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By Ed Richter and Josh Sweigart
Staff Writers
Public employees will be hitting the campaign trail heavily this fall as a high-stakes fight over collective bargaining plays out statewide in Issue 2.
But as they don T-shirts, walk in parades, hand out literature and appear in TV commercials, they have to mind a slate of laws that govern how politically active government employees can be.
These rules — some of which are occasionally overlooked, a Hamilton JournalNews investigation found — are meant to sharpen the fuzzy line between government operation and politics.
“The danger is, say you’re an officer in a political organization and you’re also a classified employee, does the party political actions and activities bleed over into your civil service job?” said Grant Neeley, political science professor at the University of Dayton. “The difficulty in separating out those two is why you see a law like this.”
Government employees are frequently active in politics.
State law prohibits classified public employees — laborers, office staff and other workers who have civil service protection — from engaging in partisan politics, which includes participation in a political party central committee. Most central committee members from both parties who are county employees are unclassified — often managers, workers who handle money or special appointees — and are exempt from this restriction.
But the JournalNews found a handful of examples in Warren and Butler counties where this law has not been followed.
A Butler County Prosecutor’s Office secretary quit her post in the Butler County Republican Party leadership last week after a reporter called and asked about her status as a classified employee.
In Warren County, one Democrat works in the county auditor’s office and one Republican works in Workforce One while holding party posts in apparent violation of the law, the JournalNews found.
The Butler County secretary’s resignation leaves that county’s prosecutor’s office with a highly political workforce. The Butler County office employs 14 Republican central committee members, and none from the Democratic party.
Prosecutor Michael Gmoser, who was appointed by the county GOP in February to replace former prosecutor Robin Piper, said that was none of his doing.
“Frankly my understanding in the past was the past administration encouraged individuals to be on the central committee,” he said.
Gmoser said this sometimes involved simply changing people’s job from classified to unclassified service so they could hold party office.
“That will not happen again,” said Gmoser, who himself is not a member of the party’s central committee. “I will never use my employees for political purposes.”
“When I took office I had a staff meeting and I told everybody in this office that I was taking politics out of this office,” he said. “Nobody is required or encouraged to be on any committee, but I’m not going to go out and tell them they can’t be.”
Piper, now judge on the Ohio 12th District Court of Appeals, did not return calls for comment.
Butler County government employs 20 of the county Democratic Party’s 160-member central committee members, and 51 from the Republican Party’s 290-member committee. All are in jobs that are considered ‘unclassified,’ which means they are allowed to hold the job and be active in politics.
Warren County government employs seven of the county’s 53-member Democratic central committee and 23 of the county’s 158-member Republican committee.
“I was unaware,” said Republican Warren County Auditor Nick Nelson when notified that a Democratic central committee member was working for him in a classified postition. He said he notified the employee.
“I’ll plead ignorance and I really doubt he was aware of it either,” Nelson said.
AWorkforce One employee is also a member of the Republican central Committee.
County GOP Executive Committee Chairman David Fornshell, who is stepping down to focus his attention on serving as the county prosecutor, said, “in the 15 months I have been chairman, this is the first time that this has been brought to my attention.”
‘A little more leeway’ with issues
While state laws allow public workers more leeway to be active on nonpartisan issues like Issue 2, AFSCME-Ohio spokesman Dennis Willard said he advises members that rules in their own workplaces can be more strict.
Issue 2 is the referendum that will be voted on Nov. 8 over whether the state should retain Senate Bill 5, a recently passed law that limits collective bargaining rights for public workers.
“You can’t wear a ‘I Love Ted’ button at the workplace, you can’t do political activities on behalf of candidates at the workplace and things like that,” Willis said. “There’s a little more leeway for public employees when it comes to issues. You can wear certain types of buttons and other things in the workplace.”
Even then, city ordinances and workplace rules can limit such political speech, he said, “but it has to be uniform.”
‘The potential is there for a real conflict’
The laws that govern political activity of government workers were put in place to keep Tammany Hall-style political machines for sprouting up, according to Neeley, who is also director of UD’s masters in public administration program.
“This goes back to problems when you had machine politics, party politics running everything in government,” Neeley said. “It’s really a movement to make sure you have a professional public service, and for employees to give them some space so they weren’t receiving pressure in their normal civil service job to be embroiled in party politics.”
“From a good government standpoint, it’s trying to isolate good government service and isolate them from partisan politics,” he said.
But even when the person is willingly wanting to be an active party leader and rank-and-file public servant, “the potential is there for a real conflict,” Neeley said.
The line between what is and is not appropriate for government workers and politics has blurred in local county government several times, though it usually only makes news when the allegations run afoul of more severe laws.
Former Butler County Democratic Party official Mark Conese was convicted in 2002 of improper solicitation of funds after prosecutors said he told a Board of Elections employee he could lose his job if he didn’t double his contributions to the party.
Butler County commission clerk — and later candidate — Rawnica Dillingham resigned from the county in 2004 amid allegations she pressured a co-worker for contributions to the Republican Party. Dillingham was active in the party as an unclassified employee.
In Cuyahoga County, 70 county employees may be ordered to choose between their party posts and their jobs, according to reports in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the law on classified employees may be outdated and should be reconsidered given other laws that punish elected officials for trying to coerce staff politically. The current prohibition against classified employees being active in partisan politics, he said, seems to limit the rights of rank-and-file employees.
“I think these laws should be revisited by the legislature,” DeWine said.
Database reporter Gerald Fullam contributed to this article.