Subpoenas sent for nonexistent hearing

Photo

David Aey

The sheriff filed a formal protest with the elections board.

STAFF REPORT

YOUNGSTOWN — An attorney representing David P. Aey overstepped his authority by issuing subpoenas for a nonexistent hearing to be held today, Mahoning County election officials said.

“The board will only decide whether or not we’ll accept [Aey’s] petitions at the meeting,” said Robert J. Wasko, board chairman. “There is no hearing. I’m not going to entertain anything else on the subject” at the meeting.

The board was to meet today to determine if Aey, a former sheriff’s deputy, is eligible to run as a write-in candidate for county sheriff in the Nov. 4 election.

Robert J. Rohrbaugh II, Aey’s attorney, sent subpoenas to a number of people that “required” them to attend today’s elections board meeting and to provide “phone records of incoming and phone logs calls” from the past few weeks.

“This is one of the strangest things I’ve seen,” said Mark Mun- roe, the board’s vice chairman, about the subpoenas. “This is not a hearing and he doesn’t have the authority to issue subpoenas for our meeting.”

Board director Thomas McCabe said Aey and his campaign “crossed the line” with the subpoenas.

“He went off the deep end,” McCabe said of Aey. “It’s almost surreal ... The subpoenas carry no weight with the board. It’s the board’s meeting, not his.”

Among those issued subpoenas Monday were:

UDavid Skolnick, politics writer for The Vindicator. The subpoena for his phone records was later withdrawn, but the one to appear wasn’t. Skolnick’s last name on the subpoena was spelled “Skolnilk” and not actually served to him. Instead it was thrown at a security guard at the newspaper.

UMaj. James Lewandowski of the county sheriff’s department, who serves as the jail warden.

UChief Jack Gocala of the Youngstown State University police department.

UAn undetermined number of officials from Jefferson Community College in Steubenville. Aey says he received 66 college credit hours during the past six months, half of them from JCC.

Atty. David Marburger, who represents several Ohio newspapers including The Vindicator, said Rohrbaugh withdrew the subpoena for the phone records after Marburger spoke with him.

Marburger also questions the other attorney’s authority to issue subpoenas.

“I can’t find anything that would allow him to do this,” he said.

Rohrbaugh couldn’t be reached Monday to comment.

Sheriff Randall Wellington filed a protest with the elections board Monday about Aey’s eligibility to be a write-in candidate.

The Ohio Supreme Court threw Aey off the Democratic primary ballot, determining he didn’t have the required ranking-officer experience to be a sheriff candidate.

Aey filed last week as a write-in candidate, saying he has 66 college credit hours, which would satisfy the needed education requirement to seek the office.

To run for sheriff, a candidate needs to meet either an experience or education minimum requirement.

Aey hasn’t produced transcripts showing he has the education to be eligible.

Elections board members want to see Aey’s transcripts before they consider certifying him as a candidate.

Wellington contends in his protest that state law prohibits Aey from running for the same seat twice in the same election cycle.

That has been the case since 2003, but an Ohio secretary of state’s spokesman told The Vindicator last week an October 2007 Supreme Court decision changes that law in the office’s opinion.