Sunday, February 24, 2008
The county’s purchase of a former hospital to house its offices is a
central issue in several campaigns.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN —The Cafaro name does not appear on the March 4 primary ballot for any Mahoning County office.
But don’t be misled by its absence.
On the local scene, it’s likely the most discussed name this primary season as county leaders who engaged in an intense battle over the Cafaros seek four years in office.
The Cafaro Co. squared off against Mahoning County to block moving government workers out of the Cafaro-owned Garland Plaza to the county’s recently acquired Oakhill Renaissance Place.
The dispute pitted the county’s top bosses against each other. The offices of the county commissioners, prosecutor, treasurer and auditor housed people who supported or opposed the Cafaro interests. Only the auditor is not on the ballot this year.
The divisions among county bosses became the backdrop for several maneuvers to block the county’s purchase of Oakhill.
They appeared in the trial of the Cafaro’s unsuccessful taxpayer lawsuit against the county, and they fill thick binders of paperwork. Some of the trial testimony paints a picture of some current and former county officials linked to the Cafaros.
And now, the latest chapter comes before the voters.
Although the county has settled its legal dispute with the Cafaro Co. over the purchase of Oakhill, the fallout from that quarrel lingers over some key county Democratic primary election contests.
“Public office is a sacred trust, and I feel that trust has been broken,” said Mary Lyden, who is challenging incumbent Commissioner John A. McNally IV in the primary. “The oath is to take care of all of the taxpayers,” Lyden said, adding that failure to do so is “dishonesty by omission.”
Lyden complained that McNally, who opposed the county’s acquisition of Oakhill, met behind the scenes with Anthony Cafaro, president of the Cafaro Co., to discuss the Oakhill project.
“He took all information that was supplied to him by a vested interest. He did not do due diligence on his own,” Lyden said of McNally. She was referring to adverse information Cafaro compiled about the costs of buying, renovating and operating Oakhill.
McNally emphatically disputed Lyden’s accusations of dishonesty, however.
“My opposition to the [Oak
hill] project, the questions I asked, are not because of my relationship with the landlord,” McNally said, adding that his objections were based on his own ideas.
McNally complained that he didn’t receive sufficient information from other county officials on the proposed purchase while it was under study and that county officials didn’t discuss it enough.
The Cafaro Co.’s subsidiary, Ohio Valley Mall Co., was the landlord for the county’s Department of Job and Family Services at Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side from 1988 to 2007.
The county bought Oakhill — the 353,184-square-foot former Forum Health Southside Medical Center — in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in July 2006 and relocated JFS and its 300 employees from Garland Plaza to Oakhill a year later.
OVM failed in its lawsuit to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill. OVM had also filed a breach-of-lease lawsuit alleging the county neglected its maintenance obligations at Garland Plaza.
In exchange for the county’s payment of a $913,590 settlement of the breach-of-lease lawsuit, OVM agreed to drop its appeal of its loss in the taxpayer suit.
The Oakhill purchase was a good idea, Lyden said. Oakhill has ample office space, parking and transportation accessibility, and the county wouldn’t have had the money to build a new building, she added.
“It is what it is. We own the building, and now we have to move forward,” McNally said. “I still don’t know if it was a good idea. My concern, I think, overall on that project, is going to be the long-term financial prognosis for that building.”
McNally is seeking a second four-year term as county commissioner.
He said he doesn’t think Oakhill will be a major campaign issue.
More significant, he said, is the stabilization of the county’s revenues and full reopening county jail facilities, which were achieved through the permanent renewal last May of the county’s half-percent sales tax.
The Oakhill issue also looms large in the other county commissioner’s race — the one that pits challenger Eric C. Ungaro against County Commissioner Anthony T. Traficanti.
“Nobody’s going to own me,” Ungaro said. “I’m taking this on with no cards stacked in my favor,” he said, adding that he would take a leave of absence from his teaching job if he’s elected.
Ungaro said he’s convinced that the county should own, not lease, the space that houses county agencies. “It’s a no-brainer that you had to get out of there,” he said of Garland Plaza. “Do you own a new building? Do you own [an existing] building? Those are things that could have been discussed,” he said.
He accused Traficanti, who took office in January 2005, of delaying action on the JFS issue, and being too confrontational with the Cafaro Co. Now that the county owns Oakhill, the county needs to consolidate its offices there and renovate the building, Ungaro said.
“We cleaned up 25 years of bad history,” said Traficanti, who also is seeking his second term as a commissioner. “I did justice for this community.”
The county commissioners were straddled with a bad lease with the Cafaros for Garland Plaza, and the settlement agreement was the only way out of the legal entanglement, Traficanti added.
After taking office, Traficanti said he, McNally and Commissioner David N. Ludt met twice with Anthony Cafaro in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate solutions for a deteriorating roof, mold and security problems at Garland.
In spring 2006, Oakhill became available in bankruptcy court, and Mahoning Valley Hospital announced it was leaving Oakhill.
Ungaro said it will be many years before county officials know whether the Oakhill acquisition was a good idea.
But Traficanti said he’s now convinced that it has been “absolutely 100 percent” a good idea. JFS employees are “exuberant about having a new home,” and they have expressed gratitude for offices with exterior windows and for a secure, well-lighted, fenced-in facility, Traficanti said.
He added that the county Veterans Service Commission will move to Oakhill in the summer, and that the former hospital is suitable for consolidating additional county agencies under one roof.
Traficanti said he has kept his initial campaign promises to improve working conditions for JFS employees or move them, stabilize county finances and reopen all jail facilities.
The Oakhill issue also spills over into the county treasurer’s race, where Atty. John Shultz is challenging incumbent Treasurer Lisa A. Antonini, who was appointed in March 2007 to replace John Reardon after he left to take a job in Columbus. Antonini was chief deputy treasurer before she replaced Reardon.
“My opponent’s interjection into the Oakhill situation, I think, is totally intolerable,” Shultz said, adding that he couldn’t understand why a county treasurer would become involved in that issue unless it was to benefit a “special interest.’’
In May 2006, Reardon had called the media’s attention to what he said was a $400,000 prior real estate tax obligation the county would inherit if it were to buy Oakhill.
Reardon testified under oath in the trial of the taxpayer lawsuit that he, County Auditor Michael Sciortino and McNally, all opponents of the Oakhill purchase, met with Anthony Cafaro to discuss the implications of the Oakhill acquisition within a few hours after the county’s purchase of Oakhill in bankruptcy court.
Shultz accused Antonini, who also is the county Democratic Party chairwoman, of having a potential conflict of interest. He said she was trying to please the Cafaro family, which had been major party campaign donors, while “abdicating her obligation to service the general good of the Mahoning County taxpayers.”
Antonini acknowleged in her testimony in the trial of the taxpayer lawsuit that her cellular phone records showed 28 calls made or received between her and Cafaro Co. headquarters between August 2006 and March 2007.
During the year before the trial, Antonini said Anthony Cafaro talked to her many times by telephone on matters pertaining to her role as party chairwoman, but she said she testified accurately that she never spoke to him about the Oakhill project.
After she became treasurer, however, she said John J. Cafaro, executive vice president of the Cafaro Co., inquired of her office about the commissioners’ decision to consolidate the county’s outstanding debt to finance Oakhill.
“I never did anything wrong. I didn’t have anything to hide,” Antonini said. The Cafaros have a right to call the county treasurer, she said.
“They’re taxpayers of Mahoning County, too,” she said, adding that they pay nearly $250,000 a year in real estate taxes in the county.
The Oakhill dispute also has a connection to the race for county prosecutor, where Paul J. Gains, who has been the prosecutor for 11 years, was the commissioners’ lead defense lawyer in the taxpayer lawsuit trial.
Gains is being challenged by Atty. Heidi Hanni. Although she said she grew up in the law — her father, Atty. Don L. Hanni Jr., is a prominent longtime criminal defense lawyer — she did not become a lawyer until 2002.
“If we had to hire outside counsel [for all defendants in the taxpayer’s suit], God knows what it would have cost us,” Gains said, referring to the county’s decision to defend the case primarily with his civil division staff attorneys.
“I haven’t even addressed it” in the campaign, Hanni said, adding that she didn’t oppose moving JFS from Garland Plaza to Oakhill.
milliken@vindy.com