Trumbull County engineer has a lot of explaining to do

Six months ago, we suggested that Trumbull County Engineer David DeChristofaro’s abuse of power should be a lesson for all government officeholders. Now, it is increasingly clear that DeChristofaro should have been his own first student. While some Mahoning Valley residents — perhaps many — may wonder why the Ohio Ethics Commission and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office are spending time investigating the engineer’s illegal use of county resources, equipment and labor for political purposes, we would simply remind them of the case of former Mahoning County Commissioner Frank Lordi.

Lordi was convicted in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court for theft in office while a commissioner. He was found guilty of using two county building inspectors to pick up political petitions while on county time. The value of the time they spent doing that work was estimated at $200. Yes, a mere $200, but Lordi was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was released on shock parole in January 2002 after serving eight months. He spent several years filing appeals to “clear my name,” but was unsuccessful.

And so, when DeChristofaro’s secretary testified last week that she did campaign-related tasks at work on county office equipment over the past year, our reaction certainly wasn’t “so what?”

Jennifer Bindas gave her testimony at a deposition at the county engineer’s office. The deposition is part of the civil lawsuit filed by the Chandra Law Firm of Cleveland on behalf of Niles resident Vincent Davila Sr. that seeks to have DeChristofaro removed from office for misconduct.

Bindas presented a variety of documents, many of them stored on a computer flash drive, she used at the county engineer’s office, including spreadsheets to track payments DeChristofaro received from campaign supporters for tickets to a Columbus Day fund-raising dinner and tickets to a DeChristofaro golf outing fund raiser. There also were mailings that Bindas said she assembled and sometimes designed for the engineer and David Rouan, director of administration. She said spent a week or more on campaign related tasks.

For those Valley residents who continue to believe that the allegations of misconduct on the part of the elected officials are much ado about nothing, consider this:

Lawsuit settlements

Last year, the county engineer settled lawsuits filed against him by three employees he laid off on his first day in office, Jan. 5, 2009. Amanda Latell, Matt Dohy and Nicole Klingeman were let go not because there wasn’t enough work for them to do, as DeChristofaro had claimed, but because of politics. Latell is the daughter-in-law of former Engineer John Latell and Dohy is the son-in-law. The former engineer had supported DeChristofaro’s opponent in the primary election, Randy Smith, who was his chief deputy. Klingeman supported Smith in the 2008 Democratic primary,

Although the hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements were largely paid by CORSA, the County Risk Sharing Authority, the county’s insurance pool, the fact of the matter is that taxpayer dollars are used to pay Trumbull County’s membership in the pool. As we said last year, it would be foolish to believe there will be no additional cost to the public treasury.

There is a mentality that still unfortunately prevails in this region that officeholders and other government officials can use their positions for personal gain. That must change.

The investigation into DeChristofaro’s behavior is not only justified, it is demanded. He has a lot of explaining to do.