Warren, Ohio - A City With a Future of Limited Raises - Vote Yes to Repeal the Raises

"This Is a Great Idea — But I Don't Live in Warren, Ohio."

Good. You don't have to. Every Ohio city, village, and home-rule township has the same tools we used. Here's how to hold your own local politicians accountable.

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Who Can Use This

Any Ohio statutory city or village follows the process below — it comes straight from the Ohio Revised Code, not from a local charter. Most charter cities also follow this process unless their charter specifically replaced it with its own initiative/referendum procedure (check your city's charter or ask your law director/clerk). Home-rule townships have a similar option under R.C. 504.14.

Two Different Tools: Initiative vs. Referendum

Ohio law gives citizens two distinct petition tools, and picking the right one matters — we learned this the hard way (story below).

Initiative — Form 6-I Referendum — Form 6-J
What it does Lets citizens write and propose a brand-new ordinance — including one that repeals and replaces an existing one — and put it directly to voters. Lets citizens force an ordinance council already passed onto the ballot for voters to approve or reject as-is.
Signatures required 10% of the electors who voted for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election, in that city/village. 35% of the electors who voted for governor in the most recent gubernatorial election, in that city/village (updated in HB 96 — see below).
Time to gather signatures No fixed expiration. R.C. 731.28 sets no explicit deadline for collecting signatures once the pre-circulation copy is filed — the real constraint is the 90-day certification runway before your target election (details below). Only 30 days, hard stop, from the ordinance's passage/filing.
Deadline to file No fixed short fuse — but it must be certified at least 90 days before the general election you're targeting. Only 30 days after the ordinance is filed with the mayor (or passed over a veto). Miss it and the referendum option is gone for that ordinance, permanently.
What it CAN'T touch — Referendum is unavailable against emergency legislation (ordinances council declares an "emergency" for the immediate preservation of public peace, health, or safety) and against ordinances that are effectively third-party agreements — contracts, appropriations, and similar measures where the city has already bound itself to another party. Councils that want to dodge a referendum have an incentive to slap an emergency clause on the ordinance or structure it as a contract. Check the ordinance's actual language and your law director before assuming referendum is even on the table.
Legal citation Ohio Revised Code §731.28 Ohio Revised Code §731.29
Official form Form 6-I — Initiative Petition (PDF) Form 6-J — Referendum Petition (search "Form 6-J" on the Ohio Secretary of State's Forms & Petitions page)

What happens after a petition is certified — effective dates, how the board of elections handles the vote, and the process for both tools — is covered in Ohio Revised Code §731.31.

Our Story: Why We Failed in 2023 and Won in 2026

When Warren's City Council passed the pay raise ordinance in the final days of 2023, our first move was a referendum petition — the tool that lets voters reject an ordinance council already passed. The problem: a referendum only gives you 30 days from the ordinance's passage, and you need signatures from 35% of the electors who voted for governor. Our 30-day clock ran straight through the holidays — filing logistics, weekends, and Christmas ate most of our usable days, leaving us with far less than 30 actual working days to gather signatures at that threshold. We came up short.

So we switched tools. Instead of asking voters to reject the existing ordinance, we filed an initiative petition — a new ordinance we wrote ourselves that repeals and replaces the raise. The initiative route only requires 10% of the gubernatorial vote and isn't tied to a 30-day fuse after passage, just a 90-day runway before the election you're targeting. That's the version that got certified for the November 3, 2026 ballot. See the press release for the full timeline.

"No Fixed Deadline" Doesn't Mean Unlimited Time

Unlike a municipal referendum under R.C. 731.29 (strict 30-day filing window after an ordinance passes or is filed with the mayor), R.C. 731.28 sets no explicit fixed number of days or expiration limit for gathering initiative signatures once the pre-circulation copy of the proposed ordinance is filed with the city auditor or village clerk. In practice, though, four things constrain how long you really have:

1. The 90-Day Election Deadline (the hard calendar limit)

To land on a specific general election ballot, the auditor/clerk must certify the petition's sufficiency and validity to the county Board of Elections at least 90 days before the election. Because the auditor/clerk holds the petition for 10 days before transmitting it, and the Board takes up to 10 more days to check signatures, organizers should plan to submit all signatures roughly 110 days before the election — not 90.

2. The Gubernatorial Baseline Can Shift Mid-Drive

The 10% threshold is pegged to the most recent gubernatorial election. If your signature drive spans a governor's race, the required number of signatures automatically resets to 10% of the new turnout total once those results are certified — potentially raising your bar mid-drive.

3. Charter Cities May Impose Their Own Clock

General-law municipalities follow R.C. 731.28 as-is, with no expiration clock. Charter municipalities only default to state law if their charter is silent on initiative timeframes — otherwise the charter's own deadline (e.g., 60, 90, or 180 days from filing the pre-circulation copy) controls. Check your charter before you assume you have unlimited time.

4. No "Cure Period" If You Come Up Short

Unlike statewide ballot initiatives or charter amendments, the Ohio Supreme Court has held that R.C. 731.28 provides no 10-day supplemental cure period to gather extra signatures if your initial submission falls short. Every signature you need has to be in hand at the time you submit — gather a real cushion above the bare minimum.

Why Referendum Now Requires 35%, Not 10%

Until 2025, R.C. 731.29 set the referendum threshold at the same 10% as an initiative. House Bill 96 (136th General Assembly) rewrote that number to 35% — more than triple the old bar — the same era statehouse politicians across Ohio were watching grassroots referendum and initiative efforts like ours push back on pay raises and other unpopular council actions. A citizen movement that could credibly force a council vote onto the ballot with 10% of the gubernatorial vote became a lot less credible once it needed 35%.

Whether or not that specific motive can ever be proven, the practical effect is not in dispute: the legislature made the referendum tool dramatically harder to use right as citizen groups were starting to use it. That's exactly why this page pushes the initiative route (still 10%, still Form 6-I) as the more reliable path — and why part of "repealing the raises" everywhere else in Ohio also means keeping an eye on Columbus and pushing back if lawmakers keep raising the bar on citizens holding them accountable.

Writing Your Own Petition: Title & Ordinance Text

Both the state's official form and Ohio law require more than just signatures. Before you circulate:

Full instructions and statutory citations are printed directly on Form 6-I itself.

Relevant ORC Sections & Key Reminders

The statutes that actually govern this process, in one place:

NOTICE — Whoever knowingly signs this petition more than once, signs a name other than their own, or signs when not a legal voter is liable to prosecution.

This exact warning (R.C. 3501.38) is required to be printed in red on the face of Form 6-I — it's not boilerplate, and violating it is a criminal offense. Make sure every part-petition you circulate keeps this notice intact and legible.

Reminder — a "committee" for the petition and a "committee" for campaign finance are not the same filing.

Naming a petitioners' committee on Form 6-I (even a committee of one) satisfies R.C. 731.28. It does not register you as a ballot issue committee for campaign finance purposes. Before you take in a single dollar or spend your own money on the effort, R.C. 3517.10 requires filing a Designation of Treasurer / Statement of Organization with your county board of elections. Campaign finance complaints and violations (false statements, undisclosed spending, etc.) are separately handled by the Ohio Elections Commission. Skipping this step is one of the easiest ways for an otherwise-solid grassroots effort to get tangled up after the fact — file it early, even if you're a committee of one.

Find Your Numbers

Both thresholds (10% for initiative, 35% for referendum) are based on the number of electors who voted for governor in your city or village at the most recent gubernatorial election — not registered voters, not turnout in a random election. That baseline resets after every governor's race. Ohio's next gubernatorial election is in 2026; a well-contested race typically produces a bigger, harder-to-hit denominator than a quiet one, so the exact signature count you'll need can change significantly from cycle to cycle.

Your county board of elections can tell you the exact number for your municipality. Find yours at the Ohio Secretary of State's County Boards of Elections directory.

Learn the Legal Standards

The Ohio Secretary of State publishes a comprehensive Ohio Ballot Questions and Issues Handbook covering the legal rulings and standards election officials apply to petitions like these — read it before you draft anything.

When you have specific questions, talk to your local board of elections first, or call the Ohio Secretary of State's Elections Administration division directly at 614-466-2655.

Don't Live in Ohio?

Most states give citizens some version of this power — it just goes by different names and different rules. Search "[your state] municipal initiative petition" or "[your city] citizens' referendum process" to find your state's equivalent statute, or call your county/city clerk and ask directly how residents can petition to put a local ordinance on the ballot.

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