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BCI agents interviewed Mahoning County auditor employees about their former boss
YOUNGSTOWN
Michael V. Sciortino might no longer be Mahoning County’s auditor, but he still is having an impact on county government.
On Thursday, Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents interviewed auditor’s office employees for the first time as part of the state’s probe into the suspended auditor’s involvement in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-conspiracy case.
Meanwhile, county commissioners weighed in on raises and bonuses discovered this week and repeated that Sciortino legally could give them out if his budget would allow for that action. They said, however, he did not indicate that was part of his plan during last year’s budget hearings.
The staff interviews were confirmed by Dan Tierney, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, which oversees BCI.
The agents, one of them based in downtown Youngstown, interviewed employees and met with the new auditor, Ralph T. Meacham, and Paul J. Gains, county prosecutor.
The agents, who arrived about 9:30 a.m., did not present a search warrant and did not take any boxes of auditor’s office documents with them.
Meacham said the mood of his staff appeared to be mixed.
“People are always apprehensive of change. ... People in the office are very supportive of me today, and people in the office want to move on and restore some of the luster into the auditor’s office. We want to restore the confidence, the credibility and the integrity of the auditor’s office,” Meacham said.
Meacham began work Tuesday as acting auditor and will begin his full four-year term as auditor Monday.
The AG and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office are prosecuting the case against Sciortino, Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his former capacity as county commissioner — both are Democrats — and attorney Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for county prosecutor.
The three defendants are accused of 83 criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, tampering with records, perjury and money laundering. The three have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A panel of three retired judges suspended Sciortino on Feb. 23 based on allegations against him in the case.
The last time BCI agents were at the auditor’s office was Sept. 23, 2014. Also that day, they were at the county’s information-technologies department — overseen by the auditor’s office — as well as the county’s computer-network facility at Oakhill and Sciortino’s Austintown home.
BCI agents took 676 computer disks and computers that contained emails from current and former county officials.
When asked if the interviews with office employees had any connection to Sciortino’s giving the raises and bonuses to selected workers before his suspension, Tierney said: “That’s a separate matter.”
Meacham, a Republican, fired Carol McFall, longtime chief deputy auditor, on Wednesday after he said she provided him with a redacted document that showed pay raises, but not bonuses paid.
McFall called The Vindicator on Thursday afternoon to say she would be making a statement to reporters in front of the Mahoning County Courthouse at 10 a.m. today.
If there is to be an investigation into the pay raises and bonuses issue, Tierney said that would be done by Gains.
“Anything that I would do would be coordinated with the attorney general’s office,” Gains said. He declined to comment further on a potential investigation.
A May 14, 2014, indictment accuses Sciortino, McNally and Yavorcik of illegally trying to impede or stop the move of the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services from the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza to Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
Sciortino is being paid about $3,182 while suspended. The auditor job pays $89,109 annually.
Sciortino never told the commissioners during his budget hearing last fall he intended to give pay raises and bonuses to selected employees in his office, said Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the commissioners, during Thursday’s commissioners’ meeting.
“It is disturbing, particularly when you didn’t know that this was going to happen,” he said of the raises and bonuses.
“It’s up to the individual officeholder. This was done, not by the county commissioners,” Traficanti added. State law permits Sciortino to grant pay increases to his staff.
“Of course, the timing is suspect. It was ugly the way that it happened, and now we have to deal with the fallout. But, as long as it was done within his budget, then I see it being something legal,” Traficanti said.
“I don’t believe that this was done as a malice thing or an illegal thing,” Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti said of the compensation increases Sciortino granted.
Sciortino could not be reached for comment.
The auditor’s office’s 2015 general-fund budget is $1,009,346, with an additional $1,240,374 for data processing. This year’s combined budget for the county general fund and criminal justice fund totals $58.3 million.
The general fund, the county’s main operating fund, pays for the central operations of county government.