YOUNGSTOWN — A proposal in the state budget bill sponsored by area legislators to change who selects the members of the Mill Creek MetroParks Board remains a possibility but now goes under consideration by the Ohio Senate.

State Rep. Lauren McNally, D-Youngstown, one of the legislators, said the proposal “is currently in the budget, but the budget is with the Senate. They will be making changes to the budget and then it will come back to the House. We will decide if we like their changes. Then it will go to the governor. So it’s definitely still a live issue.”

She said this proposal is patterned after legislation she introduced in 2023. The proposal would remove the appointments from Mahoning County Probate Judge Robert Rusu Jr. and shift them to the county commissioners. McNally said she and state Rep. Tex Fischer, R-Boardman, “tweaked that bill and added it as an amendment to the budget.

“It made it through the budget process on the House side. We passed the House budget a week ago,” she said. “That sends it to the Senate,” she said.

She said she has spoken with state Sen. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, about it.

She said the MetroParks proposal will need Cutrona’s support in the Ohio Senate for the proposal to remain in the Senate version of the budget bill.

CUTRONA

When Cutrona was asked about the proposal, he said this week that he cannot support the proposal in its present form, saying it needs “massive changes” because “as written, it has a whole host of issues and problems.”

He said, “I understand what (McNally and Fischer) are trying to do. I am going to work diligently in the Senate to come up with a reasonable solution to a problem we have had in the selection process.”

He said he is specifically referring to the selection process for executive director, though he is open to having discussion about the selection process for board members.

He said he intends to have a roundtable discussion with Rusu, Mill Creek MetroParks board members and county commissioners “and have an open dialogue as to the steps we can take.”

Cutrona said he has spoken with McNally, Fischer, many of the members of the park board, Judge Rusu and “a whole host of people in the community” about the proposal. He said he wants to come to a “reasonable solution to a problem.”

Some flaws he sees are that the current proposal would “preclude many people from being on” the MetroParks Board. The makeup of the board being proposed, for instance, “would create more of a problem,” he said. He added he also sees issues with “some legalities just in general with the way it is drafted.”

He credited McNally and Fischer for “working very hard, very diligently on this, and I want to work with them in coming up with something that works for everybody. I have faith we will be able to come up with something once we all put all of our heads together and bring in interested parties.”

REASON FOR PROPOSAL

McNally said the “purpose of the legislation is to provide more transparency and more accountability for a park board in general.” She said the way park board members are appointed across Ohio does not make them as accountable to the public as is needed.

“They are not elected officials. They do not have to respond to the public in any way, shape or form. There is no recourse for them if they don’t,” she said.

She said the proposal, in part, resulted from “conversations with Judge Rusu.”

McNally said there is “no rhyme or reason for why the probate judge has that power. It was just put in place in the 1970s,” she said. “There is nothing that qualifies him over anybody else for this type of appointment.”

McNally said, “The probate court in general has a lot of random appointment powers,” adding, “It’s like it all falls on them.” She said Rusu was “OK with relinquishing that power.”

An attempt to talk to Rusu about that last week was not successful.

The current language in the proposal would limit the law change to metroparks boards “created before 1892 and converted into a park district … on or before Jan. 1, 1989,” according to a copy of the proposal. Such a park district’s commissioners would be appointed “by a majority vote of the board of county commissioners of the county in which the park district is located,” it states.

It further states that the commissioners “shall appoint five commissioners, one of whom is a member of the city council of the most populous city in the park district, one of whom is a member of the village council of the most populous village in the park district, one of whom is a member of the board of trustees of the most populous township in the park district, one of whom is a citizen who lives in the most populous township in the park district and one of whom is a citizen who lives in the most populous city in the park district.”

The terms would begin consecutively over the course of five years on Jan. 1 after the date of his or her appointment, the proposal states. The successor park commissioners would be appointed by the county commissioners for three-year terms, the proposal states.

Youngstown is the largest city, Boardman is the largest township and Sebring is the largest village in Mahoning County, McNally said.

McNally said she is not certain whether any other metroparks in the state would qualify for this proposal other than Mill Creek MetroPark. “It can obviously be expanded to all metroparks (in Ohio). We have had that conversation,” she said.

When asked whether she thinks the proposal has a chance of becoming law in the state budget, McNally said, “The fact that it made it through the House is a really good sign” because the House has so many more members than the Ohio Senate.

She said the budget has to be approved and signed by Gov. Mike DeWine by June 30, “so we have a few more months to see the finish line.”

METROPARKS

When Aaron Young, Mill Creek MetroParks executive director, was asked for a comment on the proposal, he said park officials “are aware of the proposal within the current state budget bill that would change the way MetroParks commissioners are appointed, specifically targeted to Mill Creek MetroParks, and remain opposed to such a change.”

He added, “As written, the proposal is a blatant attempt to politicize the functionality of Ohio’s first park system in order to appease a few local special-interest groups. We believe that it is best to keep politics out of parks and leave the current law as it is.”

He drew a comparison between the proposal and the stormwater issues that have hampered Mill Creek Park for many years.

“With the City of Youngstown Mill Creek Sewer Improvement Project scheduled to begin in 2026, it will have taken over 100 years to correct the previous wrong that politics placed upon the MetroParks,” he stated. “This politically charged proposal could take infinitely longer to correct and have just as dire consequences.”

CONTROVERSY

Mill Creek MetroParks has been mired in controversy since it proposed a deer reduction program in early 2023 that ultimately took place starting that fall and continued last fall and winter.

The Save the Deer of Mill Creek Park group sued the MetroParks in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in September 2023, seeking to stop the program, but the litigation was not successful. Neither was a petition submitted to Rusu in February 2024 seeking removal of members of the board of the Mill Creek MetroParks.

The petition led to a hearing before visiting Judge John Campbell, who later ruled against removing any park commissioners and also ruled against removing Young. The deer group asked the MetroParks Board to remove Young in a separate petition in December 2023.

McNally expressed her support for making the Mill Creek MetroPark board more accountable to the public in the fall of 2023 with a bill that would have required that four of the five board members be elected officials, with MetroParks board members coming from Youngstown City Council, Boardman Township trustees, Village of Sebring and a county commissioner. It did not make it into law.

McNally said she sponsored the bill after hearing complaints from people on a wide range of issues involving the Mill Creek MetroParks, including the deer reduction program.