Probe of Oakhill growing broader
A county commissioner says he has already given Oakhill documents to the Mahoning prosecutor.
YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County Commissioner John A. McNally IV said he will cooperate fully with a subpoena he received Thursday morning to produce for the county grand jury documents and correspondence related to the county’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place.
“It looks to me to be pretty much everything that I’ve already provided to the prosecutor’s office in the past year or year and a half, so we’ll go through it again and provide them whatever they need,” McNally said.
“I’ve got two or three boxes’ worth of documents related to Oakhill, and they can take a look at all those,” he added.
McNally said the subpoena was served on him by Deputy Gary W. Snyder of the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Department.
McNally is the second county official known to have been served with a subpoena to produce Oak- hill-related documents in the ethics probe, which began last fall.
County Treasurer Lisa A. Antonini confirmed Wednesday that she had received a similar grand jury subpoena to produce Oakhill-related documents and correspondence by late April.
County Commissioner Anthony T. Traficanti and county Administrator George J. Tablack said they have not received subpoenas.
The investigation is a joint effort of the Ohio Ethics Commission and the Mahoning County sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices and concerns possible ethics violations by public officials and employees and those who do business with them, said David Freel, commission executive director.
The probe concerns possible criminal violations of Ohio’s ethics law pertaining to conflict of interest, Freel said.
The prosecutor has discretion to present felony charges to the grand jury for possible indictment or to file misdemeanor charges in municipal or county courts, Freel said.
McNally was one of three top county officials who publicly opposed the county’s acquisition of Oakhill. The others were County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino and then-county treasurer John B. Reardon. They expressed concerns about what they said were undetermined costs associated with buying, operating and maintaining Oakhill — the 353,000-square-foot former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
By a 2-1 vote, with McNally dissenting, the county commissioners bought Oakhill in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the summer of 2006.
The Ohio Valley Mall Co., a subsidiary of the Cafaro Co., filed a taxpayers’ lawsuit that unsuccessfully sought to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill.
OVM is the former landlord for the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, which moved last summer from OVM’s Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side to Oakhill.
John B. Reardon, then county treasurer, testified in the trial of the taxpayer’s lawsuit that he, McNally and Sciortino met with Anthony Cafaro, president of the Cafaro Co., at Cafaro Co. headquarters within hours after the county bought Oakhill at the bankruptcy court hearing.
“If somebody wants to look into it further, I’ll cooperate and give them the documents that I have,” McNally said.
“I believe I took a stance that was necessary” concerning Oak-hill when the county was contemplating buying the former hospital, he said.
“We own the building now. We have staff in there. We’re moving forward to get it renovated,” McNally said. “We’re going to continue moving forward with the building, and I don’t have a problem with that right now.”
Traficanti said he wasn’t surprised subpoenas were being issued. “It was a very high-profile case. I was personally sued for millions of dollars during the whole Oakhill debacle,” he said, referring to the Cafaro suit. “My life was put on hold for over a year dealing with this.”