MAHONING PROBATE COURT RACE Panel finds fault on both sides

The committee ordered some changes made and also questioned the timing of the ethics complaint.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A lawyer running for judge of Mahoning County Probate Court made some "careless" campaigning mistakes, but her opponent was criticized for waiting so long to point them out.
That's the decision of the county bar association's campaign ethics committee, which ruled Monday on a series of complaints lodged last week against Atty. Maureen A. Sweeney by Judge Timothy P. Maloney.
Judge Maloney's complaints alleged that Sweeney, his opponent in today's election, misled voters with information in her campaign materials and advertisements and on her Web site.
The committee ruled that Sweeney did violate judicial ethics rules in some of her campaign materials and ordered her to correct them immediately.
The panel ordered Sweeney to stop using the term extensive to describe her probate court experience and to pull any campaign commercials implying that professionals are not used to conduct adoption proceedings or that adoptive parents are not treated with dignity in the court.
She was also ordered to stop using language suggesting that the probate court does not have a Web site.
Maloney's reaction
"They found that she did knowingly misrepresent her qualifications and she provided misleading information about adoptions. I guess that's the heart of it," Judge Maloney said. He declined to comment further.
Outside of those corrective actions, which Sweeney said were remedied early Monday morning, the committee said in its written decision that it is "hard-pressed to find that [Sweeney] violated any disciplinary rules," so ordered no disciplinary action taken against her.
"The violations were largely careless," the report says.
The committee was "troubled" by the fact that some of the activities and violations complained about by Judge Maloney took place in April and May, but he did not take action until last week.
"[Judge Maloney] must acknowledge that waiting as much as seven months to raise claims which he now says are flagrant violations calls into question how serious he believed the violations to be when they occurred," the committee's report says.
"Our goal is to make judicial elections in Mahoning County fairer, not tip the balance in the final days to the candidate who delays filing a complaint when the factual predicate has existed for some time."
Sweeney's remarks
Sweeney chalked up the flap to "Mahoning County politics as usual." She also criticized Judge Maloney for the 11th-hour timing of the complaint.
"He questioned my ethical conduct," Sweeney said. "Well, I question his ethical conduct in filing this in the last week before the election."
bjackson@vindy.com