Trumbull commissioner scolds hiring supervisors, fellow commissioners for unfair hiring practices

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Trumbull County Commissioner Frank Fuda reacted publicly this week to earlier criticism of the county’s hiring practices, calling out three department heads for allowing “commissioners” to dictate who gets hired to county jobs.

Fuda didn’t single out one commissioner as being responsible for applying too much influence, but he later identified Commissioner Dan Polivka as the target of his remarks. Polivka also is chairman of the Trumbull County Democratic Party.

Neither Polivka nor Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa reacted to Fuda’s comments at the meeting. But Polivka told The Vindicator later that it’s Fuda who makes up the largest number of hiring referrals.

Fuda first directed his comments to the county’s human-resources director, Jim Keating; the Job and Family Services director, John Gargano; and the building and vehicle-maintenance director, Al DeVengencie; saying he had spoken with all three of them for the past 18 months about giving everyone a fair chance at jobs.

“I thought eventually it would change, but they don’t,” Fuda said.

He receives a lot of job applications while he’s at the commissioners office because he’s at the office a lot, Fuda said. He turns them in to the secretary at human resources, but the applicant never hears anything back, he said.

“It appears if a commissioner gives you something, it’s top of the list. And they always score the best, and they get hired. This practice has to stop as far as I’m concerned,” Fuda said.

“I don’t know what you two think, but that’s what I think,” he said referring to Polivka and Cantalamessa who were both at the Wednesday board meeting.

“It’s not fair to those citizens who go to college, get their degree and come here for a job and can’t get it because it never gets to the people. It’s always in the file. It’s ridiculous,” Fuda said.

At one point, Fuda referred to a county resident who spoke at the previous week’s meeting, criticizing the county’s hiring practices, mentioning specifically the county engineer’s office.

Fuda said that man “wasn’t totally wrong” in his criticism.

“I’ve been talking to all three of you about this problem for a year and a half now, and it doesn’t go away. And I figure this is the only way to stop it. I hope it will stop now. We’ll start hiring people because they have the best ability for that job.”

When asked later about Fuda’s remarks and told Fuda was referring to him, Polivka said Fuda has “gotten more jobs than Monster.com.”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about. I can tell you this: A liar always gets found out. He can rant all he wants. He’s just trying to cover himself” because of criticism directed at him at the previous week’s meeting, Polivka said.

“I encourage you to see if I have anybody working for the county and check his record,” Polivka said of Fuda. “I let the department heads do the work.”

Keating said he suspects the controversy surrounds the hiring of entry-level custodians because that’s about the most entry-level job in the county, and it frequently leads to transfer to something better.

It’s the job that comes open the most often, and there have been several people hired into the job recently.

The human-resources department typically gives the commissioners several top candidates to pick from, and then the hiring is approved through a public vote of the commissioners.

“In my 23 years there, I would be hard-pressed to remember anyone I was ordered to hire,” Keating said. He thinks hiring is done fairly, he said.

DeVengencie said he follows the training he got years ago – he works with human resources, candidates are background checked and drug tested, and “we whittle it down to a number.”

Gargano could not be reached to comment.

Cantalamessa said he thinks Keating does “a great job” with hiring.

“For me, I’ve tried to distance myself as much as possible” from the hiring process, he said. “I can’t speak for the other two. Is there anything nefarious about it? I don’t think so.”

“If I had to worry about what the other commissioners are doing, I’d never get anything done,” Cantalamessa said. “I don’t see it. Have I suspected it? Maybe once or twice with both of them.”