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Prosecutors revisit grand jury in probe of Oakhill purchase
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Oakhill Renaissance Place
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
Special prosecutors probing potential conflicts of interest concerning the dispute over Mahoning County’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place made their sixth known presentation to the county grand jury Thursday.
Earlier presentations by special prosecutors Dennis P. Will, Lorain County prosecutor, and Paul M. Nick, chief investigative counsel for the Ohio Ethics Commission, were Feb. 11 and 25, March 18 and April 8 and 15.
The grand jury produced a short list of routine local criminal indictments Thursday, but no Oakhill-related indictments have been announced.
Detective Gary Snyder, a Mahoning County deputy sheriff working with the special prosecutors, and two other men were seen wheeling a flatbed dolly loaded with banker’s boxes full of documents into the courthouse’s south entrance about 9:45 a.m. Thursday.
The special prosecutors remained in the courthouse after the grand jurors left in mid-afternoon.
The grand jury, whose regular four-month term was set to expire Thursday, has been extended indefinitely by order of Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court at the request of the special prosecutors.
Will and Nick said they wanted the extension “to allow for continuity in the presentation of evidence to one grand jury” and estimated that they needed no longer than an additional six weeks to present their case.
After this week, the new grand jury, which will convene for four months of weekly sessions beginning next Thursday, will hear routine local criminal matters, and the extended grand jury will hear only from the special prosecutors, said Judge Maureen A. Sweeney, who will become grand jury judge next week.
The county bought Oakhill in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2006 and moved its Department of Job and Family Services there the following year. Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
Central to the Oakhill matter is opposition to the purchase 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 complex.
The three met with Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., then president of the Cafaro Co., in Cafaro’s office the day the county bought Oakhill.
Cafaro, who was the landlord for JFS in Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side, unsuccessfully sued the county in an attempt to rescind the Oakhill purchase.