ABOUT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT INSTITUTE
Over the last five years, the Accountability Project has been active across the country on several different fronts. The unifying theme of our work is that we seek to promote free enterprise and good government. We hold accountable those leaders who choose to be less than transparent or who ignore the will of the people. Here’s how we’ve done it:
Research
We spend a lot of time researching issues. What’s happening at the state, county and local level? Are there examples of governments infringing upon the rights of citizens? Where are there transparency issues? And is the government dabbling in programs that will grow the government at the expense of taxpayers? We find examples of this last question especially annoying where there’s a private-sector solution. From the school board to the mayor’s office and everywhere in between - We’re watching.
While we track many issues, we’ve established ourselves - and repeatedly worked - in two specifically:
Keeping an eye out for elected officials and un-elected bureaucrats who misuse tax dollars and/or ignore the will of the people
Governments seeking to establish public broadband internet utilities (because it puts the public sector into competition with the private sector)
We’re especially interested in the election of judges and school boards because we believe that they’re vitally important jobs and we find that voters are often selecting their choice with little or no information in non-partisan races such as these. In one famous instance, Ohio voters elected a Judge named Tim Horton. It wasn’t his jurisprudence that won him the election. It was the fact that he had a familiar name. Horton resigned under threat of suspension and has been disbarred. School boards often act quietly with little oversight. An example of bad governance at school boards was the overreaction to the cancel culture by removing school resource police officers. We saw one school district vote to remove this important safety role from their district and then demand police protection at board meetings when parents showed up to call them out!
And we’re interested in government efforts to take over broadband internet access because it’s a classic case of government competing with the private sector. Few, if any, such examples end up being a good deal for taxpayers. As just one example, the state of Kentucky undertook a project to provide fiber access. The Courier Journal picks up the story: “State Auditor Mike Harmon conservatively estimates that Kentucky taxpayers over the next 30 years will be on the hook for $1.5 billion — 50 times what they were originally told the project would cost them. And that’s a best-case scenario. There has to be a better way.
gathering information
Once we’ve identified a project, we seek to gather information. We do this through usual means, but we also reach out directly to the people involved, usually through questionnaires. In the case of judicial elections, we’ll send surveys to the candidates asking them to answer questions about their background, legal philosophy and plans as the judge.
On the broadband internet front, we’ve sought out communities seeking to take over internet access and pressed local leaders on why they’ve chosen the expensive route. In some cases their answers are evasive and we’ve undertaken public records requests, attending public meetings, and other means of gathering information. By the way, a lack of transparency is always a warning sign. It was at a sub-committee meeting of a council committee in Hudson that the forces in favor of a public broadband utility admitted that their goal was to find a way to achieve their goals without offering the public a vote on the measure. That’s good information about bad government and we were there to record it.
educating the public
Once we have information, we have to have channels to share it with the public. For judicial races, we’ve chosen to post the questionnaires on the internet and to purchase digital ads targeting voters with links to the information. Voters see a lot of information and ads from legislators, federal candidates and presidential campaigns. Ours might be the only time they see in-depth biographical and ideological information from judicial candidates.
We’ve been active with the broadband internet issue across the state and to varying degrees.
In Zanesville, Ohio City Council was considering a study. We were active there educating city leaders on the issue and the council voted against moving forward.
In Solon, there was an active effort by city leaders to move forward on an internet utility. Again, we worked hard to educate both voters and council members about the very real possibility that such an effort would result in a boondoggle. Thankfully, the effort was killed in the council finance committee.
Here’s an article from Cleveland.com highlighting the news. And here’s Councilwoman Nancy Meany speaking about the deal:
Meany said she had "concerns right away" last August when the RFP was introduced to council, and they have only intensified since then.
"I look at this as a potential disaster," Meany said. "I think it's a huge mistake for the city to undertake something like this. There are way, way too many alarm bells for me."
Meany believes that broadband, at least in Solon’s case, should remain in the private sector, rather than some “pie-in-the-sky” public initiative.
In Hudson, we rolled out a complete program. Hudson was deep into a widespread effort to circumvent voters’ intent. They put a downtown redevelopment plan on the ballot and when the voters rejected it, council members sought to move forward with the project anyway. A broadband internet utility was sought, in the name of economic development. Again, the effort was plotted out behind closed doors and without voter input. That effort was defeated, and city leaders moved to put a level on the ballot to fund their takeover. We used digital ads and calls to council members, and the levy issue was defeated in council before it ever made it to the ballot. The big government types wouldn’t stop, though. Just one member of the council stood steadfastly for responsible decision-making. In 2019 we sent questionnaires to council candidates and the candidates for mayor. A slate of candidates wholly new, except for one incumbent, was endorsed by Accountability Project Ohio. We did digital ads to promote the free enterprise slate and we did a radio ad promoting the questionnaires.
In the end, all but one of the proponents for bigger government were defeated and along with them went the government’s appetite for a public internet utility. It was a true victory for common sense!
our success story
Our efforts have not been without speed bumps. Elected officials and their allies are usually unhappy to have an “outside” group getting involved in their business. We’re often called outsiders and our digital ads are often subject to the sort of internet vitriol that is all too common. Here’s what we say in those situations: we may not be members of a community where we research, gather information, and educate voters - but we are subject matter experts. We have watched the communities carefully, we know the issues, and especially in the case of Hudson, Ohio, we were the ONLY ones sounding the alarm. That’s our success story.
We won’t allow political attacks to keep us from our mission. And we’ll use all the tools at our disposal to stand up for free enterprise, transparency and good government.