Union has begun the process of appointing city commissioners to the newly voided seats on the City Commission, and two former Union City Commissioners, Brian Garner and Eric Dulaney, are not among the appointees, in spite of their previous election victories before the court nullified the commission seats on Friday.
The appointments took place at the Union City Commission meeting Monday night. As it stands, the city commission now consists of Mayor Larry Solomon, former Commissioner John Mefford, former Commissioner Doug Bine – who first brought the election challenge to the court – and new Commissioner George Eldridge.
The fifth and final seat on the commission will be chosen by a task force of the current commissioners, who will solicit applications from interested city residents and announce the final appointee at the next meeting of the Union City Commission later this month.
Solomon told reporters after the meeting that the appointments were about ensuring “harmony” among the new commissioners.
“It had nothing to do with who they are, what they are, but how much harmony we can have because we haven’t had that for quite a while,” Solomon said. “Otherwise, this thing wouldn’t have gone to the court. Two is based upon professionalism, and three is the fact that we can focus on city business without conflict.”
The appointments occurred this way: Following the court’s decision, Solomon became the only member of the commission and was thus granted the power to appoint a single member. He appointed Mefford, who nominated Bine. Those two then affirmed Bine’s appointment. Bine then nominated Eldridge, who was affirmed by the other three.
Bine lost his reelection bid in November, according to the results of the election before the court case. The other winners included Mefford, Garner, Eric Dulaney and Jeremy Ramage. Eldridge did not run at all, although he’s sat on city boards and is a frequent attendee to public meetings. In fact, Eldridge had to formally resign from a city board before he could accept his nomination to the commission.
Boone County Circuit Court Judge Richard Brueggemann ousted all members of the Union City Commission, except the mayor, last week following a court battle that began shortly after the general election in November. The legal proceedings stem from reports of wrong ballot distributions at two Union precincts on Election Day. The elections that were affected included the race for the city commission seats and the medical cannabis ballot question.
Following reports from voters, the County Clerk Justin Crigler’s office filed a petition for a recount on Nov. 8. Brueggemann rejected this as “futile” for determining the scale of the disenfranchisement that may have occurred and later granted Bine leave to levy a challenge against the election. The Board of Elections certified the election results on Nov. 15.
After several hearings, both sides submitted briefs to the court suggesting a remedy to the election troubles on Monday, Jan. 27. Jeff Mando, the attorney representing Crigler and the Board of Elections, argued for an ouster and new appointments. Bine and his attorney, Steve Megerle, argued for a new election.
Bruegemann, in his final judgment, made the case that the court was constrained by law in how it could deal with the election troubles, arguing that the statute mandated the mayor appoint new members rather than calling a special election.
Ramage vacated his seat on the commission for 2025 in December. Solomon and Mefford had pitched the idea of filling the empty seat with Bine in early January in the midst of the court proceedings, but Dulaney and Garner both voted the idea down, leading to a tie vote in the four-member commission at the time.
Ties count as a ‘no’ when there’s an even number of people on the commission and no mechanism to break a tie.
According to the results of the now-voided election, Garner barely beat out Bine. Yet, Dulaney walked away with the second-highest number of votes after Mefford, so Monday’s appointments came as a surprise to many in the packed commission chambers.
Solomon, as well as Bine and his attorney attributed Garner and Dulaney’s failure to garner appointments to their unwillingness to entertain the proposed appointment in January.
“Commissioner Delaney and Commissioner Garner could have ended this in the first week of January, and they chose to continue to hold up the government of Union and continue to cost the taxpayers of Boone County money to continue to litigate this case,” Megerle said.
“With Commissioner Ramage’s resignation, that left four commissioners for four seats or four candidates, they could have ended it,” Bine said. “They could have done what’s right for the city of Union. We could have been beyond this now and working for the citizens. They made the conscious choice to not do that, and that is not what a good commissioner should do.”
Dulaney, who ran for mayor against Solomon in 2022, and Garner, the only Democrat on the commission and who had run into disagreements with Solomon in the past, chalked it up to politics.
“I was really opposed a lot to his tax and spend policies,” Dulaney said, “and he wants to grow the government of Union.”
Dulaney added that the fact that the person with the second highest number of votes wasn’t even considered for an appointment was “inherently wrong.”
When asked if either of them planned on applying for the open spot, both said they weren’t sure yet. They didn’t seem optimistic.
“I’m not sure if the frustration would really be worth it because it’s probably not going to be a fair process,” Dulaney said.
“I’m not interested in a bad faith process,” Garner said, “and I’m not going to waste my time on somebody who doesn’t respect the will of the people.”
Dulaney left the meeting after the appointments, but Garner stuck around to address the new commission during the meeting’s public comment section. He said he was “disappointed, not surprised.”
“I really don’t comprehend a scenario that did not involve appointing Commissioner Dulaney,” Garner said. “There’s no magic way you can spin the numbers that he was not the second most votes, and I think to pack the commission with your friends in automatic votes is just, frankly, not in the best interest of this city.”
“This isn’t Youngstown, Ohio,” Garner also said towards the end of his statement, “and this is where I’m from. This is my home, and I don’t appreciate the politics being played with my home.”
When Eldridge asked if he knew he would be appointed he said, “Yes, oh yeah. It would have been a real surprise.”
When Pine was asked if he was aware he would appointed that night, he said, “No.”
Megerle said he would lobby the General Assembly in the future to establish clearer paths to resolve cases like this if they happened again.
“We look forward to an opportunity to talk with the General Assembly to fix this loophole,” Megerle said. “This is a bad loophole. All elected officials, I mean every position of power in this commonwealth, they should be elected officials. Section 160 of the Constitution says that all city commission and legislative body members should be elected. This was a quirk. It’s a loophole. It should be fixed.”
He also floated the idea of auditing the county clerk’s office to investigate how they trained their poll workers.
“We intend to reach out to the federal Department of Justice, and ask for them to come in and do a complete audit, or the state attorney general to come in and do it, so this never happens again,” Megerle said.
All board appointments and legislation the commission voted on in January became void upon the court’s ruling, so now the new commission will need to cast new votes on all of those issues at future meetings. The commission will meet again on Wednesday, Feb. 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Union City Building.