City’s Law Director No Longer Attorney for the School Board

On Nov. 8, voters .

But before they could take effect, three of them needed certification from .

One of the three charter changes approved by council on Monday dealt with the law director’s responsibility to act as legal counsel of the .

Earlier this year, in an exchange of letters between law director Kevin Butler and a law firm representing the schools, it was pointed out that a statute in the Ohio Revised Code requires cities’ law directors to act as legal counsel for the school district.

The letter from the law office of Walter and Haverfield suggested that Butler shouldn’t take any position that could be considered “adversarial” to the board of education because, under statute, he was the attorney for the school board.

Butler disagreed.

“The fact of the matter is that our charter language says that the law director ‘shall perform the duties that are imposed upon city directors of law by general law,’” he said. “That’s been interpreted to mean state law.”

To clear up any confusion, voters overwhelmingly passed a measure Nov. 8 that changed the language of the charter to allow city council to limit the law director’s duties.

And on Monday night, council made it official.

Butler told  that the overall idea of the changes is to provide consistency — and modernization — to the language of the charter.

He called them “housekeeping items.”

Council agreed.

“Part of what you’re seeing happening — slowly and methodically but with great precision and direction — is that we’re cleaning up our ordinances,” said council president Mary Louise Madigan. “Our charter can be a little bit leaner and a little bit easier to read.”

The two other items that got OK’d be council were:

• A charter amendment that will keep the power of mayoral appointment with council should there be an absence in the mayoral post.
• A charter amendment that deals with posting printed announcements. The city prints out everything it must publish — council dockets, legislation passed, public notices and the like — in paper form and post them at five locations around the city. The new charter change got rid of that.