Strong medicine is needed to cure Columbiana County

Columbiana County Health Commissioner Robert Morehead just doesn't get it -- even after 14 years on the public payroll. For that, he deserves to be fired.
Using a county credit card to buy more than $680 worth of books from Barnes & amp; Noble Booksellers and then, when asked about the purchases, to claim that some of the books were for office use, even though a review of the receipts reveals few titles that would seem to fit the official business category, reflects a disturbing attitude.
Using the Visa card to buy a visor, three brass ball markers and a glove at the Longaberger Golf Club in Nashport, Ohio, reveals a care-less approach to his job that is inexcusable.
And using the card for a $21.39 charge from the men's section at Marshall's department store in Pittsburgh, a $13.79 charge from a souvenir shop in Daytona Beach while he was on vacation, and a $44.97 bill from the Levenger Catalog, a mail-order company that advertises itself as offering "Tools for Serious Readers," is arrogance personified.
What makes those charges even more egregious is Morehead's response when asked about them by Vindicator reporter Norman Leigh.
"Don't have a clue," the health commissioner said of the Levenger buy.
A crime
As for the other times he used the county credit card for his personal use, Morehead told Leigh that it's handier. "I don't like carrying around a lot of credit cards," he said. It doesn't seem to matter to him that the interest rate on the charges and the other fees that may be applicable to the card are paid for with public dollars. And it certainly doesn't seem to bother him that using a government credit card for nonofficial business is a crime.
Several years ago, then Youngstown City Councilman Herman Hill was convicted of theft-in-office, a felony, for using his government card to buy a computer for his personal use. He spent 10 days in a halfway house and was put on probation.
Perhaps it is too much to expect Morehead to keep up with the goings-on in Youngstown, but he certainly would be familiar with the September 1993 Columbiana County government investment scandal involving then-county Treasurer Ardel Strabala and his son, Stephen. The Strabalas bilked the county out of about $10 million through illegal investments. Ardel Strabala served a year in state prison; he died in May 1999. Stephen Strabala served about eight years of a nine-year federal sentence. He was freed last year.
Given the statewide publicity surrounding the Strabala case and the spotlight that was shined on Columbiana County government, you would think that every government employee would walk the straight and narrow and do nothing that would raise an eyebrow. Of course, you would be wrong.
Leigh spent three months investigating the spending habits of Columbiana County government employees, and what he found was an attitude on the part of individuals like Morehead that can only be described as cavalier. They have blurred the line between their official duties and their personal lives yet are incensed when questioned about the way they spend public dollars.
Trips by the juvenile and probate court staffs to such far-off cities as Las Vegas, Reno, Boston, Philadelphia and Galveston at a time of tight budgets and growing voter discontent with government's management of the public treasury prompts this question: What are these government employees thinking?
The series of news stories generated by The Vindicator's investigation make it clear that a culture exists in Columbiana County government that can be described thus: What the taxpayers don't know won't hurt them.
But the taxpayers now know, and to his credit, county Prosecutor Robert Herron has responded quickly and aggressively with regard to Morehead's use of the county credit card.
Herron has requested a state audit and has ordered a criminal investigation to determine if the health commissioner improperly used the card. Herron has acknowledged that he took the action after learning of this newspaper's findings regarding Morehead's use of the Visa card in 2003.
Get rid of him
Given that such scrutiny of the health department's operation is not new -- in late 1990s, the Ohio Department of Health and the state auditor's office probed certain expenditures, including credit card use -- we believe the time has come for the board of health to fire its commissioner.
We also call on the advisory council, which is responsible for appointing members of the board of health, to seek member Matt Borza's resignation for personally benefiting from Morehead's spending of public dollars.
The Vindicator investigation revealed that the health commissioner charged county government nearly $800 for about 40 meals he ate in 2003 at Pondi's, a Lisbon bar and restaurant owned by Borza.
Apart from the obvious appearance of impropriety, Borza, as a member of the board of health, is Morehead's boss. He and others on the board hire the health commissioner, and they can fire him.
What has been revealed in the news stories is a systemic problem with the way government officials spend tax dollars, a problem that only a formal policy embraced by every department and agency will solve.
As a first step, we believe all county credit cards should be withdrawn and should be made available only if an employee is traveling on business -- after showing how the county would benefit from such a trip.
This would be the beginning of a clean sweep of Columbiana County government.
In coming weeks, we will comment on other findings from The Vindicator's probe.