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Attorney for Trumbull County says sewer contractor may have committed fraud
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office may be asked to review what may be fraudulent action by a contractor carrying out two county sewer projects.
A Tuesday letter from Atty. Joseph Cavasinni of Cleveland, recently hired by the Trumbull County commissioners, says “it appears” that Marucci and Gaffney Excavating of Youngstown “may have manipulated” video testing of sewer lines “in a fraudulent fashion for the purposes of trying to show the installed work was in conformance to requirements of the contract documents, when, in fact, it clearly was not.”
The letter to Marucci and Gaffney’s lawyer Peter Welin of Columbus says the county suspects there are “numerous sections where the installed sanitary sewers are defective.” The letter says the county is “considering referring this matter to the county prosecutor.”
Welin, when reached by telephone Wednesday, said he is “not inclined to comment because there is an allegation that needs to be investigated.” He said Marucci and Gaffney “will continue to do a good job. They’re a quality contractor.”
The video testing in question was done on the Kinsman Township sewer project. The company also is working on the Squaw Creek Sewer Project in the Vienna Township area. Cavasinni also wrote a letter Monday regarding problems with that project.
Cavasinni’s letter states that the county’s engineering consultant, MS Consultants of Youngstown, says Marucci and Gaffney failed to submit videos of 10 sections of the Kinsman project in October 2014.
“On behalf of the county, I demand that these videos be produced immediately so they can be examined in order to ascertain what other sections may be defective,” Cavasinni’s letter says.
The county will now need the videos to be done again “in some or all of the installed sections once the missing 2014 videos are produced,” it says.
If defective sewers are found, “the county will hold Marucci and Gaffney responsible for all costs associated correction and removal of the defective work.”
A second letter tells Marucci and Gaffney about numerous damages resulting from its work on the Little Squaw Creek project in the Vienna Township area, such as damage to gas lines, improper road restoration on Warren-Sharon Road, monetary damages to the 717 Credit Union on Youngstown-Kingsville Road because of a gas-line incident, work not done on time, basement flooding, guy wires removed and other things.
Also Wednesday, the commissioners had a news conference to announce they will not impose a sales-tax increase for now.
Commissioner Frank Fuda said he hopes people will spend more money during the later stages of 2015 to generate more sales-tax revenue for county government “so we don’t have to cut services.”
Adrian Biviano, Trumbull County auditor, said he and the commissioners will just “watch the budget carefully” throughout the year.
Commissioner Dan Polivka said county officials will carry out an “additional review” of the county’s finances, and he later clarified that could come from a performance audit from the state, a citizens committee financial review or something else.
Biviano, however, said he’s not in favor of a performance audit because they cost money, and he doesn’t believe the benefits would be worth the cost.