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Mahoning board expected to vote on terms of director contract
YOUNGSTOWN
The head of the Mahoning County Mental Health Board said he is seeking clarification on whether a board member who works parttime for one of board’s contract agencies can serve on the panel.
An opinion from the county prosecutor’s office says state law prohibits a member of the board from simultaneously serving as an employee of an agency that contracts or receives funding from the board.
The board member in question is Barbara Orton, who also served on the board’s selection committee that recommended Duane Piccirilli, head of Help Hotline Crisis Center, be hired to replace Ronald Marian, who is retiring at the end of this month.
Orton works part time at Mahoning Valley Dispute Resolution Services, which receives some board funding. She said, however, she doesn’t see any conflict of interest.
“I would think if there is a conflict, it would have been discussed before my appointment to the mental-health board by the Mahoning County Board of Commissioners,” she said.
Also, Orton said she sees no conflict of interest in helping select Piccirilli. Orton is a former Help Hotline Crisis Center board member.
Orton said she is a part-time mediator for Dispute Resolution working three hours a week. She said she believes she is paid via Youngstown block-grant funding and not with mental-health funds.
Daniel R. Yemma, mental-health board chairman, said, however, that upon receiving the prosecutor’s opinion, he has made a request for information from Dispute Resolution in an attempt to clarify the nature of any relationship between Orton and the agency and the nature of any relationship between Dispute Resolution, the mental-health board and Help Hotline.
The ultimate question becomes: Is her involvement with Dispute Resolution Services deemed to be such that she should not serve on the mental-health board, and “what is the effect upon any action[s] taken by the board with which she has been involved, such as the executive-director selection process,” said Yemma, who also is Mahoning County treasurer.
In the meantime, Yemma said he expects the board at its Thursday meeting to move forward by formally voting on the terms of Piccirilli’s contract the board’s ways and means and programs and planning committees recommended last week.
Among other things, the committees recommended Piccirilli be paid $112,000 a year. Marian is paid $138,169 a year.