Cafaro interests traded free legal services for Oakhill opposition, prosecutors allege

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The Cafaro interests provided free legal services to Mahoning County officials to manufacture opposition to the purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place, special prosecutors alleged.

Those interests did this while they lined their pockets “with fat rent checks for an aging, decrepit building,” the special prosecutors added in a recently unsealed filing in the now-dismissed Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case.

The allegations are contained in the prosecutors’ response to the Cafaro defendants’ motion to dismiss the case.

Visiting Judge William H. Wolff Jr. dismissed the entire 73-count indictment on July 11 at the request of the prosecutors, who said the FBI’s refusal to provide tape recordings made it impossible for them to proceed.

The Mahoning County Common Pleas Court case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled.

Five people and three companies were charged with conspiring to impede the move of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services from Cafaro Co.-owned rented quarters at Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side to Oakhill.

The county bought Oakhill in 2006 and moved JFS there in July 2007.

During the first seven months of 2007, the county paid $37,464 in monthly rent for JFS’ 71,903-square-foot quarters in the 1960-vintage Garland Plaza.

Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which was built in stages between 1910 and 1972.

“The only reason someone might call it decrepit is because the county failed in its obligation to maintain the building as it agreed to do in its lease,” Joe Bell, director of corporate communications for the Cafaro Co., said of Garland.

“That’s the reason the county agreed to pay our company” $913,590 to settle a breach of lease suit pertaining to Garland, Bell said. JFS had been at Garland for 19 years.

Charged in the indictment were Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., former president of the Cafaro Co.; the Cafaro Co. and two of its affiliates; county Commissioner John A. McNally IV; county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino; former county Treasurer John B. Reardon and former county JFS Director John Zachariah.

The conspiracy charges in the indictment all alleged the provision of, or the receipt of, free legal services, or complicity thereto.

“The facts in this case illustrate the dangers inherent in a lack of transparency in government,” the special prosecutors opined in the unsealed document.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.