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Will controversy hurt sales tax renewal?
Mahoning County commissioners and county Prosecutor Paul J. Gains want answers.
Why did the county board of elections fail to send them the ballot language of a half-percent sales tax for review?
Was it done purposely and by whom?
So the commissioners are having the county sheriff’s department conduct a criminal investigation to see what happened.
It turned out that Danielle O’Neill, the clerk responsible for sending letters to political entities with issues on Tuesday’s ballot, didn’t just pick out the county’s sales tax issue.
She forgot to send them to every entity with a tax issue on the ballot. The board has sent tax language to those entities as a courtesy for years.
Mistakes were made. But elections officials say nothing criminal was done.
No conspiracy, elections officials say. Just an oversight, they say.
The clerk will be suspended for five days. Thomas McCabe, the board director, will be suspended for three days for failing to properly supervise the clerk.
Yet the commissioners refuse to call off the investigation.
Investigators from the sheriff’s office requested the county board of elections provide documents related to the procedures in writing ballot issue language.
An investigator recently interviewed O’Neill.
That the investigation into potential criminal activity over this issue hasn’t stopped is angering board of elections members.
“The call for a criminal investigation is absolutely ridiculous,” said Mark Munroe, elections board vice chairman. “The suggestion of a grant conspiracy to sabotage the sales tax is ridiculous.”
Sheriff Randall Wellington said his department will continue its investigation, regardless of how long it takes.
The commissioners are showing no signs of asking Wellington to stop the investigation.
Commissioner David Ludt was at the board of elections office Thursday to learn what he could about the ballot problem.
The initial issue raised by commissioners and Gains was the ballot language for the half-percent sales tax.
The language states the sales tax would provide “additional general revenues.”
The commissioners and Gains say that language isn’t accurate. The tax proposal is for a continuous period. It’s been on the ballot before as a five-year renewal.
They also say the language misleads voters.
But the language came from a resolution written by the prosecutor’s office and approved by county commissioners.
If the elections board had sent the language, as it always does, to the county, the problem would have been resolved, Gains said.
That may not necessarily be so.
The Ohio secretary of state’s office says the elections board wrote proper ballot language for the sales tax issue.
On top of that the same thing happened in Columbiana County with its sales tax issue on the Tuesday ballot.
The secretary of state’s office sided with that county’s elections board on using “additional” revenue for that tax.
Despite what Mahoning County officials believe the language probably wouldn’t have been changed.
In an interesting twist, the vocal complaints by those blaming the board of elections for this problem have made the county sales tax issue a front-page story.
It was flying under the radar until the commissioners and Gains made it a big issue.
There are no guarantees the sales tax will pass Tuesday, but negative attention is not going to help.