Is hiring family right? Elected officials split
The prosecutor said there the law needs to be more definitive.
By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- Elected county officials are split on whether the practice of hiring relatives is right or wrong, with Trumbull County's prosecutor calling for the state Legislature to clarify the issue.
They were reacting to Trumbull County Engineer John Latell's hiring of two in-laws to work in his department.
Auditor David Hines and Treasurer Christ Michelakis said they have daughters working for county agencies outside their employ.
Recorder Diana Marchese and Clerk of Courts Karen Infante Allen, meanwhile, said they never have hired relatives and consider the practice wrong.
"I've never hired a member in my immediate family," Hines said Friday.
His daughter, Heather Hines, has worked for the engineer's office for 15 years. Hines was county treasurer 15 years ago when she got the job, he said, adding that he thinks there is nothing wrong with it.
"If you can't help your children, then there's something wrong," he said.
Daughters hired
Michelakis said his daughter, Kathy Huggins, works in the personal property division of Hines' office and has been there about five years. Another daughter, Diane Hess, was hired this week to a job in the county Job & amp; Family Services Department. Michelakis has been treasurer since 1995.
Michelakis had no comment on whether the hirings of his daughters are ethical.
Hess started out in a summer job there and landed full-time employment -- just like Commissioner Daniel Polivka's mother, Donna, did this year in the same J & amp;FS department.
Wouldn't do it
Infante Allen, who has held office since January, said she "personally would never hire a relative. I wouldn't do it,"
"What kind of message does it send?" asked Marchese, who has been recorder 12 years. "As elected officials, we should be a step above."
Marchese said that she has no relatives working in any county job and that she believes elected officials should abide by a principle: If they would mind seeing their actions on the front page of the newspaper, they shouldn't do it.
Common Pleas Judge John Stuard said he isn't aware of elected officials' relatives being hired in the courthouse, but he thinks that years ago, county offices were populated by many relatives.
"We've gotten into the thought process that you have to have complete strangers. I'm not sure that is a valid process," Judge Stuard said, explaining that to some degree the principle of "to the victor go the spoils" should apply on the "battlefield of elections."
"Then the question becomes where to draw the line" legally and ethically, he said.
Ethics panel
The Ohio Ethics Commission says the legal line is crossed by hiring parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, spouses and siblings. Also considered family members are any other people related to the public official by blood or by marriage and residing in the same household. Ohio law excludes hires that occurred before 1986.
Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins said his office won't be taking action on this year's hirings by Latell of a son-in-law and daughter-in-law to positions as engineer and stenographer, respectively, in his department. Latell said Matthew Dohy and Amanda Latell are qualified to do the work.
Watkins said state law and family, as defined in an ethics commission opinion, are not specific enough for him to initiate prosecution. A legislative change is required to determine the definition of family member.
"If something is vague, does it cover a cousin? Second cousin? I mean, God Almighty, you've got a lot of prosecutions here," Watkins said. "There's no court case saying that family members include daughters-in-law and sons-in-law, and I'm not going to prosecute such a case."
As a matter of due process, Watkins does not think anyone would be successful in prosecuting because there is no clear definition of family. And, the ethics commission's opinion defined family not to include people such as son-in-law and daughter-in-law.
The Ohio Legislature needs to make the definition specific or the ethics commission needs to redefine what is family. "Then, everybody would know what the playing field is," Watkins said.
In Mahoning County, Engineer Richard Marsico said he has never considered hiring a family member, so he has never considered what is legal. He just knows that "it's bad politically to do it. The public definitely has a strong opinion against it."
Bert Dawson, Columbiana County engineer, said he has never hired a family member to work in his department. He has, however, two family members working for him now.
Dawson's daughter-in-law works for him, but his son married her after she was hired there, he said. And a man working for Dawson became his brother-in-law after he was hired. "Generally, it's a practice we would try to avoid," he said.
Dawson said he wrote a letter to the Ohio Ethics Commission asking whether there was a problem with any of this, but he "never got an answer."
He said he has a policy of not hiring more than one member of a family to his department. Once he had four people from the same family in the department and worried about problems that could create.