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County grand jury hears more evidence on Oakhill purchase
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
A Mahoning County grand jury spent all day Thursday hearing evidence presented by special prosecutors probing potential conflicts of interest related to the county’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place.
No indictments, however, were announced after the grand jury session.
It was the fifth known presentation to the grand jury since February by special prosecutors Dennis P. Will, who is the Lorain County prosecutor, and Paul M. Nick, chief investigative counsel with the Ohio Ethics Commission.
The grand jury previously had heard from the special prosecutors on Feb. 11 and 25, March 18 and April 8.
Key figures who have appeared at previous grand jury sessions with the special prosecutors have included Anthony T. Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners; County Administrator George J. Tablack; and County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains. No such high-profile public figures were seen entering Thursday’s grand jury session.
As they left the grand jury session at about 4 p.m., Nick and Will declined to comment on whether Thursday’s session concluded their presentation of evidence to the grand jury or when they might return. All grand jury sessions are secret.
Nick and Will left with Linette Stratford, chief of the civil division of the Mahoning County prosecutor’s office, and one of her secretaries.
The prosecutors and those accompanying them wheeled banker’s boxes full of documents out of the visit ing judge courtroom in the county courthouse where the grand jury heard Thursday’s presentation.
The session differed from the special prosecutors’ earlier visits in that the grand jury spent the full day hearing their evidence and did not hear any other criminal cases presented by Mahoning County’s assistant prosecutors earlier in the day.
The grand jury met Wednesday to consider matters presented by local prosecutors.
Central to the Oakhill matter is the public opposition to the county’s purchase of Oakhill expressed by County Commissioner John A. McNally IV, the sole dissenting commissioner; County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, and then County Treasurer John B. Reardon.
McNally, Sciortino and Reardon said they opposed the purchase because of uncertain costs of buying, operating and maintaining the former hospital complex. Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
McNally, Sciortino and Reardon met with Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., then president of the Cafaro Co., in Cafaro’s office the day the county bought Oakhill in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2006.
Cafaro, the landlord for the county’s Department of Job and Family Services in Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side, unsuccessfully sued the county in an attempt to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill. The county moved JFS to Oakhill in 2007.
Stratford was one of the lawyers defending the county against the Cafaro lawsuit.