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Denial of ex-YSU official’s jobless benefits upheld
YOUNGSTOWN
A Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge has upheld the denial of unemployment compensation to a fired Youngstown State University payroll specialist who is now under criminal indictment in the university’s payroll scandal.
Judge R. Scott Krichbaum upheld the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Board of Review’s decision to deny unemployment compensation to Ivan Maldonado, 42, of Euclid Boulevard.
After a hearing, the commission’s hearing examiner found that Maldonado was fired July 6, 2009, for just cause and therefore not entitled to unemployment compensation, the judge noted.
“The review commission’s factual determinations are supported by competent, credible evidence,” Judge Krichbaum ruled.
Maldonado said a reporter’s telephone call Friday was the first notice he got concerning Judge Krichbaum’s decision and that he wasn’t sure if he would appeal it.
The university fired Maldonado amid accusations that his job performance was unsatisfactory and that he threatened another university employee.
Maldonado, who had been a 20-year university employee, is a former president of YSU’s Association of Classified Employees, a 400-member labor union.
Judge Krichbaum’s judgment entry cites telephone calls in which Maldonado is alleged to have made various threats in conversations with three female university employees.
In one case, Maldonado allegedly told a woman that her circulating a letter of agreement with the university’s human-resources director regarding another university employee would be “bad for her health.”
In that case, Municipal Judge Robert Douglas acquitted Maldonado of a misdemeanor menacing charge.
“The threat was not physical harm,” so it didn’t meet a necessary element of the charge, Judge Douglas ruled. Maldonado’s alleged comment was in the venue of union culture and the stress of union litigation, Judge Douglas added.
“I never threatened anybody,” Maldonado said Friday.
In the criminal payroll-scandal case, which is still pending in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, Maldonado is charged with 10 counts of theft, two counts each of falsification and theft in office and one count each of tampering with records and grand theft.
In that case, another defendant, Ron Granger, 46, of Shannon Road, Girard, former university payroll manager, recently resigned from the university, pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution as needed.
Judge James C. Evans sentenced Granger to a year’s probation and a 90-day suspended jail term and fined him $750, with half of the fine suspended.
“This is just a political vendetta from the university” administration and board of trustees, Maldonado said of the criminal indictment against him.
Maldonado said the university’s leadership is upset with him because it doesn’t like the ACE contract, which included an enrollment bonus.
University spokesman Ron Cole did not address the criminal charges but said of Judge Krichbaum’s ruling in the unemployment compensation matter: “We believe this ruling speaks for itself.”