Longtime activists step down, leaving watchdog vacuum

AP Wire

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio's cadre of government watchdogs - activist groups that comb budgets and campaign finances for hints of waste or ethics violations - is dwindling, The Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday.

     Directors and leaders of many of the state's most vocal government-watching groups have stepped down during the past year.

     Two longtime critics of government spending announced their departures in the last two weeks. Donald C. Berno is leaving the Ohio Public Expenditure Council after 13 years, and Scott A. Pullins stepped down as president of the Ohio Taxpayers Union.

     Common Cause-Ohio was once one of the most active groups, but it has been without a director for months. Both Ray Cadwallader and his predecessor, Janet Lewis, have left.

     Ohio Citizen Action, likewise, lost Laura Yeomans as research director last summer. Yeomans used her computer to track campaign contributions and spending by state and local politicians.

     States need private groups to keep an eye on government spending and ethics, said Meleah Rush, director of state projects for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington. She co-wrote a report, "Watchdogs on Short Leashes," issued by the center in December.

     "The value is, really, that these third-party groups aren't physically involved in government," Rush said. "We can be as critical as we need to be as long as we show both sides."

     Ohio is one of 27 states with no outside agency overseeing ethical conduct by state lawmakers, according to Rush's study.