But the petition forms, which had been prepared by Vandalia’s law director Gerald McDonald, contained critical errors, ultimately prompting the city in early June to reject the referendum petition as invalid, preventing its placement on the ballot, despite a recommendation to the contrary by the BOE.
The petition forms used by the committee did not include the full, required circulator’s certification against election falsification under the penalty of law, a critical formatting error.
In a June 3 statement announcing its decision to throw out the petition, the city of Vandalia claimed BOE officials had also determined the petition to be legally insufficient, but BOE Director Jeff Rezabek denies this.
He pushed back against the assertion in a late July letter to city officials.
“Contrary to the city’s characterization, the Montgomery County Board of Elections did not make a ‘determination of legal insufficiency.’ Instead, the petition was deemed insufficient due to a lack of required valid signatures, which resulted from errors in the submitted part petitions,” Rezabek’s letter reads.
For its part, the BOE had reviewed the sufficiency of the petition itself in May at the request of the city, according to Rezabek.
Rather than ruling the petition invalid altogether, the BOE recommended the city of Vandalia give petitioners another 10 days to re-collect signatures on corrected forms.
“This was a unique situation, and I think our board stayed true to our mission of allowing a ballot issue to potentially still have life,” Rezabek said via phone this week. “There were errors, we pointed them out and said, ‘Go fix them.’”
But city officials instead argued the petition could not be saved through a signature collection extension, citing the city’s charter.
Rezabek said he was surprised by the decision, as he’d been told by McDonald that the city’s charter, in fact, gave the BOE sole authority to determine the overall sufficiency of a petition.
“That’s not normally our role,” Rezabek said, noting the BOE is typically involved in referendum petitions only so far as to provide a courtesy check of signature validity and conduct elections.
“The assumption is they wanted us to be the ‘bad guy’ (because) we told them if they wanted us to make the final decision, we’d do that, (but) when we did, they didn’t like our decision and didn’t follow our instructions,” he said.
Rezabek also asserted the city failed to maintain neutrality throughout the referendum process, alleging an attempt to “influence” the BOE’s review by emailing and calling to point out potential signature and notary errors.
“This interference became significant enough that I found it necessary to contact the city and request that it cease,” Rezabek wrote in his letter.
City officials declined Monday to publicly respond to the board’s letter.
Preliminary plans for the housing project, which is being led by developer Addison Properties, were approved by Vandalia council earlier this year and are set to continue as planned.
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