Columbus City Councilman Mitchell Brown to retire at end of year

On Apr 2, 2021

Columbus City Council member Mitchell Brown

Columbus City Councilman Mitchell J. Brown announced Friday that he will withdraw from the November general election and leave office on Dec. 31.

“I’ll be 74 (then),” Brown told The Dispatch when asked why he was leaving. “It’s time for me to pass stewardship on to my colleagues.”

His retirement announcement comes one week after Council member Priscilla Tyson, who has served on council since January 2007, announced that she would not be seeking reelection and would leave office at the end of 2021.

Brown said the pandemic played a role in his decision to leave at the end of the year, citing an inability to spend time with friends around the country.

“I guess primarily with COVID and last year, I thought about what I was going to do,” he said, mentioning how much he enjoyed a pre-COVID trip with his wife, Rebecca, to Vancouver, British Columbia. Brown also said he wants to have more time with his daughter, Lindsay.

“It marks my 13th year of being cancer-free. I don’t want to have any specific assignments,” he said.

Brown was appointed to City Council in January 2016 to fill the remaining two years of the term of former Council member Eileen Y. Paley after she was elected to be a Franklin County Municipal Court judge. He was elected in 2017.

Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin told The Dispatchthat when he and former Council President Zach Klein, now the city’ attorney, asked Brown to step in to replace Paley, they were surprised when Brown said “yes” because he just served as the city’s public safety director for 14 years.

“When he did. I didn’t think he would stay as long as he did. He felt he was needed,” Hardin said.

“When you have a council replacement, it’s all about who’s ready to govern the next minute,” he said. “It was a no brainer to ask him.”

Hardin called Brown a quintessential old-school council member. “He harkens back to a day when a handshake meant something. He brought balance and stability to council and helped me grow as a leader,” he said.

In 2020, Brown lobbied against an ordinance that Hardin co-sponsored that would have limited police use of chemical agents, helicopters, military-type rifles and “less-lethal” munitions such as rubber and wooden bullets. In September, Hardin joined Brown, Tyson and Councilman Emmanuel Remy to indefinitely table the measure.

The proposal came in response to the aggressive Columbus police response to local protests after the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died in Minneapolis police custody in late May. Derek Chauvin, the former police officer accused of holding his knee on Floy’d neck for nearly nine and a half minutes as Floyd said “I can’t breathe,” is currently on trial for murder.

“I will watch and see how the Division of Police continues to improve the way in which they engage with the citizens of Columbus,” Brown said.

During his time on council, Brown pushed a program to increase education of hands-only CPR and the locations of automated external defibrillator units for residents and businesses.

Brown also cited his work with council members on affordable housing and programs for senior citizens.

Brown said he will be submitting paperwork Friday to the Franklin County Board of Elections to take his name off the ballot.

Like Tyson, he will be replaced on the ballot by a five-person nominating committee that he listed when he filed for reelection. Both council members listed the same nominating committee: Larry Price; Keisha Hunley Jenkins; Francine Ryan; Gretchen James; and Christian Hardin.

Before serving on City Council, Brown was director of public safety under former Mayor Michael B. Coleman from 2000 through 2014. During that time, the city’s first Black fire chief, Ned Pettus, was appointed. Pettus is now public safety director under Mayor Andrew J. Ginther.