Auditor: Timing of probe suspect

By Peter H. Milliken | February 18, 2010 at 12:04a.m.

Grand-jury access allowed the Oakhill presentation to move ahead last week, a special prosecutor said.

Mahoning County Auditor Michael Sciortino

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County’s auditor says the timing of the special prosecutor’s presentation to a grand jury last week of evidence related to the county’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place is suspect.

Michael V. Sciortino, 39, of Austintown, is seeking re-election as auditor in the May 4 Democratic primary, for which the filing deadline is 4 p.m. today.

Republican Tracey Winbush, a former Youngstown school board member, plans to file nominating petitions today to run for county auditor.

Any other candidate wanting to challenge Sciortino in the primary would have to turn in only 50 signatures from registered Mahoning County Democratic voters by today’s deadline.

“I was highly suspicious of the timing of the whole proceeding,” Sciortino said earlier this week.

“In the midst of my campaign for re-election, the grand jury is hearing evidence on Oakhill, and they’ve been on board since ’08. Yes, I’m saying it’s highly suspicious,” Sciortino added.

Dennis P. Will, Lorain County prosecutor, and Paul M. Nick, chief investigative counsel for the Ohio Ethics Commission, are among four special prosecutors appointed by the Mahoning County common pleas judges in November 2008 at the request of Paul J. Gains, Mahoning County prosecutor.

Gains said the special prosecutors’ job is to probe potential criminal violations of Ohio’s ethics law related to conflict of interest.

Sciortino, who opposed the county’s Oakhill acquisition, said he has done nothing wrong in his activities on that issue.

“I’m completely confident in my position that I took,” he said. “I was acting in the best interests of the taxpayers, talking to all interested parties to garner my facts, and I have nothing to hide,” he added.

Will and Nick presented evidence to an extended session of the Mahoning County grand jury last Thursday, but no indictments have been announced.

Nick flatly denied Sciortino’s allegation. “That issue is not part of our consideration whatsoever,” Nick said of the primary filing deadline. “The timing is related to obtaining access to the grand jury,” he added. Nick declined to comment on details of the special prosecutors’ presentation to the grand jury.

Sciortino said the grand jury process has not, and will not, interfere with the operation of his office. “I have a very professional, competent staff. We’re doing our jobs, and we’re going to continue to put forth our initiatives,” he added.

The auditor’s office is now engaged in major projects, including the startup of a new regional broadband link among local governments, the conversion of the county’s payroll from the PeopleSoft to the Munis computer system, and a complete, once-every-six years, countywide real estate reappraisal.

“What I intend not to do is get caught up in this gossip game. What I do intend to do is my job as county auditor, and that’s what the voters put me here to do,” Sciortino said. “I’m here. We’re working. We have a lot going on.”

Regardless of the outcome of the grand jury process, Sciortino said he’ll stay in the re-election race.

“The special prosecutors have a job to do, and so do I. I’ll continue to do my job,” the auditor said.

Sciortino said there was nothing wrong with a meeting that included him and fellow Oakhill-acquisition opponents, county Commissioner John A. McNally IV; then county-treasurer John B. Reardon; and Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., then president of the Cafaro Co., in Cafaro’s office on the day the county bought the former hospital in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in July 2006.

The Cafaro Co., the former landlord for the county’s Department of Job and Family Services at Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side, filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill.

In July 2007, the county moved JFS to Oakhill, which is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.

Sciortino, McNally and Reardon opposed the county’s purchase of that building because of what they said were unknown costs of buying, operating and maintaining the 338,000-square-foot, five-story former hospital, which was built in stages between 1910 and 1972.

“We’re upwards of nearly $5 million in expenses at Oakhill right now,” for operations, maintenance and past debt since the county bought the building, Sciortino said.

Although he turned over Oakhill-related documents and correspondence to the grand jury in April 2008 in response to a subpoena, Sciortino said he has never spoken with Will, Nick or any other investigators about Oakhill.

milliken@vindy.com