TRUMBULL COUNTY Bribery case affects campaign to pass additional sales tax

A commissioner said voting against the sales tax can only hurt the local investigation.
By STEPHEN SIFF
and PEGGY SINKOVICH
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- With the faltering economy, local bankruptcies and increased state taxes, selling Trumbull County voters on a permanent 1 percent county sales tax would be no easy task.
And it won't become any easier with the news that up until last year, a vendor was ripping off the county for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and paying tens of thousands of dollars in bribes for the privilege.
"It makes you worry about government accountability," said Gilbert Rucker of Southington. "It makes you think."
On Thursday, Barry Jacobson, co-owner of Envirochemical Inc. of Bedford Heights, pleaded guilty to bribery and complicity to theft in office.
As part of the plea agreement, he admitted to overcharging and overordering janitorial products for the county and agreed to pay $180,000 restitution, plus a $20,000 fine.
The county paid more than 500 percent above list price for some products, county Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said. One example: bug spray at $73 a can.
The county quickly reacted when the investigations began last year, said Commissioner Joseph Angelo Jr. Commissioners changed the purchasing system, began keeping paper trails of purchases, and started putting inventory under lock and key.
"We had a problem, we were alerted to it, we didn't sweep it under the rug," Angelo said.
Expenditures on janitorial supplies have dropped by at least 80 percent, according to numbers from the county auditor.
Tax vote
But will the courtroom revelations still hurt the tax vote in November?
"Unfortunately, I have to think yeah," Angelo said.
The news could convince people who had been sitting on the fence about the tax -- which local officials say they desperately need to maintain county services -- to vote no, he said.
If passed by voters, the November ballot measure would continue a 0.5 percent additional sales tax imposed by commissioners in March. That's on top of the half-percent tax already on the books, bringing the total sales tax collected by the county to 1 percent.
A vote against the additional tax, expected to raise about $8 million a year, would hurt the local corruption investigation, said Commissioner Michael O'Brien.
"By voting no, it is hurting the prosecutor's office, and the prosecutor's office is conducting the investigation," O'Brien said. "Why would the public want to cripple the prosecutor's office?"
A vote against the tax would also hurt the sheriff's department, where 22 employees remain on furlough from budget cuts earlier this year. The department has not yet been able to restore its detective bureau, said Sheriff Thomas Altiere.
Altiere said he hopes voters would recognize that officials have pinched a crooked vendor, and not hold it against them by voting down the tax.
"We had a problem and it has been dealt with," he said.
Bribery
The man Jacobson says he bribed, county maintenance director Tony Delmont, has not been allowed to make purchasing decisions since September, and he has been off work since a minor crash in a county snowplow in February.
Trumbull County Domestic Court records show that Delmont's wife, Karen, filed for a legal separation Friday.
On Thursday, commissioners Angelo and James G. Tsagaris voted in favor of suspending Delmont without pay, a decision that keeps open the possibility he can continue receiving workers' compensation benefits he has been getting since the crash.
O'Brien thought he should be fired.
The revelations of dishonesty at the county building did not fill Karen King of Warren with relief that crooks had been caught.
"This will probably make a lot of people think twice," she said.
siff@vindy.comsinkovich@vindy.com