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Port authority hires Moliterno executive director, decides against hiring second person
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
John Moliterno is no longer interim executive director of the Western Reserve Port Authority. The authority’s board made him the permanent director Wednesday.
The board made its decision after a three-hour, closed-door meeting.
The board interviewed Moliterno and the other finalist, Anthony Trevena, during the meeting before making its selection in open session.
The port authority conducted a national search for executive director and received eight resumes, but one dropped out before interviews were conducted.
Board member David Mosure, chairman of the committee that conducted the search, said the authority considered hiring Moliterno as executive director and Trevena for another job but decided against hiring Trevena.
The authority’s recently completed strategic plan calls for adding staff to the economic-development team as soon as possible.
The current economic-development staff includes Moliterno and Sarah Lown, senior economic-development manager. Lown worked on economic development alone for more than a year after her former boss, Rose Ann DeLeon, left as port authority director because of illness. DeLeon, who became executive director in 2009, died earlier this year.
Moliterno came on board as interim executive director in September.
Mosure said there will be more personnel decisions made in the coming weeks and months, but Moliterno will lead them, adding the decision the eight-member board made “is best for the Mahoning Valley.”
Mosure said Moliterno was selected because he “interviewed the best” of the candidates and “impressed us all the most.” He said Moliterno has the relationships and connections to local business and government that is needed for the job.
Moliterno is earning $88,000 annually now, but a new wage and contract will be worked out soon, Mosure said.
The process of selecting an executive director was complicated by concerns that have been raised over the years that the person who would lead the port authority’s economic-development arm would need to remain independent of local politics or power bases.
When word leaked out that one of the two finalists was Trevena, who had been a former chief of staff for John Boccieri when Boccieri was a congressman from 2008 to 2010, questions were raised about political influence.
Boccieri, a port authority board member, said by telephone Wednesday he didn’t participate in any of the meetings relating to candidates for executive director, not because he thought he had a conflict of interest relating to Trevena but because the meetings conflicted with “my military duties and my civilian job” as an airline pilot. He did not attend Wednesday’s meeting.
Another board member, David Detec, principal attorney with the Youngstown law firm of Manchester, Newman & Bennett, recused himself from part of Wednesday’s executive session while Moliterno was being interviewed, saying he was avoiding a possible conflict of interest because Moliterno is a client of his firm.
Moliterno, of Girard, is a partner in Postal Mail Sort of Youngstown and a former partner in Pegasus Printing Group. He was recently re-elected to Girard City Council, and he said he plans to keep that position.