Trumbull GOP candidate calls for engineer to step down
Staff report
WARREN
Patricia Paridon, Republican candidate for Trumbull County commissioner, is asking Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda to join with her in asking that Trumbull County Engineer Randy Smith relinquish his position as engineer while an ethics probe is conducted.
Fuda said he wouldn’t act alone to do such a thing because the commissioners act as a body, and Smith’s attorney has said Smith has done nothing wrong.
Paridon, who faces the winner of the Democratic primary matching Fuda against Lisha Pompili Baumiller, says Smith should step down to “show our growing oil and gas industry that all business will be without even a hint of impropriety.”
Investigators with the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation searched Smith’s offices on North River Road and the county’s Data Processing Department last week, seizing records and electronic media after obtaining a search warrant.
The investigation includes questions about whether Smith had a conflict of interest because of money he received personally for a gas and oil lease with BP America while supervising road-use and maintenance agreements with BP and other gas and oil companies.
Another issue in the investigation is whether Smith violated ethics laws by hiring Don Barzak as his director of government affairs and grants coordinator despite owning rental properties with him.