Fired deputy auditor to get severance payout

YOUNGSTOWN

Salary payments to Carol McFall stopped March 4 when she was fired from her job as Mahoning County’s chief deputy auditor, but, today, she will receive a payout of $8,465.

That consists of 139 hours of unused vacation time totaling $6,088; 16 hours of unused personal time totaling $701; nearly 27 hours of compensatory time totaling $1,176; and a $500 bonus for completing continuing professional education.

Those calculations are based on an hourly pay rate of $43.79, which applied when she earned $91,084 annually, just before former county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino raised her pay, effective Jan. 1, to her final salary of $92,500.

McFall, 55, of New Castle, Pa., is a certified public accountant who had been with the county since August 2005.

Ralph T. Meacham, who began work as interim county auditor March 3, said he fired McFall because she didn’t meet his standards of transparency in responding to a Vindicator public-records request concerning pay raises in the auditor’s office when she redacted bonus information from a personnel action request supplied to the newspaper.

Meacham, also a certified public accountant, began his full four-year term as auditor March 9 after unseating Sciortino in the November election.

The county commissioners had appointed Meacham as interim auditor after a three-judge panel suspended Sciortino on Feb. 23 based on allegations against Sciortino in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-conspiracy case.

On Monday, Meacham canceled all future payments of $21,703 in raises Sciortino had approved for 13 auditor’s office employees.

County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains has said he doesn’t believe any of the $1,576 in raise money already paid to McFall and three current employees can be recovered.

Raises that would have gone to nine other employees were never processed by the county’s payroll department.

In addition to the raises and bonuses for selected employees, 22 members of the auditor’s office staff, who belong to American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 2533, ratified a three-year union contract Jan. 9.

That contract, retroactive to July 2, 2014, provided for $1,200 cost-of-living supplements in January 2015 and January 2016 for full-time workers, followed by a 2.5 percent raise for all union workers in January 2017.

Union members earn between $33,858 and $64,749 a year.

The labor contract took effect automatically because the commissioners didn’t vote on it during the 30 days after Jan. 12, when it was submitted to them.

Read more about the situation in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.