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Betras again calls on chamber for records
By Karl Henkel
YOUNGSTOWN
Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman David Betras remains disappointed with what he calls a “less-than-adequate response” from the Youngstown/ Warren Regional Chamber in response to his May 2 records request.
“The time has come for Mr. [Tom] Humphries and the Chamber of Commerce Board to fully disclose how they are using the taxpayer dollars they receive,” Betras wrote in an email distributed to the media. “If they do not want to comply with the law, then they should immediately terminate all contracts for services they currently have with public entities.
“I am disappointed that the Chamber of Commerce and its CEO have not come close to fully complying with my public-records request as mandated by Ohio law.”
Betras says he will confer with lawyers representing the party before deciding whether “to force compliance with our lawful request for data.”
Betras sought information, according to a statute in the Ohio Revised Code, that asked about the chamber and its involvement with any federal contracts.
Humphries, chamber president and CEO, told The Vindicator on Tuesday the chamber does not enter into contracts with the federal government but does receive dollars in the form of grants and allocations.
“He asked for contracts,” Humphries said. “We don’t have contracts with the federal government.”
Betras says he plans on filing another records request that clarifies what he’s looking for, and he won’t stop until he gets the information he is seeking because he said Humphries has injected politics into a business organization.
Humphries publicly supported Senate Bill 5, which curbs some collective- bargaining rights for public employees.
“He wants to belt-tighten, and he doesn’t want his own belt tightened,” Betras told The Vindicator on Wednesday.
The chamber Tuesday released agreements made with five local entities — Mahoning and Trumbull counties, the Mahoning and Trumbull Community Improvement corporations and the Western Reserve Port Authority — and documents showing how it used dollars received from those entities.
The chamber received about $400,000 in federal, state and local taxpayer dollars in 2009, the latest available year in which tax documents are publicly available. That figure represented about 15 percent of the chamber’s $2.7 million revenue stream in 2009.
Those dollars, when reported to the IRS on Form 990 (a form used by nonprofits), combine federal, state and local taxpayer money entered onto a line titled “contract fees,” which in 2009 totaled $1,244,424.