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McFall defends document redactions, calls firing political
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
milliken@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
McFall Response
Video
Carol McFall, recently fired chief deputy Mahoning County auditor, explains her position in altering public records requested by The Vindicator.
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Carol McFall, the recently fired Mahoning County chief deputy auditor, said she has “a clear conscience” and doesn’t believe she did anything wrong regarding fulfillment of The Vindicator’s public-records request for pay-raise information concerning auditor’s office employees.
The new auditor, Ralph T. Meacham, however, said again Friday he fired her because she didn’t meet his expectations of transparency and added he has no regrets about terminating her employment.
Meacham took office Tuesday after a three-judge panel suspended Michael V. Sciortino on Feb. 23 because of allegations against Sciortino in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-conspiracy case.
“I have always exhibited fairness and transparency. I am the collateral damage of ‘politics as usual,’ while being told by the new auditor that it would be anything but,” McFall said Friday in a news conference in the courthouse rotunda.
Saying she had been “persecuted in the press,” McFall spoke two days after Meacham fired her.
“I’m anything but ‘politics as usual.’ I’m probably the least political person ever elected to office in Mahoning County,” said Meacham, a political newcomer, who unseated Sciortino in the November election.
“This was not a political move. This was a management move,” he said of his decision to fire McFall.
McFall is a certified public accountant serving at the auditor’s pleasure. She had been with the county since 2005. She said she was “the driving force” behind the county’s “award-winning financial reporting” and favorable bond ratings.
The Vindicator requested this week the Personnel Action Request forms pertaining to any pay increases granted to auditor’s office employees since Jan. 1.
McFall admitted she deleted bonuses paid to nonunion employees from the last page of one of the PARS forms that contained pay-raise information and created a new front page without the original Feb. 12 date stamp for that three-page document.
“Per our office public-record policy, I redacted the documents to provide The Vindicator with the information that they requested and nothing more,” McFall said.
“I did not tamper with any original documents, as they are all on file in the payroll department,” McFall added.
“What she should have provided you was the three-page document that is file-stamped Feb. 12 and on record in the payroll department,” Prosecutor Paul J. Gains told a reporter. “She wasn’t within her rights to alter that.”
“She violated the Public Records Act,” Gains explained. “However, you received the correct document within an extremely reasonable time period [the following day from Meacham], so any violation of the Public Records Act was purged.
“The whole spirit and the intent of the law is to provide accurate public records,” Gains added.
“I know he said I did not meet his expectations, but I don’t know what his expectations were,” McFall said of Meacham.
Meacham, however, said The Vindicator was entitled to unaltered, authentic copies of the documents it specifically requested.
“You absolutely are entitled, and I expect unaltered documents to be handed to you,” Meacham told a reporter. “We’re not going to change official documents. That’s not the way we do business,” he added during a news conference in his office immediately after McFall’s.
“That is all public information that anybody is allowed to see” in unaltered form, except for deletion of home addresses, telephone and Social Security numbers and dates of birth, Anthony Traficanti, chairman of the county commissioners, said of the documents The Vindicator requested.
“Her actions in changing those official records are not proper. ... I was counting on her, and, frankly, she let me down,” Meacham said of McFall.
“I would not stand for that personally, and that would be something the prosecutor should look at harshly,” Traficanti said of unauthorized public document alterations.
“If there are redactions, each redaction must be accompanied by a supporting explanation, including citations to legal authority,” according to the written public-records policy of the Sciortino administration. The Vindicator received no such explanations or citations explaining McFall’s redactions.
“The Public Records Act is to be interpreted liberally in favor of disclosure. That means, where the decision whether to disclose a record is a close call, a public office should disclose it,” according to a 2004 Ohio Attorney General’s opinion.
“The whole thing boils down to a matter of trust and a great discrepancy between what I view as adequate and full disclosure and what Ms. McFall thought was an adequate and full disclosure,” Meacham said.
“I don’t see how you glaze over $28,000 in bonuses and not think that’s important, so I had to have a parting of the way,” Meacham said of his decision to fire McFall.
During his news conference, Meacham disclosed that Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents took with them a county desktop computer used by McFall when they left after a five-hour visit to the auditor’s office to interview employees Thursday.
Meacham said he and Gains consented to the agents’ departure with the computer, even though the agents did not present a search warrant.
“I’m not at odds with BCI. I want this mess cleaned up as quickly as possible,” Meacham said.
McFall again minimized her role in handling the compensation increases.
“My participation in the raises and bonuses issued by Michael V. Sciortino did not involve opinion, counsel or discussion,” said McFall, who said she was on vacation or taking other days off from Feb. 13-25, though the PAR form is file-stamped Feb. 12.
McFall said, however, she advised Sciortino at least three times not to grant raises to certain unionized employees that were not prescribed by the union contract.
The leadership of the union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2533, has said the raises Sciortino selectively gave to three union members violated the union contract.
“I believe it would be prudent on our part to allow the prosecutor to let us know and to guide us as to whether or not there was something illegal involved with the pay increases, and, if that is the case, the commissioners may need to look at rolling back those increases,” Traficanti said.
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 is the county’s main operating fund, and it pays for the central operations of county government.
The commissioners urged against awarding pay increases in last fall’s budget hearings, and Sciortino did not announce his intention to bestow any pay increases or bonuses on selected employees in his office during his budget hearing.