Dispute centers on drug houses
The former AG enhanced the program, a campaign spokesman says.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Marc Dann, the Democratic attorney general nominee, said a former attorney general seeking the post in the Nov. 7 election stopped a successful drug house shutdown program because of politics.
But Mark Weaver, campaign spokesman for Betty Montgomery, who served as attorney general from 1995 to 2002 and is the Republican nominee for the post this year, said Dann is mistaken. Montgomery, of Perrysburg, was elected state auditor in 2002.
If elected, Dann said he would restart and expand "Operation Crackdown," a program created by Lee Fisher, a Democrat, when he served as attorney general from 1991 to 1994.
The program had the attorney general use Ohio's nuisance abatement law to obtain court orders allowing it to board up known drug houses for up to a year. More than 160 drug houses were closed under the program, said Dann, a state senator from Liberty.
After being closed, most of the houses were either sold by landlords to drug-free families or community groups or were rehabilitated by the owner in exchange for having the injunction removed, Dann said.
When Montgomery took office in 1995 after defeating Fisher, she shut down the program, Dann said.
"We can't think of an explanation why Betty Montgomery ended this program except that it was created by Lee Fisher," he said.
Talking back
But Dann has the facts wrong, Weaver said. Montgomery renamed the program "Project Phoenix," and changed and expanded it, Weaver said. Besides drug houses, Montgomery included shutting down prostitution houses, he said.
"Operation Crackdown" provided state attorneys and resources to close the drug houses.
Montgomery used money from that program for "Project Phoenix," which trained lawyers in communities and counties statewide how to obtain court orders to close the drug and prostitution houses, Weaver said.
"It's not an expensive project, so we gave the locals the tools and training to do this themselves," he said. "Not ever being a prosecutor, this is probably news to" Dann.
Dann said he's never heard of "Project Phoenix," and burdening local governments with this work doesn't provide much assistance.
skolnick@vindy.com