Grand jury hears more evidence in Oakhill probe

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Special prosecutors probing potential conflicts of interest in the dispute over Mahoning County’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place have made their seventh known presentation to a county grand jury.

Special prosecutors Dennis P. Will and Paul M. Nick made their presentation of evidence Thursday to an extended session of the grand jury, whose four-month term was to have expired last week.

In a judgment entry signed Monday by all eight county common pleas judges, that grand jury’s term was extended until June 3, solely to hear Oakhill- related matters.

Will and Nick presented to the extended grand jury in the visiting-judge courtroom on the third floor.

All grand-jury proceedings are secret.

Will is the Lorain County prosecutor, and Nick is chief investigative counsel for the Ohio Ethics Commission. Will and Nick also made presentations to the grand jury here Feb. 11 and 25, March 18 and April 8, 15 and 29.

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 publicly 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, which was built in stages between 1910 and 1972.

The three met with Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., then president of the Cafaro Co., in Cafaro’s office the day the county bought Oakhill. The JFS had been housed in Cafaro’s Garland Plaza.