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Lots of interest, no clarity on Oakhill
‘I still believe the stance I took was proper,’ Commissioner McNally says.
YOUNGSTOWN — The day after special prosecutors presented evidence to the county grand jury related to Mahoning County’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place, Commissioner John A. McNally IV said he did nothing wrong when he opposed the acquisition.
“I still believe the stance I took was proper. I still believe the reasons why I opposed it were proper. ... I have no idea what’s going to happen from here on out,” he said Friday.
About the presentation to the grand jury, McNally said: “I don’t have any reaction. I’m not really up to speed on what’s going on.”
Special prosecutors Dennis P. Will, Lorain County prosecutor, and Paul M. Nick, chief investigative counsel for the Ohio Ethics Commission, began presenting evidence during an extended grand-jury session Thursday. No indictments related to Oakhill have been announced, and Will and Nick declined to say when they’d return to present more evidence.
In response to a subpoena, McNally said he turned over all his Oakhill-related documents and correspondence to the grand jury in April 2008, but he declined to discuss specifics of what he provided. McNally said he has not spoken to Will, Nick or any other investigators about Oakhill.
As a member of the county building commission, which oversees Oakhill renovations and improvements, McNally said he has strived to control Oakhill’s heating costs by halting a plan to install a new $3 million heating system there.
Also reacting to the grand-jury presentation was the Cafaro Co., which had been the landlord for the county’s Department of Job and Family Services at Garland Plaza from 1988 until the commissioners moved JFS to Oakhill in 2007. That company filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to rescind the county’s Oakhill purchase.
“I don’t know that it has a whole lot to do with anybody at this company at the moment,” Joe Bell, Cafaro’s director of corporate communications, said of the grand-jury presentation.
Because grand-jury proceedings are secret, he added: “We don’t know what’s being said or who’s being targeted in this investigation.”
Bell said it’s notable that Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains proclaims the independence of the special prosecutors, but that Linette Stratford, chief of the civil division in Gains’ office, was with the special prosecutors Thursday outside the grand-jury room.
“It seems obvious he’s pursuing an agenda here,” Bell said of Gains, noting that Gains requested appointment of the special prosecutors.
“I can categorically deny that there is any agenda,” Gains said, adding that he sent Oakhill-related information to the ethics commission, and that commission then voted to launch the investigation. “It’s an ethics-commission investigation, not a Mahoning County prosecutor’s investigation,” Gains said.
Gains referred questions about Stratford’s presence to Will, who could not be reached to comment Friday.
The county has had to replace part of Oakhill’s roof and some of its air-conditioning equipment. This substantiates then-company president Anthony M. Cafaro Sr.’s contention, when the county was contemplating buying the building, that Oakhill would cost the county more than the commissioners anticipated, Bell said.
Bell also said nobody should read anything into the fact that the retirement of Cafaro and his brother, John J. Cafaro, company vice president, at the end of 2009 was announced with only a few days’ notice.
The elder Cafaros had been planning their departure from the company’s day-to-day operations and had been grooming Anthony’s sons, William A. and Anthony Jr., to take over as co-presidents, far in advance of their retirement, Bell said.
The former president of an anti-corruption advocacy organization said he is pleased that the special prosecutors have begun presenting their evidence.
“I’m encouraged to learn that the process is proceeding. ... It’s essential to the integrity of local government to address these kinds of problems as forcefully as possible,” said James Callen, who was president of the Citizens League of Greater Youngstown, a watchdog organization that has been dormant for several years.
When the county’s common-pleas judges appointed the special prosecutors in November 2008 at Gains’ request, Gains said their probe concerned possible criminal violations of the state’s ethics law related to conflict of interest.
The county bought Oakhill, which is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, after the nonprofit Southside Community Development Corp., which owned the building, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation bankruptcy May 3, 2006. The county commissioners voted 2-1 to purchase the former hospital, with McNally dissenting.
County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino and then-county-treasurer John B. Reardon joined McNally in opposing the county’s purchase, citing concerns about undetermined costs of buying, operating and maintaining the complex.
On the very day U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kay Woods approved the county’s Oakhill purchase in July 2006, McNally, Sciortino and Reardon immediately met with Anthony M. Cafaro Sr. in Cafaro’s office, Reardon testified in the July 2007 trial of the company’s lawsuit.
McNally said Friday that he saw nothing wrong with that meeting with Cafaro but declined to elaborate.
“The fact that this process was undertaken, that it was pursued seriously, is encouraging,” Callen said of the investigation and presentation to the grand jury.
“We’ve had a sorry history for decades in this community of political corruption, and it’s really degraded our quality of life,” he said, adding that corruption damages the community’s reputation and discourages businesses from locating here.
“It costs us jobs. It costs us money,” Callen said.
In the past, “Where our public offices are located, where we go to do public business, has been determined by special interests, instead of what’s in the best interests of the entire community,” said Callen, who filed an unsuccessful taxpayers’ lawsuit to block JFS’ move from downtown to Garland Plaza in 1988.
milliken@vindy.com