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Auditor fires chief deputy for incomplete disclosure
vindicator investigation fallout
YOUNGSTOWN
On his second day in office, Mahoning County Auditor Ralph T. Meacham fired his chief deputy auditor for failing to fully disclose to him compensation increases.
Those pay raises and bonuses were selectively bestowed on certain employees in the auditor’s office by now-suspended Auditor Michael V. Sciortino.
Meacham said he fired Carol McFall on Wednesday afternoon for failing to disclose $28,110 in Sciortino-approved bonuses paid to 14 employees of his office.
That amount was in addition to $21,703 in raises Sciortino approved in his final days in office for an overlapping group of 13 employees.
The combined total of the raises and bonuses was $49,813.
Some of the raises were to take effect Feb. 23, the day Sciortino was suspended by a panel of three retired judges because of allegations against Sciortino in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case.
The county commissioners appointed Meacham as acting auditor until the beginning of his four-year term as auditor Monday. Meacham unseated Sciortino in the November election.
“She didn’t meet my standards of disclosure and transparency,” Meacham said of McFall. “She was my key deputy here. ... She didn’t meet my expectations.”
“I had no plans for changing the staff when I got here, and, actually, Carol McFall was very supportive of me as I came into office and in the last two days,” Meacham said, adding that he had no one “waiting in the wings” to replace McFall.
“I would like to cast a wide net to get the most-qualified person” to serve as chief deputy auditor, preferably a certified public accountant, he said.
McFall said Wednesday night she has contacted two lawyers concerning her dismissal, but conceded that it would be difficult for her to win reinstatement because the chief deputy serves at the auditor’s pleasure.
Her absence “won’t set the county back because the rest of the staff is very qualified,” he said. “I will pull them together, and together, we’ll get through this. We have no choice,” he added.
McFall, a certified public accountant, who served at the pleasure of the elected auditor and earned $92,500 annually, had been with the county since August 2005.
Meacham said in a Wednesday afternoon news conference he had asked McFall to supply him with personnel action request forms signed by Sciortino this year and authorizing pay increases for auditor’s office employees.
He said he asked McFall to compile the forms in response to a Vindicator public-records request.
McFall produced the records of the pay raises given to the 13 employees, most of them ranging from 1 percent to 3 percent. The amounts of the annual raises ranged from $449 to $7,070.
Meacham said, however, Thomas Lyden, who was recently promoted from payroll manager to payroll director, informed him Wednesday morning that 14 nonunion employees received one-time bonuses, which Sciortino approved Feb. 11. The bonuses ranged from $1,250 to $2,730.
McFall acknowledged that, in addition to the raises, bonuses were paid, but she hadn’t informed Meacham of that fact.
“She intentionally omitted it because she didn’t think it was relevant or specifically requested,” Meacham said of the bonus information not initially provided to him by McFall.
“My policy will be ‘Don’t make an assumption. If someone asks you for something, let them decide the relevance.’ I’m not going to run this place and hide stuff. The [information about] bonuses should be out there,” Meacham said.
“I had nothing to do with those raises,” McFall said, adding that she wasn’t asked for her opinion on granting them. “I was on vacation when all of that stuff came down,” she added.
“His name was on it, not mine,” McFall said, referring to Sciortino and his decision to award the compensation increases.
Sciortino could not be reached to comment.
McFall said Meacham asked her about raises, but didn’t ask her about bonuses.
“Our policy has always been: We give what is asked for, nothing more,” McFall said of the auditor’s office. The Vindicator requested information about raises, but the request did not mention bonuses.
“I’m 55 years old. I have worked my entire life. I’ve only received promotions, recommendations, awards and commendations until I came to Mahoning County,” McFall said.
She said she received the president’s award at Giant Eagle, where she was a wholesale accounting controller for the company’s warehouses, she said.
Sciortino had the authority to grant the bonuses, which were paid Feb. 20, so they can’t be rescinded, Meacham said.
Paul J. Gains, county prosecutor, said, however, payments of the nine raises not yet processed by the payroll department have been halted until the investigation of them is completed by the auditor’s and prosecutor’s offices.
Gains said the county has no authority to recover money already dispensed by the payroll department.
Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti acknowledged the commissioners urged against awarding pay increases in last fall’s budget hearings.
She said, however, the recently approved American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2533 labor contract for auditor’s office workers is one of many county labor contracts commissioners have allowed to take effect without a vote in a public meeting.
“The ORC gives us that right,” she said, referring to the Ohio Revised Code and denying that the commissioners were trying to conceal anything by not taking a vote on Local 2533’s contract.
That 22-member local’s contract contains two $1,200 cost-of-living supplements, one awarded in January, and the other forthcoming in January 2016, to be followed by a 2.5 percent pay increase in January 2017.
The agreement took effect automatically 30 days after its Jan. 12 submission to the commissioners because the commissioners did not act on it.
“It was within his budget,” she said of the contract Sciortino had negotiated with his union workers.