The Aug. 7 CELDF press release, in part, reads:

Tish O’Dell, the Ohio com­mu­ni­ty­or­ga­niz­er for CELDF, says, ​“The right to com­mu­ni­ty self-gov­ern­ment is an inalien­able right — one that the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies fought and died to uphold. The right to vote is sup­posed to reflect our right to self-gov­ern­ment. In Youngstown, that right is ren­dered mean­ing­less when the peo­ple in the com­mu­ni­ty are out­spent in their issue cam­paigns 50:1 by cor­po­rate enti­ties. Res­i­dents are ready to lev­el the play­ing field and bring inalien­able rights back to the real peo­ple who live here.”

The ini­tia­tive states that the peo­ple of Youngstown rec­og­nize that ​“cor­po­ra­tions use their dis­pro­por­tion­ate wealth to frame impor­tant issues and influ­ence elec­tions.” There­fore, the mea­sure removes cor­po­ra­tions from the elec­tion process. It also places can­di­date selec­tion in the hands of vot­ers rather than pow­er­ful polit­i­cal par­ties. It rein­forces the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers between the judi­cia­ry and oth­er branch­es of gov­ern­ment by remov­ing the initiative’s con­tent as grounds for block­ing it from the bal­lot. Thus, if tech­ni­cal require­ments are met, ini­tia­tives must be placed before voters.

“We have fought to keep frack­ing projects out of our City for sev­er­al years, with six bal­lot mea­sures that assert­ed our right to clean water and to local com­mu­ni­ty self-gov­ern­ment,” says Lynn Ander­son, a lead orga­niz­er with the Youngstown Com­mit­tee. ​“We have been vast­ly out­spent by indus­try and their cor­po­rate allies. It is clear to us that we are try­ing to advance rights via the bal­lot in an elec­tion sys­tem set up to favor cor­po­ra­tions. This time, we’re address­ing the elec­tion sys­tem too.”

The Youngstown Com­mu­ni­ty Bill of Rights Com­mit­tee draft­ed the ini­tia­tive with the sup­port of the Com­mu­ni­ty Envi­ron­men­tal Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). CELDF has been assist­ing Youngstown res­i­dents to advance their demo­c­ra­t­ic and envi­ron­men­tal rights since 2013, when res­i­dents launched their com­mu­ni­ty rights work to pro­tect them­selves from frack­ing activ­i­ties. Frack­ing threat­ens their drink­ing water and has caused earth­quakes in the area.

Today, a long-stand­ing com­mu­ni­ty rights group in Youngstown, Ohio, sub­mit­ted over 1,900 sig­na­tures to qual­i­fy their Youngstown Fair Elec­tion Bill of Rights ini­tia­tive for the Novem­ber bal­lot. The mea­sure is the first of its kind in the state, lim­it­ing cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions to reg­is­tered vot­ers with­in the City, and cap­ping those con­tri­bu­tions at $100.

The full peti­tion, also avail­able on the Youngstown Com­mu­ni­ty Bill of Rights Committee’s web­site, reads:

PETI­TION FOR SUB­MIS­SION OF PRO­POSED AMEND­MENT TO CHARTER

Con­sti­tu­tion of Ohio, Art. XVI­II, Sec­tions 9 and 14; Revised Code 731.28 — .41, 3503.06 To be signed by 10 per­cent of the elec­tors, based upon the total vote cast at the last pre­ced­ing gen­er­al munic­i­pal election.

NOTICE: Who­ev­er know­ing­ly signs this peti­tion more than once, signs a name oth­er than his own, or signs when not a legal vot­er, is liable to prosecution.

To the Coun­cil, the Leg­isla­tive author­i­ty of the City of Youngstown, Ohio:

We, the under­signed, qual­i­fied elec­tors of the City of Youngstown, Ohio, respect­ful­ly peti­tion the leg­isla­tive author­i­ty to forth­with pro­vide by Law, for the sub­mis­sion to the elec­tors of the City of Youngstown, Ohio, the fol­low­ing pro­posed amend­ment to the Char­ter of the City of Youngstown to be effec­tive as of the date of its adop­tion by a vote of the peo­ple of Youngstown, adding Sec­tion 133 under a new head­ing titled Youngstown Drink­ing Water Pro­tec­tion Bill of Rights, to-wit:

Where­as, we the peo­ple of Youngstown rec­og­nize that the con­tin­ued extrac­tion of fos­sil fuels uses increas­ing amounts of fresh water for the extrac­tion process, and cre­ates waste­water that can nev­er be returned safe­ly to the water cycle; and

Where­as, we the peo­ple of Youngstown, rec­og­nize that both humans and the nat­ur­al com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems in Youngstown require clean water, air, and soil to thrive and flourish;

Where­as, we the peo­ple of Youngstown, through this amend­ment, seek to alter our form of gov­ern­ment to restore a sys­tem of local gov­ern­ment capa­ble of secur­ing our fun­da­men­tal rights and deriv­ing its just pow­ers from the con­sent of the peo­ple, as required by the foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ples expressed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Independence

There­fore, we, the peo­ple of Youngstown, adopt this char­ter amend­ment rec­og­niz­ing and pro­tect­ing com­mu­ni­ty rights to safe drink­ing water and a healthy environment:

SEC­TION 133: YOUN­STOWN DRINK­ING WATER PRO­TEC­TION BILL OF RIGHTS

(a) Right to Clean Water, Air, and Soil. All peo­ple of the city of Youngstown, along with ecosys­tems and nat­ur­al com­mu­ni­ties with­in the city, pos­sess the right to clean water, air, and soil, and to be free from activ­i­ties that would vio­late this right and expose cit­i­zens to the harm­ful effects of con­t­a­m­i­nants in their water sup­ply, includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, the drilling of new wells or extrac­tion of oil and gas using any tech­nol­o­gy not pre­vi­ous­ly used on an exist­ing well after the date of enact­ment of this amend­ment for oil and gas explo­ration and extrac­tion oper­a­tions, the dis­pos­al of drilling waste from oil and gas extrac­tion oper­a­tions, or the deposit­ing, stor­age, treat­ment, injec­tion, dis­pos­al, trans­port, or pro­cess­ing of waste­water, pro­duced water, ​“frack” water, brine, drill cut­tings, and muds or oth­er sub­stances that have been used in, or result from, the extrac­tion of oil and gas.

(b) Right to Enforce­ment. The peo­ple of the City of Youngstown, and the nat­ur­al com­mu­ni­ties and ecosys­tems in Youngstown, pos­sess the right to enforce their rights, includ­ing those enu­mer­at­ed in this Amend­ment. If the City of Youngstown fails to enforce or defend this Amend­ment, or a court fails to uphold this Amend­ment, any nat­ur­al per­son may enforce this Amend­ment through non­vi­o­lent direct action or via a suit at law or in equi­ty as a pri­vate attor­ney gen­er­al plain­tiff, for dam­ages and costs of lit­i­ga­tion, includ­ing, with­out lim­i­ta­tion, expert and attor­ney fees. City of Youngstown law enforce­ment, and coop­er­at­ing agen­cies act­ing with­in the juris­dic­tion of the City of Youngstown, shall have no law­ful author­i­ty to sur­veil, detain, arrest, or oth­er­wise impede nat­ur­al per­sons enforc­ing these rights. ​“Direct action” as used by this pro­vi­sion shall mean any non-vio­lent activ­i­ties car­ried out to direct­ly enforce the rights expressed in this Amendment.

© Right to Enforce­ment Against Cor­po­rate Rights. Any cor­po­ra­tion, or oth­er busi­ness enti­ty, that vio­lates the rights in this Amend­ment shall not be deemed a ​“per­son” to the extent that such treat­ment would inter­fere with the rights enu­mer­at­ed by this Amend­ment, nor shall it pos­sess any oth­er legal rights, pow­ers, priv­i­leges, immu­ni­ties, or duties that would inter­fere with the rights, includ­ing the pow­er to assert state, fed­er­al or inter­na­tion­al pre­emp­tive laws in an attempt to over­turn this Amend­ment, or the pow­er to assert that the peo­ple of the City of Youngstown lack the author­i­ty to adopt this Amendment.

(d) Right to Infra­struc­ture Invest­ments. As the res­i­dents of Youngstown pay for water and sew­er used plus addi­tion­al monies which are to be placed into improve­ment funds, the funds accu­mu­lat­ed in the ​“water and sew­er fund” can only be spent on improve­ments to the water and sew­er infra­struc­ture and in updates to the sys­tem that will ben­e­fit the water sup­ply to the res­i­dents. None of these funds can be dis­trib­uted for pri­vate eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment projects with­in the city.

(e) Right of Local Com­mu­ni­ty Self-Gov­ern­ment. The peo­ple of the City of Youngstown pos­sess the right of local com­mu­ni­ty self-gov­ern­ment, as expressed in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the Unit­ed States Con­sti­tu­tion’s pre­am­ble and Ninth Amend­ment, and the Ohio Con­sti­tu­tion’s Bill of Rights, sec­tions 1, 2, and 20. The peo­ple’s right of local com­mu­ni­ty self-gov­ern­ment includes but is not lim­it­ed to their pow­er to com­pel their gov­ern­ments to pro­tect their rights, health, and safety.

(f) Sev­er­abil­i­ty. The pro­vi­sions of this law are sev­er­able. If any court decides that any sec­tion, clause, sen­tence, part, or pro­vi­sion of this law is ille­gal, invalid, or uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, such deci­sion shall not affect, impair, or inval­i­date any of the remain­ing sec­tions, claus­es, sen­tences, parts, or pro­vi­sions of the law. This law would have been enact­ed with­out the invalid sections.