43
Resident claims council members double-dipping
Quit double dipping, the plaintiff tells city council members.
YOUNGSTOWN — Two members of city council should be ordered to vacate either their council seats or their Mahoning County jobs, according to complaints filed by a city resident.
Terrance Esarco of East Midlothian Boulevard filed complaints Wednesday in the 7th District Court of Appeals against Jamael Tito Brown, 3rd Ward councilman, and Janet L. Tarpley, 6th Ward councilwoman.
In his complaints for a writ of mandamus, Esarco cited a state law he says bars city council members from holding any other public office or employment.
In addition to holding his council seat, Brown holds a $50,003-a-year job as director of operations in the county treasurer’s office.
In addition to her council duties, Tarpley earns $44,990 a year as parent project coordinator at the county’s juvenile justice center.
Council members earn $27,817 annually.
Esarco asked the appellate judges “to place this matter on the accelerated docket, as said dual salaries and benefits are being paid at relator’s and other taxpayers’ expense.”
Brown said he believes state law clearly allows him to hold both his city and county jobs simultaneously.
“I am a fiduciary employee, and I serve at the pleasure of the county treasurer; and, as an elected official, she has the right to hire fiduciary employees,” Brown said of his boss, Lisa A. Antonini. “I’m an elected official [as a councilman], and I’m selected for this position,” in the treasurer’s office, Brown added.
Tarpley said she has neither seen the complaint nor reviewed it with her lawyer, but she added that she has not done and will not do anything illegal.
“He’s gone to the [county] commissioners. He’s gone to the prosecutor. He’s gone everywhere, and no one’s giving him his satisfaction,’’ Brown said of Esarco.
County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains declined to comment on the matter, saying it is pending litigation before the court of appeals. If he were to offer an opinion, Gains said he’d need to research the matter. “It’s an interesting question,” he remarked.
In his complaints, Esarco said he got no response from city Law Director Iris Torres Guglucello when he brought this matter to her attention before Brown and Tarpley assumed their council seats in January.
Guglucello said she isn’t aware of any law that specifically prohibits a city council member from simultaneously holding an appointed county job, but she said the legal test is usually whether there would be conflict of interest between the two positions.
If there’s a conflict, there might be a problem in holding both jobs at the same time, she said. Guglucello said she wasn’t familiar with the details of the county jobs Brown and Tarpley hold, so she doesn’t know if there would be a conflict.