In 2004, then-Ohio State head football coach Jim Tressel helped persuade Columbus City Schools voters to pass a permanent 6.95-mill property-tax levy, lending his name, image and endorsement to the campaign.

But in 2015, as president of Youngstown State University, Tressel might have ensured that those taxpayers eventually lose local control of that money.

Columbus and nine other school districts across the state are facing the requirements of a controversial GOP state-takeover law called "the Youngstown plan" that Tressel and seven other Youngstown-area officials helped craft. During nine months of secret meetings, the Youngstown contingent, led by the former head of the city's chamber of commerce, drafted the law with staffers from the Ohio Department of Education and Gov. John Kasich's office, according to the allegations in a lawsuit.

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While billed as a fix for Youngstown schools, the law ended up being much more.

It applies to any school district that gets an overall "F" grade on the state report card three years in a row, triggering the appointment of a powerful state-employed CEO with “complete operational, managerial, and instructional control of the district." The CEO has the power to unilaterally run the operation, convert district schools to charters, cancel union contracts and privatize public operations.

Two other districts already have been taken over under the 2015 law: Lorain and East Cleveland. Dayton schools could be next, after the end of this school year. Columbus and eight more districts — Ashtabula, Canton, Euclid, Lima, Mansfield, North College Hill, Painesville and Toledo — face potential takeovers after next school year.

And the list has the potential to keep growing each year.

Did lawmakers understand that a panel of Youngstown officials, including a former Ohio State football coach turned university chief, had secretly crafted a law with so much impact?

State Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee and who voted for the law, said Friday: "I don't recall us having that conversation at all," adding that is "unfortunate."

"It went through very quickly," she said. "I think it was on the last day of session." The crafting of the law "was not something that the legislature played any role in."

Lehner explained that lawmakers were set to vote on House Bill 70, which dealt with "community wrap-around services" for school districts, when representatives from Kasich's office came in the night before the vote wanting to add the amendment.

"And the legislature did that," Lehner said. "In hindsight, I wish we had spent more time."

The lawsuit filed by the Youngstown school district and a union that represents its non-teaching employees, is now before the Ohio Supreme Court, which accepted the case in late October. The suit contends that the Ohio Constitution required lawmakers to spend more time looking over the legislation. It states: "Every bill shall be considered by each house on three different days," which didn't happen.

"The (state) superintendent's office basically wrote it with the people from Youngstown," said state Rep. Andrew Brenner, R-Powell. People shouldn't be questioning the state law, which is trying to break a cycle of poor performance, but questioning the failing districts, he said.

"If you've got a different idea, let's sit down and draft it, see if we can come up with something better," Brenner said.

But that didn't happen with the Youngstown-plan amendment, which expanded the bill from 10 to 77 pages, because "there was barely time for the legislators to read the amendment prior to voting, let alone digest the information in the 67-page amendment and debate it," the lawsuit states. "And because it was developed in secret, there was no opportunity for public input."

Tressel didn't return a telephone message left with his office Friday seeking to clarify whether he understood the potential impact of the law. State schools Superintendent Paolo DeMaria, who would be responsible for appointing three of the five members who would select each district's CEO, declined to be interviewed. The Department of Education, which DeMaria oversees, declined to answer any questions, citing the pending Supreme Court case.

The state Education department did issue a statement: “A reasonable aspect of any state education system is a mechanism to address the circumstances of persistently underperforming schools. And in other areas of government, there are systems in place to restructure decision-making when the current system isn’t working. Ohio is not alone in this.''

State Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-Boardman, said the law is undemocratic, unconstitutional and a dangerous precedent that goes far beyond what might be best for Youngstown.

"This is a state takeover plan and one of the most drastic that this country has seen," Schiavoni said. "If you don't like your school board members, then elect new ones. It was a slippery slope for the state to say 'School board members don't have the ability to run their affairs.'"

Schiavoni points out that three of the five members of the Youngstown takeover commission already have quit the post, and the CEO they appointed, Krish Mohip, is actively looking for a new job.

"So we have a CEO with all the power in the world to do whatever he wants," Schiavoni said, "and he's looking for other jobs across the country."

bbush@dispatch.com

@ReporterBush