannot conduct business without repressing the demands of our communities, and so it is that very fight for our rights and democratic decision making which will lead our survival or demise. Like yourselves, we are fighting for these rights locally, and at the same time, running a state ballot initiative to codify our right to local self government. The efforts in each state are complimentary and among the most relevant of our times.

Let’s fight together, and create democracy in the most important place it can occur: where we live.

Cliff Willmeng, of Lafayette, Colo., is one of the founding members of East Boulder County United, the community group that banned fracking there in 2013, and is a plaintiff on the enforcement action lawsuit against the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, the State of Colorado and Gov. John Hickenlooper. He is a board member of the Colorado Community Rights Network and has been a ballot initiative proponent for the Colorado Community Rights Amendment, which will be run in 2016. Willmeng is on the Board of Directors of the National Community Rights Network.

Guest Column: Douglas County residents won’t benefit from pipeline

Douglas County residents face the threat of eminent domain by a foreign corporate partnership. Canada’s Veresen, Inc., and Williams Companies strategized to construct the Pacific Connector Pipeline, a 36-inch high-pressure pipe carrying non-odorized fracked gas across rural properties.
If approved, that gas will be transported to the proposed Jordan Cove facility in Coos Bay, converted to LNG and exported to Asia for competing economic interests to the U.S. If built, Jordan Cove will become the top polluter in Oregon.
These companies know well the rural scenario: dangle the “job carrot” in front of vulnerable communities, promise politicians and the Chamber of Commerce streets paved in gold and <snap> they’re in! Private citizens and property owners speak against these projects and point to places like Malin, Oregon, where promised prosperity from construction of the Ruby Pipeline was, as we predict here, more boom and bust economics.
Boost Southwest Oregon organized as a nonprofit specifically to advocate for Jordan Cove and the pipeline projects. They are well funded. You see their ads and hear their commercials all the time now, likely underwritten by those who stand to benefit such as unionized labor and the companies themselves.
If they are willing to spend $7.2 billion dollars to maybe create 150 long-term family wage jobs, none of which will be in Douglas County, what’s a few thousand to buy friends through advertising and Chamber luncheons? Imagine the fair return and fat wallets of corporate shareholders on this investment. They do not do business for the fun of it; they do it to make money, lots and lots of money.
Douglas County landowners stand to lose what they have worked a lifetime for and were offered pennies on the dollar to construct the pipeline across their properties. Unlike the private corporations, it is not about money for landowners; it is having the right to say “No” to the pipeline and saving their homes.
It works like this: if Pacific Connector or Jordan Cove are approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a federal agency, supported by fees from the oil and gas industry, eminent domain is an automatic right for foreign corporations to take the land of your Douglas County neighbors. Landowners are prohibited from saying no.
Landowners followed the local regulatory route and contend Douglas County did not protect them through current zoning regulations. The County’s Coastal Zone Management Area is the one area where local government can trump Federal approvals on public and private lands. While shepherding the pipeline permit through with Williams’ attorneys, Douglas County’s Planning Director was adamant Commissioners’ only option was to approve the permit. The State Land Use Board of Appeals however, ruled Commissioners could indeed say no.
Where is the public good or public interest in these projects? They are not building a school or a hospital to benefit our community, it is a pipeline to benefit a private company. We wonder how the argument that those temporary paychecks for out-of-town workers, some from as far away as Oklahoma, outweighs the lifetime of work and sacrifice more than 600 tax-paying Oregonians stand to lose. Odds are not favorable. FERCs record to date: communities nothing, corporations everything.
We especially wonder about energy independence when officials are hell-bent on exporting our natural resources at the expense of thousands of Americans facing eminent domain and domestic job loss to make way for private corporate profits. We puzzle over the acceptance of the Pacific Connector Pipeline and its fracked gas by Senators Wyden and Merkley, and Congressman DeFazio, each outspokenly opposed to the Keystone XL. You cannot be for one and against the other. Governor Brown is quiet on this issue now, yet was adamantly against LNG when running for Secretary of State.
Abraham Lincoln counseled, “This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”
Yes, weary and seeing little choice but to heed Lincoln’s words, we exercised our right to amend our government and take back our community. We joined cities and counties across America and filed a Community Bill of Rights Initiative for a sustainable energy future with Douglas County’s Clerk.
A Portland law firm through an unknown benefactor has now sued her and the District Attorney. Through local petitioners they seek to prevent our constitutional right to amend our government. We are undeterred and remain vigorous in our goal to undo the stranglehold and end the rabid assault by corporations to rob us of our right to a sustainable energy future.
Our wish is simple: to offer our children and grandchildren a viable future and the right to protect our families and homes from those who seek to do us harm.
Stacey McLaughlin lives in Round Prairie where her family’s property will be threatened by eminent domain if the Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline is constructed. Stacey joined with fellow petitioners Susan Applegate and Jim Dahlman in filing a Community Bill of Rights Initiative for a Sustainable Energy Future. Initiative petitioners have filed to intervene in the lawsuits against Douglas County.

Green group’s unconventional fight against fracking