by Nick Castele
The Cuyahoga County sheriff’s office is looking into the collection of signatures for a merger petition that circulated East Cleveland this summer, spokespeople for the sheriff and prosecutor said.
East Cleveland’s mayor and his allies collected more than 1,600 signatures on petitions that require the city council to begin merger negotiations with neighboring Cleveland. The move was seen as a way out of the suburb’s financial problems.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections ruled 827 of the signatures they’d collected were valid—enough to begin negotiating an annexation agreement that would be decided by voters in 2016.
But council didn’t appoint negotiators. Instead, council members asked the county prosecutor to investigate what they believed to be irregularities in the petitions.
“East Cleveland City Council has serious questions about annex petitions, related certification, and has declared the petitions to be invalid,” Council President Barbara Thomas told state officials and others at a budget meeting last month.
The sheriff’s office received the case from the prosecutor late Wednesday and is investigating, county communications director Mary Louise Madigan said. She declined to elaborate on what specifically the probe is looking into.
Asked about the investigation, East Cleveland Mayor Gary Norton noted the signatures had already been vetted and approved by the county elections board.
“The signatures were collected, they were submitted to the board of elections and they were certified by the board of elections,” Norton said in a phone interview. “Where do they check for forgeries? At the board of elections.”
Norton’s chief of staff, Michael Smedley, recently filed a lawsuit asking a judge to compel city council to move forward with merger talks. The suit also asks the judge to consider appointing annexation negotiators himself.
Meanwhile, the state auditor’s office presented East Cleveland with stark financial options last month, saying the road out of fiscal emergency may require the city to cut between 20 to 40 percent of its staff.
