Board votes out trustee who is deployed

Associated Press

TOLEDO

A county prosecutor has threatened legal action after two township trustees voted out another board member on deployment with the Ohio National Guard and replaced him with an outgoing trustee.

The two Spencer Township board members near Toledo called an emergency meeting on New Year’s Eve to vacate the seat of the deployed trustee who in September was sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

One of the board members voting was D. Hilarion Smith who had lost his seat in November’s election.

Smith and the other trustee, Michael Hood, then voted to appoint Smith to the vacated seat.

Both Smith and Hood said they vacated the seat of Shawn Valentine because he had been absent from the township for 90 consecutive days.

State law dictates when a township office can be considered vacant, but it also says the law can’t “apply to a township officer while in the active military service of the United States,” The Blade reported.

Lucas County assistant prosecutor John Borell said at the board’s meeting this past week that the county would take legal action to remove Smith from office if he does not resign.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Borell said.

Smith told The Associated Press on Friday he would not resign. He said the trustee’s seat was vacated because Valentine did not tell the board about his deployment or say how long he would be gone.

“If he had done that, this argument would not exist,” Smith said.

Valentine said in a statement to The Blade that he informed both the board and county prosecutor’s office about his deployment.

“At the September 2015 Board of Trustees meeting, it was stated in the minutes that I would deploy, including a comment by trustee Hood that everyone should ‘pray for me during my deployment,’” Valentine said.

Hood said the township, which is just west of Toledo, deserves to have three active trustees.

“We’ve been put in this position, and we have to act,” he said. “It’s not a matter of us being unfair or being unreasonable or anything else. The government has to continue to function.”

He also questioned Valentine’s whereabouts.

“How do we know he’s in the military,” Hood said. “I don’t know that he’s in the military. Everyone is assuming he’s in the military, everyone is saying he’s in the military. But there is no proof to support that at all.”