toledoblade.com --

COLUMBUS - Ohio First? Well, maybe second.

Ohio First, Inc., the nonprofit organization quietly created last month to fight proposed constitutional reforms of Ohio's election system, was incorporated in the state of Delaware.

"That tells us Republican politicians are so entrenched and arrogant that they don't get the fact that, if they're going to call themselves Ohio First, they should at least pretend that they are," House Minority Leader Chris Redfern (D., Catawba Island) said.

Ohio First opted not to file its incorporation papers with Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's office and instead incorporated on July 6 as a religious nonprofit entity with the Delaware Department of State.

The organization, whose public face so far has been lobbyist and former Senate President Richard Finan, made its public debut Thursday when it sued in Ohio Supreme Court to invalidate petitions being circulated by a coalition of mostly liberal to moderate-leaning groups calling itself Reform Ohio Now.

The coalition wants to place three proposed constitutional amendments on the Nov. 8 ballot, one of which would take the power to redraw congressional and state legislative districts out of the hands of politicians.

The proposed amendments also would strip the secretary of state of the authority to oversee Ohio elections, allow voters to cast absentee ballots without having to state a reason, and roll back increases in campaign contribution limits recently enacted by the General Assembly.

"It's a small-time, legal thing about where the organization is organized," said Rep. Kevin DeWine (R., Fairborn), an Ohio First supporter. "It's a filing of papers, done as a function of time in order to be up and running to try to prevent bad public policy from reaching the ballot.

"At the end of the day, who cares?" he asked. "This organization is being funded and run by Ohioans. The bigger question is who is funding [the coalition]."

Reform Ohio Now - consisting of such groups as Common Cause, Ohio AFL-CIO, and Ohio Environmental Council - plans to file petitions with nearly 500,000 signatures on Tuesday, the day before the deadline. It needs 323,000 valid signatures to make the ballot.

"There is a Delaware in Ohio, but I don't know if there is an Ohio in Delaware," coalition attorney Don McTigue said. "I've incorporated Reform Ohio Now in Ohio, and it didn't take us any time to do it. I prefer that my franchise fee be paid to the state of Ohio instead of Delaware."

Delaware touts its flexible corporate laws, noting that half of all U.S. publicly traded companies are incorporated there.

"It doesn't pass the giggle test," said Catherine Turcer of government watchdog Ohio Citizen Action. "People have complained about money coming from outside Ohio [for the coalition], and it's interesting to think about people living in glass houses," she said.

Although it has yet to file a report disclosing specific numbers, Reform Ohio Now has revealed that early individual and foundation funding has come from as far away as California, New York, and Minnesota.

Contact Jim Provance at:
jprovance@theblade.com
or 614-221-0496.

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