Grand jury gets facts on Oakhill purchase

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

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

The special prosecutors, Dennis P. Will and Paul M. Nick, presented evidence in a nearly all-day session Thursday to the grand jury. The jury’s four-month term has been extended to June 3.

Thomas Anastos, one of the Cleveland lawyers who represented the Cafaro Co., former landlord of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, during the company’s unsuccessful civil lawsuit to rescind the county’s purchase of Oakhill, sat outside the grand-jury session Thursday morning. The county moved JFS to Oakhill in 2007.

No Oakhill-related indictments have been announced.

Atty. David Betras, Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman and a frequent media commentator on legal issues, said that, in his opinion, the grand jury will be forced to choose between indicting on felony-level criminal charges or declining to indict at all.

No misdemeanor indictments could be issued because, he said, Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations for them has expired for Oakhill purchase- related events that occurred in 2006 and 2007.

Ohio’s statute of limitations for felony charges is six years.

Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.