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Request to hired lawyer denied
The treasurer and auditor allege the prosecutor has a conflict of interest.
YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County treasurer and auditor have asked the county prosecutor to seek an outside lawyer to represent them at county expense for county business, but the prosecutor won’t oblige them.
Treasurer Lisa A. Antonini and Auditor Michael V. Sciortino had letters hand-delivered to County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains on Monday, saying they think Gains cannot properly represent them anymore because of a conflict of interest linked to an Ohio Ethics Commission investigation concerning Oakhill Renaissance Place.
Although they asked Gains to petition the county common pleas judges to appoint outside counsel for them, Antonini and Sciortino lamented that their request would cost the county additional money.
While acting as her lawyer for county business matters, Gains launched what she termed “politically motivated investigation” of her, Antonini complained, referring to the ethics probe.
“You and your staff have held attorney-client conferences with me, soliciting my trust and confidence, but knowing that you were working to my legal detriment,” Sciortino wrote, also referring to the Oakhill probe.
Sciortino also complained that the Vorys Sater law firm of Cleveland, which serves as the county’s bond counsel, recently subpoenaed him for documents in a pending lawsuit by the county against state Auditor Mary Taylor concerning the county’s borrowing practices.
Antonini also complained that Gains circulated election petitions on behalf of her unsuccessful Democratic primary opponent, Atty. John Shultz, which were signed by members of the prosecutor’s civil division, the branch of the prosecutor’s office that provides legal advice to her office.
Gains said he would “absolutely not’’ ask the county commissioners or the common pleas judges to appoint outside counsel for the county treasurer and auditor. “I am the elected prosecutor. I represent them in their official capacities. If they engaged in behavior, and that’s an if, that is not legal, then that’s outside their duties,” Gains added.
“I don’t think either of them can name one time when they’ve been given bad advice by this office,” Gains said.
Antonini, Sciortino and County Commissioner John McNally acknowledged they have received subpoenas directing them to turn over Oakhill-related documents and correspondence to the county grand jury this month.
Antonini and Sciortino said they are paying their own lawyers to represent them in the Oakhill investigation.
Sciortino, McNally and Antonini’s predecessor, John Reardon, opposed the county’s purchase of Oakhill in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2006.
The county moved its Department of Job and Family Services from Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side into Oakhill last summer. Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
Ohio Valley Mall Co., a division of the Cafaro Co., which was JFS former landlord at Garland Plaza, filed a lawsuit that sought unsuccessfully to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill.
In the trial of that lawsuit, Reardon testified that he, Sciortino and McNally met with Anthony Cafaro, president of the Cafaro Co., at Cafaro headquarters within hours after the bankruptcy court hearing at which the county bought Oakhill.
OVM agreed to drop its appeal concerning that lawsuit in exchange for a $913,590 settlement of a breach-of-lease lawsuit it had filed against the county.
Gains acknowledged he sent a letter to the Ohio Ethics Commission in October, and the commission voted to open a probe of Oakhill in December. Gains said the commission will review the subpoenaed documents and correspondence.
If the commission advises him that grand jury action is appropriate, Gains said he’d likely ask the county common pleas judges to appoint a special prosecutor from outside Mahoning County to assess the evidence and independently determine whether the matter should be presented to the grand jury.
“That is the whole point of it — to maintain the independence and to keep the politics out of it,” Gains said of the role of the commission and the possible special prosecutor.
If the commission determines that only misdemeanor charges are appropriate, they’d be handled by the city prosecutor, Gains explained.