Origins
The organization was founded in 1975 as the Ohio Public Interest Campaign, a coalition of unions, churches, and community organizations, working to pass legislation to protect employees and communities from the damage done by plant closings. The coalition proposed state legislation to require advance notice to employees before a closing (1977). The Ohio legislature balked, so U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (D-OH) sponsored it as a federal bill. It became federal law in 1988.
Economic hardship also produced a fiscal crisis for the City of Cleveland, which began selling off its assets: the port (1969), Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (1972), Cleveland Municipal Stadium (1974), and the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (1975). In 1976, Mayor Ralph Perk proposed the next sale, the Municipal Power System (Muny Light, now Cleveland Public Power), and began granting multi-million dollar tax abatements to downtown developers. The Ohio Public Interest Campaign joined with neighborhood groups associated with the Commission on Catholic Community Action and the United Auto Workers union to oppose tax abatements and the sale of Muny Light. These two issues triggered an electoral revolt, dubbed the "Tuesday Night Massacre" (1977). Mayor Perk and one-third of City Council lost their jobs. The new mayoral administration of Dennis Kucinich sided with the citizens coalition, setting the stage for a showdown with the city's major banks and the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co. (now FirstEnergy). Amid the political battle, Clevelanders voted to keep Muny Light (1979), and tax abatements were suspended for a decade.
In 1983, the Ohio Public Interest Campaign won a federal anti-trust suit against three northeast Ohio grocery chains -- Fisher Foods, Inc., First National Supermakerts, Inc.(Finast), and Stop N Shop -- for price-fixing, resulting in $20 million going to a million Cleveland, Akron and Lorain-area households, then the largest private consumer anti-trust settlement in U.S. history. The organization was also involved with issues including community reinvestment, natural gas prices, nuclear power plant construction, health insurance, and victims rights.
Read more about this topic: Ohio Citizen Action
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)