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Commissioners will re-do budget hearings because of notification problem
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
The Trumbull County commissioners say they will have budget hearings a second time to correct their office’s failure to notify the news media of the hearings the first time, Nov. 21 and Nov. 22.
The hearings will take place Dec. 8 in the fifth-floor hearing room of the Trumbull County Administration Building on Courthouse Square. Starting time for the hearings has not been set.
All of the same 24 county departments will be invited back to discuss their budget proposals with the commissioners, but the hearings will be shortened from 30 minutes to 15, Commissioner Frank Fuda said.
The hearings don’t usually take 30 minutes, so they can be shorter than that, Fuda said.
“The prosecutor felt it was best we redo them. That way, everybody will be clear,” Fuda said.
The hearings typically are conducted a week or two later in the year. A clerk in the commissioners office told The Vindicator she failed to notify the news media and apologized, saying the reason may have been because she’s been busy training someone to replace her. She is retiring at year’s end.
All three commissioners said they noticed that only one television reporter attended the morning of the second day and thought it was surprising – since reporters from both local newspapers usually attend parts of the hearings.
The lone TV reporter who attended said she had been told by county employees to attend the budget hearing involving the sheriff’s office because of rumors that layoffs may be coming.
On Wednesday, Commissioner Dan Polivka contacted The Vindicator to say the hearings would take place again Dec. 8, but he didn’t answer when asked if the redo was recommended by the prosecutor’s office.
Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa, who is out of town, said by telephone that he agreed that having the hearings again was “the prudent thing,” adding, “Honestly, I didn’t know the press hadn’t been notified.”
He said he didn’t know what legal advice had been given on the subject.
Bill Danso, the assistant Trumbull County prosecutor who advises the commissioners, said he cannot comment on the legal advice he gives his clients, in this case the county commissioners.
The Vindicator was the only news outlet to report last week that the failure to notify the media was apparently a violation of the Ohio Open Meetings Act.
The act says public bodies must “take official action and conduct all deliberation upon official business in open meetings where the public may attend and observe.”
Public bodies also must provide notice to the public indicating when and where each meeting will take place.
Any formal action of a public body that did not take place in an open meeting or that resulted from deliberations in a meeting improperly closed to the public, or that was adopted at a meeting not properly noticed, is invalid, the act says.
The commissioners have posted audio recordings of the first set of hearings on their website at www.commissioners.co.trumbull.oh.us/comm_budget.html