The investigation that led to criminal charges filed against 26 Youngstown water employees isn’t over
YOUNGSTOWN
Though nearly all of the Youngstown Water Department employees accused of falsifying their credentials will plead guilty Monday, the criminal investigation isn’t closed.
Twenty-six city water department employees were charged in September 2016 with a misdemeanor count each of falsifying contact hours. Two of the 26 have since died.
Atty. Charles Dunlap, who represents 23 of the remaining 24 workers, said all but one of his clients will take the plea deals Monday in Franklin County Municipal Court.
As part of the deal, the employees have agreed to make restitution to the city for the extra pay they received for the certification, Dunlap said.
The Vindicator estimates that amount to be between $150,000 and $175,000.
The employees also will pay fines, do community service and lose their Class 2 water certification for a year, Dunlap said.
After a year, the convictions will be dismissed, he said.
The employees will be eligible after that to obtain their Class 2 certification.
Dan Tierney, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, whose Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Environmental Unit spearheaded the probe, said, “We consider this an ongoing criminal matter. Certainly, additional charges [against others] is something the office hasn’t ruled out.”
Tierney declined Thursday to discuss the plea agreements with the Youngstown employees, saying the office doesn’t talk about deals until after they’re finalized.
The Youngstown employees were charged by BCI’s Environmental Unit after the state Environmental Protection Agency discovered the problem.
Water department employees attended only part of a training class – or in some cases, didn’t attend at all – for state Class 2 water distribution certification in 2013 and 2014.
The workers don’t need the certification to do their jobs but receive extra pay for having it, said city Law Director Martin Hume.
Workers receive $1.03 to $1.08 more an hour for the certification, according to the water union contract.
That amounts to $2,142 to $2,246 in additional annual salary per employee.
The city will consider potential disciplinary action after the cases are resolved in court, Hume said.
“Anybody who commits misconduct should be held accountable for their behavior,” he said. “We’ll take into account the extent they’re punished [by the court] and what the attorney general’s office does.”
The city doesn’t plan to conduct its own investigation and will rely on the AG’s work, Hume said.
“No specific disciplinary decisions have been made, but I expect they would be done quickly” after Monday’s hearings, he said. “A decision on firing a person hasn’t been made.”
A city source doesn’t expect any of the employees to lose their jobs over this.
Hume said: “Anytime there’s large-scale misconduct, it should be a concern to the community.” But “we don’t believe there’s been any threat to water safety.”
Dunlap said Anthony Vigorito, who teaches the certification course, let the workers leave early from the training, and they were not aware it was an issue.
“They relied totally on Mr. Vigorito,” he said.
Martin White, Vigorito’s attorney, declined to comment Thursday to The Vindicator on behalf of himself and his client.
Vigorito, the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District’s plant operations manager, has trained water department employees in other parts of the Mahoning Valley.
The newspaper requested that the EPA provide that information and if Vigorito is still training water employees, but an EPA spokeswoman didn’t respond Thursday.
Dunlap called the AG investigation “selective prosecution,” saying there likely are other communities with water department employees who didn’t receive the full training.
“The Ohio EPA has not gone after any other [community’s] water employees,” Dunlap said.
The attorney said his clients were “caught by surprise” by the criminal charges, and “the state realizes there was no intention” to defraud anyone.
Tierney declined to say if Vigorito was the subject of the ongoing criminal investigation.
“I can’t comment on specific uncharged persons,” he said.
Dunlap said his clients had the opportunity to take the training class online for a couple of hours and take a test or to attend the in-person class.
He acknowledged the training from Vigorito is supposed to last eight hours and that in some cases it lasted about four hours. But Dunlap said his clients relied on Vigorito as their instructor to know how long the training was to be.
According to documents from the Ohio EPA, employees can receive a class 2 water distribution certificate after logging 36 months of work experience and passing a written exam.
Workers are expected to have experience in areas such as daily water plant management, laboratory work or industrial wastewater management.
Tierney declined to comment when asked why the employees weren’t charged with theft in office, except to say the falsification charge is specifically spelled out in state statute.
Tierney also wouldn’t comment on why the cases aren’t being prosecuted in Mahoning County as the supposed training was in Youngstown.
But he said, “In general, if it is connected to the Ohio EPA, it can go to Franklin County. Mahoning County could have been a venue.”