Officials to meet, discuss funding

Election-law mandates require more funding, the board says.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County Board of Elections officials will meet shortly with the county commissioners, administrator and auditor to discuss the payment of more than $450,000 owed to its voting machine vendor.
The county owed $601,915 to Election Systems & amp; Software for 312 additional voting machines in September 2004 as well as maintenance agreements.
The elections board sent about $74,000 to ES & amp;S last week for its 2005 maintenance agreement payment and is mailing a check to the Omaha-based company this week for $77,000 for this year's maintenance bill, said Joyce Kale-Pesta, Mahoning elections deputy director, at Wednesday's elections board meeting.
County Administrator George Tablack said the commissioners are reviewing the ES & amp;S documents, and "we want to pay promptly."
Possible litigation
Eric A. Anderson, an ES & amp;S attorney, sent a June 26 letter to Thomas McCabe, county elections board director, stating if the money owed is not paid by Friday, the company "was suspending all further performance" for the county.
Anderson wrote that without the payment, "ES & amp;S will have no choice but to pursue other means to resolve this matter which may include litigation." A majority of the money is almost two years delinquent.
But Amanda Brown, an ES & amp;S spokeswoman, said Wednesday that the company is working with Mahoning County to resolve the issue, is making progress, expects to receive the money it is owed and is not holding the county to the Friday deadline.
As for ES & amp;S suspending its services, Kale-Pesta quipped that she thought the company did that before the May 2 primary. ES & amp;S did a poor job of training county poll workers in preparation for the primary, she said.
ES & amp;S took too long to install a state-required paper trail add-on to the voting machines, elections officials say. The lack of training from the company resulted in poll workers in about 32 precincts having trouble closing machines on election night, resulting in lengthy delays in compiling results, they say.
Funding shortfall
At the county meeting, elections board officials also will request about $400,000 to cover a variety of needs, most of them state-required, Kale-Pesta said. The board's budget was cut by about $500,000 this year, she said.
About $192,000 of that $400,000 request would be used to buy secure voting machine storage containers from Security Storage Transport Systems of Westerville. Federal law requires storage containers for voting machines effective with this year's general election.
A state law requires elections boards to mail postcards to registered voters with information about the Nov. 7 election, including the proper voting location for their registration and a new mandate that proper identification is needed to vote. That will cost the elections board about $55,000, Kale-Pesta said.
The board also needs $129,480 to pay poll workers for the November election and for two pre-election training sessions for those workers, Kale-Pesta said. The board's budget doesn't include any money for those items, she said.
"I asked [election officials] to develop an agenda for our meeting; we'll review it, and then we'll meet," Tablack said. "If they are short on money for poll workers, we'll look at their expenditures."
Also Wednesday, the elections board certified the independent candidacy of Jamael Tito Brown of Youngstown, who is running for county commissioner.
Brown needed 869 valid signatures to qualify for the race. He submitted petitions with 1,181 signatures, with 887 deemed valid by the elections board. The others were disqualified for a variety of reasons.
skolnick@vindy.com