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Boccieri resigns from port authority after appointment to Ohio House
COLUMBUS
Newly appointed state Rep. John Boccieri resigned from the Western Reserve Port Authority board of directors because a state agency determined he couldn’t hold both positions.
Shortly before the Ohio House confirmed him as a state representative Wednesday, Boccieri, a Poland Democrat, submitted his resignation letter to Ron Klingle, WRPA board chairman.
The letter was effective at 1 p.m., about three-plus hours before the state House approved Boccieri’s appointment to the 59th District.
“I have been advised by the [Joint Legislative Ethics Committee’s] Ohio Legislative Inspector General that I cannot continue my service with the port authority once I am appointed as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives due to the Ohio Constitution’s prohibition on holding two public offices simultaneously,” he wrote in the resignation letter.
Mahoning County commissioners appointed Boccieri – an Air Force Reserve pilot who also flies for United Airlines – to the port authority board, based in Vienna, late last year. Commissioners will have to appoint a replacement.
Based on recommendations from the Mahoning County Democratic Party, a five-member Ohio House Democratic Caucus screening committee and House Democratic leadership, the full 33-member House Democratic Caucus voted Wednesday to have Boccieri fill the empty seat.
Boccieri replaced Ronald V. Gerberry, an Austintown Democrat, who resigned as the 59th District representative Aug. 21, the same day he was convicted of unlawful compensation of a public official.
Boccieri will serve the rest of Gerberry’s term, which ends Dec. 31, 2016. He will run for a full two-year term next year.
Boccieri is a former congressman and state legislator who served in the Ohio House from 2001 to 2006. He then spent two years in the state Senate before being elected to the 16th Congressional District in 2008. He lost a re-election bid to Congress in 2010.