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Attorney: South Range appointment in public 'just theater'
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By ROBERT CONNELLY
NORTH LIMA
The South Range Board of Education violated state law by appointing Amy White to its board, the attorney representing The Vindicator said Tuesday.
The board unanimously approved White’s nomination Monday night, as a gold and black metallic nameplate for her sat before the vacant seat on the board.
While the board met in executive session last week to discuss the replacement, “A public body may not take any formal action, such as voting or otherwise reaching a collective decision, in an executive session. Any formal action taken in an executive session is invalid,” states the Ohio Sunshine Laws.
Ironically, this is Sunshine Week in Ohio, and Attorney General Mike DeWine issued the 2015 edition of “Ohio Sunshine Laws: An Open Government Resource Manual” on Monday. It is available in .pdf form at Vindy.com.
“The whole circumstance sounds to me that there would be clear evidence that the decision was already made, and taking a formal vote before the public was just theater,” said Atty. David Marburger for the newspaper. The nameplate itself, he argued, is “just the clearest evidence. ... The most troubling part is what that represents. That represents that the decision was already made. ... It’s such persuasive evidence of that, no matter how the board tries to get out of it, no one will believe the board.”
In December, The Vindicator reported on how the Mill Creek MetroParks Board of Commissioners appointed Aaron Young as its new executive director and sent out a news release an hour before the public vote. After media coverage, Mill Creek rescinded that appointment and, in an open meeting later, appointed Young.
The attorney for South Range schools, John Britton, argued a different point. “Their consensus can develop as a result of an executive session between four board members,” Britton said.
There was a March 12 executive session “for the purpose of interviewing and considering the appointment” of filling the vacancy by Bruce Zinz’s resignation Feb. 16.
“We went into executive session immediately to interview the potential candidates and no action was taken that night as far as appointing, but within there we determined who we were going to appoint,” board President Ralph Wince recalled of that meeting.
There were five applicants — a sixth turned in an application past the deadline — and of those five, two were interviewed. One of the applicants not interviewed was resident Richard Ferenchak, who raised issue at Monday’s school board meeting with the board’s not following its own policy of interviewing every applicant.
Wince said that while the board didn’t follow its own policy — which he takes full responsibility for — it did not violate state law. “Legally, there is nothing that we did wrong,” he said. “We don’t have to undo what we did [Monday] night.”
Britton further explained that if a board doesn’t follow its policy, it changes it.
“You just changed your policy and you can do that. It’s discretionary,” is what Britton tells clients in similar situations.
But Marburger countered: “That sounds pretty bogus to me.”
Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains said there was no law broken by the school board’s going against its own bylaws. He did say that it could hurt the school politically in the future, but there was nothing illegal about it.
Overall, Marburger said of both situations, “If somebody challenges that [appointment], I think [board members are] going to have a tough time prevailing.”