NILES, Ohio – State Attorney General Mike DeWine says he is pleased with tougher laws approved by the Ohio Legislature governing the oil and gas industry, but would like greater power to intervene on disputes involving landowners.
Speaking Tuesday before the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s government affairs council, DeWine, who previously served as a U.S. senator and as the state’s lieutenant governor, said his office often hears complaints from property owners that there is “confusion about the facts” involving lease agreements they have reached regarding their property.
“They think they were told one thing, signed some papers, then the found out something else after the fact. It’s kind of a typical consumer problem,” he explained. However, his office doesn’t have jurisdiction to intervene because such transactions don’t fall under the state’s consumer sales practice act. “They” – the landowners – “are the seller, not the buyer,” he explained.
Giving his office the authority to “help these people, to mediate these problems, to go to bat for them when it’s appropriate” would require action on the part of the General Assembly, and DeWine said he has asked for that authority.
He praised lawmakers for passing new rules on oil and gas drilling. Ohio has “a great opportunity … for a lot of money to come into the state and to help some regions of the state that are very depressed and have historically certainly not been the wealthiest parts of the state,” he remarked.
Provisions of the legislation, which must be signed into law by Gov. John Kasich, include a requirement that well operators disclose within 60 days the chemicals used to drill and hydraulically fracture, or frack, a well. Additionally, the bill would require chemical reporting when operators drill though underground drinking water sources. They also could be fined up to $20,000 daily for violations of safety and environmental regulations.
DeWine told the audience of chamber members and government officials about the funds Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties will receive as a result of the settlement with national mortgage servicers over “robo-signing” mortgages. DeWine set aside $75 million of the funds the state will receive directly to address the mortgage crisis for demolition. That includes $1.5 million to demolished vacant properties in Mahoning County, $1.27 million in Trumbull County and “a little over” $500,000 in Columbiana County.
“It’s real money that’s going to go to the county,” he said. “It is something that we think will help victims,” namely the homeowners who reside near these distressed and abandoned properties. Some people are living in homes that are valued at a third of what they should be as a result of nearby properties. “Some of these homes just need to go away,” he said.
Warren Mayor Doug Franklin expressed his appreciation that DeWine allocated the demolition funds rather than placing the settlement money into Ohio’s general funds as other states did. The funds will allow Warren to remove at least 90% of the homes now on the city’s demolition list, he said.
“We think it’s the right use of the money,” DeWine said. “No other attorney general did it,” he added, acknowledging that he got “a little nervous” when he found out that no other states were doing that.
DeWine also touted the Fugitive Safe Surrender program to take place July 25-28 in Trumbull and Columbiana counties that will permit in individuals with outstanding warrants to turn themselves in at a specified church within each county. Each of the churches over the four-day period will be staffed with a judge, representatives of the clerk of courts and other officials to resolve the outstanding warrants quickly.
“It’s not an amnesty,” he stressed, but simply a means to allow individuals with outstanding warrants -- in many cases for minor offenses such as parking violations -- to have them resolved swiftly. “It sounds a bit bizarre but it works,” he said. The program, which essentially sets up a court system in a church, is modeled on an initiative that has been replicated across the country.
DeWine said he wanted to conduct the program in Mahoning County but his office ran into opposition from officials there. He specifically cited the office of the Youngstown clerk of courts, Sarah Brown-Clark.
“It is some effort. It is some time. It is some expense,” he acknowledged.
Brown-Clark disputed the assertion that her office wasn’t interested in participating because it would have been too much effort but was concerned that the city wasn’t brought into the planning process earlier. The individual from DeWine’s office sent to execute the program had already chosen the site and “invited us to get on board,” she said. Her office was given the impression that funds for the program were available “due to a faith-based philanthropist and it had to be that way or no other way,” she said.
“You can’t just plan something and then try to force people into your plan,” she added. People involved in the Columbiana and Trumbull programs were involved in the planning process, she said.
“It was an issue of a project of this size. All the invested parties should be involved in all of the planning,” she said.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.