A process attempting to throw out Luzerne County Council’s new anti-discrimination ordinance is formally underway because three citizens filed a required petition on Wednesday.
County residents Walter Griffith, Alyssa Fusaro, and Joe Granteed presented Council Clerk Sharon Lawrence with a petition containing the signatures of 135 people seeking a ballot referendum to repeal the ordinance.
This citizen-initiated referendum option was part of the home rule government that took effect in 2012, but it has not been exercised to date, largely due to the steep signature requirement and tight turnaround, said Griffith, a former county controller.
At least 11,615 voter signatures eventually will be required to get a repeal vote on the ballot, analysis shows.
The process starts with a petition signed by at least 100 voters willing to serve on a petitioner’s committee to collect the remaining signatures, which was submitted Wednesday.
Lawrence said she will work with the county Election Bureau Thursday to verify whether petition signers are registered voters.
If she approves the application, the charter requires her to supply a petition to the committee so it can gather the next required batch of at least 1,162 signatures — a figure based on 1% of the county votes cast in the last governor’s election in 2022.
Lawrence said she is working with the county law office to prepare this petition form for the committee. Griffith said the county law office expects the petition will be available by Friday.
The 1,162 signatures must be gathered and filed within 14 days of the ordinance adoption. While the definition of adoption may be subject to interpretation, Griffith said he is taking a cautious approach and treating it as 14 days from the June 9 date a council majority approved the ordinance. As a result, the committee intends to submit the 1% signatures to Lawrence by 4:30 p.m. this coming Tuesday, or June 23, he said.
Griffith, Fusaro, and Granteed said committee members will work through the weekend and on Monday and Tuesday to gather signatures. They already have contacts for numerous voters who did not want to be on the circulating committee but were interested in signing the petition, Griffith said.
“There are a lot of enthusiastic people,” said Granteed, of Plains Township.
Fusaro, a prior county Election Board member, said she spent the last two days driving throughout the county to obtain signatures from those interested in serving on the petitioner’s committee.
The ordinance establishes the creation of a county human relations commission to hear discrimination complaints involving employment, housing, healthcare, education, and establishments that sell goods or services to the general public. Council must still adopt an ordinance on the commission makeup.
Supporters said the ordinance will protect classes not already covered in state and federal laws and speed up processing of complaints due to a state backlog. Critics argued the county should not get involved in such matters and raised concerns about potential liability, litigation, and added expenses.
Fusaro maintained the ordinance can be “very easily abused,” presenting an example of someone arguing without justification that a business did not hire them because they have “blue hair or are overweight.” She said she heard from small businesses concerned they will get “drug through the mud.”
Ordinance supporters have argued frivolous complaints would likely be denied and not advance to a public hearing, but Fusaro said the public is still in the dark about who would serve on the commission and how complaints would be handled.
Fusaro said Wednesday’s citizen initiation of the process is significant because their attorney, Chadwick Schnee, could not find precedence elsewhere. Getting the referendum on the ballot would show people it is not impossible to challenge council decisions, she said.
“That was the whole point of the charter,” she said in reference to giving the public a say. “That’s the beautiful thing about this.”
If the 1% signatures are collected and approved, the charter calls for a 60-day ordinance pause, during which the committee must obtain signatures totaling at least 10% of the governor’s race votes, or 11,615.
Upon verification and approval of those signatures, council would have 30 days to reconsider its approval of the ordinance proposed for repeal.
If council fails to repeal the referred ordinance during that 30-day period, the county election board must place the repeal referendum on the ballot of the next election that falls at least 13 Tuesdays from then.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
Dallas Post
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