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Court: Campbell can’t fire employee
By jeanne starmack
campbell
A city water-plant operator has won a temporary restraining order to keep the city from firing him.
Donald Jackson, son of 4th Ward council member and mayoral candidate Lew Jackson, was granted the order Thursday.
There is a hearing set in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court at 10:30 a.m. July 27. It will be before Magistrate Timothy Welsh in Judge R. Scott Krichbaum’s court.
Jackson was hired Oct. 18, 2010, as a provisional employee to fill the civil-service position of plant operator.
He was appointed by then-mayor George Krinos. His father was city administrator and head of the water department at the time, but said Thursday he had nothing to do with his son’s hiring.
“The mayor does all the hiring,” he said, adding that his son knows Krinos.
Because there was no civil- service eligibility list from which to fill the position, a provisional employee could be hired, said then-council president William VanSuch.
VanSuch is now mayor and is named in Jackson’s court case along with the city. He said Friday he would not comment on the case because he has not yet seen the court documents.
In a letter to Donald Jackson when he was hired, Krinos indicated that Jackson still had to take a civil- service test.
Jackson participated in a civil-service exam that was given March 21, according to his complaint.
The complaint indicates that on June 27, the Campbell Civil Service Commission sent a letter to the city recommending Jackson be terminated because he failed the test for plant operator.
Jackson is saying the city cannot use the test as a basis for firing him because it wasn’t given according to rules in the city’s charter.
The professional examiner who prepares and grades the test also must administer it, Jackson asserts, but Richard Groucutt, the examiner, lives in Florida and sent it to the city. It was administered by civil-service commission member Tony Matash, the complaint states.
The union that represents water-plant workers filed a grievance against the city in May over the fact that Groucutt did not administer the test.
Jackson says in his complaint that he can be terminated only for unsatisfactory job performance, and that he has “performed with satisfactory results.”