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WORKERS' COMPENSATION Delmont's request for disability pay denied

Friday, July 29, 2005


A state commission will decide whether Delmont will get monthly payments again.
WARREN -- The Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation says a bid by Tony Delmont, former Trumbull County maintenance director, to get more disability payments from the government "is not medically substantiated."
The county recently received notice of the BWC's July 21 decision, and that the bureau has asked the Industrial Commission of Ohio to set a hearing.
That hearing will determine whether Delmont has reached a medically maximum improved state, or if he's eligible for temporary total disability compensation -- which the bureau feels is not medically necessary.
The hearing, at a date not yet set, would settle whether Delmont is eligible to have the BWC resume making monthly payments to him.
Delmont was fired by county commissioners in November 2004 after his indictment for theft in office, money laundering and bribery, to which he has pleaded guilty.
Confession
Delmont admitted taking part in a scheme that defrauded taxpayers of $400,000, and awaits sentencing. Prosecutors said the 27-year county employee -- who made $71,000 annually -- accepted bribes, vacations and gifts in return for allowing vendors to overcharge and oversell goods to Trumbull County.
Delmont's disability claim centers on a February 2003 single-vehicle accident in a county snowplow. In August 2004, a doctor working for the BWC determined that Delmont, of Willard Avenue Northeast, has recovered as much as he ever will. He was dropped last October from temporary total disability payments.
He had been receiving $2,852 a month tax-free in workers' compensation since the accident, in which he suffered back injuries, according to his original BWC claim. The accident took place a few months after a grand jury began investigating theft and bribery in his department.
Now Delmont is making a claim for a cervical herniated disc and a neck injury from the same accident. According to documents filed with the county's human resources office, the additional medical conditions were OK'd in March by the Industrial Commission.
A motion requesting payment of temporary total compensation for the period of Oct. 20, 2004, to April 1, 2005, "and to continue," was filed with the BWC on April 14.