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Youngstown cuts water workers’ pay after fraud case
YOUNGSTOWN
The city disciplined 25 water employees found guilty of falsifying their credentials by reducing the salaries of 24 of them and putting suspension letters in all of their personnel files.
However, the suspensions are only on paper – to be put in their personnel files Monday – and not actual suspensions of five days. The suspensions are the first part of a process to punish them further if they violate any other city policies or work rules, including termination, said Mayor John A. McNally and Law Director Martin Hume.
“They made a serious mistake in judgment,” McNally said Friday. “But they’ve been very good employees with extensive years of service to the city.”
The 25 workers will be required to complete a course in business ethics.
If the city moved to fire any of the workers because of the falsification, “we don’t believe it would be held up in arbitration [for union employees] or by the civil service commission” for the three management employees, McNally said.
“We believe they’re paying substantial penalties,” McNally said. “They’ve accepted responsibility, they lack prior disciplinary issues, we seriously doubt future violations will occur. Discipline is to correct conduct. All of these folks learned a lesson.”
The 25 workers, along with Steve Procick, a former employee who has since quit, were found guilty Feb. 27 in Franklin County Municipal Court of falsifying contact hours for claiming they completed coursework to receive Ohio Environmental Protection Agency Class 2 water certifications when they took only part of the training classes.
“It’s a lesson for other city employees that if you have classes you have to go to, you have to go to the classes,” McNally said.
Also, two other employees charged with the misdemeanors died before their cases could be heard in court.
The employees received additional money – $2,142 to $2,246 a year – from the city for having the classification.
The salary reductions are retroactive to Monday, with 20 of the 21 union employees seeing pay reductions between $2.04 and $2.15 an hour, a two-step job classification drop. That’s an annual pay cut of $4,243 to $4,472. Most of the unionized employees now will make between $21.95 and $24.41 an hour.
One-percent pay raises went into effect May 1 for the unionized workers.
The three management employees found guilty had their job classification lowered by one step and lost 91 cents an hour, or $1,893 annually. They are Joseph A. Dunlap, superintendent of construction; and Joe Guerrieri III and Lou Zorella, both construction foremen. Dunlap now will make $31.12 an hour, and the other two will make $25.76 an hour.
The difference between the union workers and management employees is without the licenses, those in the union had to drop two steps on the salary scale while it’s only a one-step drop under civil service rules for those in management, Hume said.
None of the 25 employees has indicated he will appeal the city administration’s decision, McNally said.
When asked why the management employees weren’t punished more than the union workers, McNally said, “I don’t look at this as an issue of supervisors and labor employees. They’re all workers. The classes weren’t organized by the supervisors.”
The letters of discipline were given to the workers Thursday.
The letters stating the employees were given paid suspensions of five days will remain in their personnel files for two years, McNally said.
“Five days’ suspension on paper is sufficient,” particularly because the demotions mean a significant loss of pay, he said.
Under a plea agreement worked out with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, all 25 people found guilty agreed to pay $2,000 in restitution to the city, plus a $1,000 fine and a $250 court administrative fee. Some workers agreed to perform 50 hours of community service, while others opted to pay an additional $1,000 fine instead.
They’ll have their Class 2 certification suspended for a year, and as long as they follow the terms of an agreement they signed in court, the convictions will be dismissed. They can seek the certification after a year, and if they receive it, they’ll have their salaries restored to the level they were before the reduction.
With some receiving that extra pay going back 31/2 years, The Vindicator estimates the total amount of fraudulent additional pay to be between $150,000 and $175,000. But the deals the 26 worked out required them to make a total of $52,000 in restitution – $2,000 each – to the city.
The agreements also stipulate that they will tell the truth about the case if subpoenaed by a court in any related cases.
The agreements specifically state workers “must cooperate with authorities in the prosecution of Anthony Vigorito.”
Vigorito, who taught the certification course on behalf of the EPA, let the workers leave early from the training, and they were not aware it was an issue, Charles Dunlap, the attorney for 25 of the 26 workers who pleaded guilty, said in court.
Vigorito, the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District’s plant operations manager, has trained water employees in other parts of the area on behalf of the EPA.