Our Success Story

Over the last five years, the Accountability Project has been active across Ohio on several different fronts. The unifying theme of our work is that we seek to promote free enterprise, good government and hold accountable those leaders who choose to be less than transparent or who ignore the will of the people. Here’s how we’ve done it…

We spend a lot of time researching issues across Ohio. What’s happening at the state, county and local level? Are there examples of governments infringing upon the rights of citizens? Where are there transparency issues? And is government dabbling in programs that will grow government at the expense of taxpayers? We find examples of this last question especially annoying where there’s a private sector solution.

While we track many issues, we’ve established ourselves - and repeatedly worked - in two specifically:

1. The election of judges.

2. Keeping an eye out for elected officials and un-elected bureaucrats who misuse tax dollars and/or ignore the will of the people.

3. Governments seeking to establish public broadband internet utilities (because it puts the public sector into competition with the private sector)

We’re interested in the election of judges because we believe that it’s a vitally important job (from Municipal Judges to Common Pleas, Court of Appeals, and the Ohio Supreme Court and everywhere in between) and we find that voters are often selecting their choice with little or no information. In one famous instance, Ohio voters elected a Judge named Tim Horton. It wasn’t his jurisprudence than won him the election. It was the fact that he had a familiar name. Horton resigned under threat of suspension and has been disbarred.

Once we’ve identified a project, we seek to gather information. We do this through usual means, but we also reach out directly to the people involved, usually through questionnaires. In the case of judicial elections, we’ll send surveys to the candidates asking them to answer questions about their background, legal philosophy and plans as judge.

On the broadband internet front, we’ve sought out communities seeking to take over internet access and we’ve pressed local leaders on why they’ve chosen the expensive route. In some cases their answers are evasive and we’ve undertaken public records requests, attending public meetings, and other means of gathering information. By the way, a lack of transparency is always a warning sign. It was at a sub-committee meeting of a council committee in Hudson that the forces in favor of a public broadband utility admitted that their goal was to find a way to achieve their goals without offering the public a vote on the measure. That’s good information about bad government and we were there to record it.

Once we have information, we have to have channels to share it with the public. For judicial races, we’ve chosen to post the questionnaires on the internet and to purchase digital ads targeting voters with links to the information. Voters see a lot of information and ads from legislators, federal candidates and presidential campaigns. Ours might be the only time they see in depth biographical and ideological information from judicial candidates.

We’ve been active with the broadband internet issue across the state and to varying degrees.

In Zanesville, Ohio City Council was considering a study. We were active there educating city leaders on the issue and council voted against moving forward.

In Solon, there was an active effort by city leaders to move forward on an internet utility. Again, we worked hard to educate both voters and council members about the very real possibility that such an effort would result in a boondoggle. Thankfully, the effort was killed in the council finance committee.

Here’s an article from Cleveland.com highlighting the news. And here’s Councilwoman Nancy Meany speaking about the deal:

Meany said she had "concerns right away" last August when the RFP was introduced to council, and they have only intensified since then.

"I look at this as a potential disaster," Meany said. "I think it's a huge mistake for the city to undertake something like this. There are way, way too many alarm bells for me."

Meany believes that broadband, at least in Solon’s case, should remain in the private sector, rather than some “pie-in-the-sky” public initiative.

In Hudson we rolled out a complete program. Hudson was deep into a widespread effort to circumvent voters’ intent. They put a downtown re-development plan on the ballot and when the voters rejected, council members sought to move forward with the project anyway. A broadband internet utility was sought, in the name of economic development. Again, the effort was plotted out behind closed doors and without voter input. That effort defeated, city leaders moved to put a level on the ballot to fund their takeover. We used digital ads and calls to council members, and the levy issue was defeated in council before it ever made it to the ballot. The big government types wouldn’t stop, though. Just one member of council stood steadfastly for responsible decision making. In 2019 we sent questionnaires to council candidates and the candidates for mayor. A slate of candidates wholly new, except for one incumbent, was endorsed by Accountability Project Ohio. We did digital ads to promote the free enterprise slate and we did a radio ad promoting the questionnaires.

In the end, all but one of the proponents for bigger government were defeated and along with them went the government’s appetite for a public internet utility. It was a true victory for common sense!

Our efforts have not been without speed bumps. Elected officials and their allies are usually unhappy to have an “outside” group getting involved in their business. We’re often called outsiders and our digital ads are often subject to the sort of internet vitriol that is all too common. Here’s what we say in those situations: we may not be members of a community where we research, gather information, and educate voters - but we are subject matter experts. We have watched the communities carefully, we know the issues, and especially in the case of Hudson, Ohio we were the ONLY ones sounding the alarm. That’s our success story.

We won’t allow political attacks to keep us from our mission. And we’ll use all the tools at our disposal to stand up for free enterprise, transparency and good government.