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Trumbull elections board selects new deputy director
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Mark Alberini, chairman of the Trumbull County Board of Elections, said deciding between two current board employees, Ron Massullo and Andrea Renn, to become the board’s deputy director was “a very, very challenging, difficult decision.”
In the end, Massullo, of Poland, was approved 4-0, with Alberini saying the board of elections will continue “without missing a beat” with Massullo as deputy director.
But to ensure a smooth transition and to provide the elections board with the help it needs in the coming months to switch to a new voting system, the current deputy director, Alan Shaker, will work 32 hours per week as the board’s voting-machine administrator through May 31.
Massullo replaces Shaker, who announced his retirement as deputy director recently, effective Aug. 31. Shaker will earn $17.34 per hour starting Aug. 31. Board Director Stephanie Penrose and the deputy director each earn $58,237 annually.
Shaker and Massullo are Democrats. Penrose is a Republican. Both political parties must be represented among the top two positions.
Massullo, who has served as Trumbull elections specialist the last 21/2 years, has worked most of the last 30 years in Mahoning County, but says he will find a temporary home in Trumbull County immediately while looking for a permanent Trumbull County residence.
Before his job as elections specialist, he was an events promoter and worked from 2007 to 2010 as a regional liaison for the Ohio secretary of state’s office.
He worked 11 months for the Mahoning County Board of Elections, three years for the Mahoning County Treasurer’s office and eight years for the Mahoning County Engineer’s Office.
The 1974 Struthers High School graduate served as vice chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party from June 2014 to this past June and is now a Mahoning County Democratic Party Central Committee member, from which he will resign, Massullo said.
Renn, of Warren, a 1994 Warren G. Harding High School graduate, has been Trumbull elections board tabulation administrator since 2005.
The other candidates were Joseph Nay of Cortland, Lisa Hovance of Cortland, Lindy Lucas of Howland and Werner Lange of Newton Falls.
In other business, the board certified two of the three independent candidates for the Nov. 6 ballot – Sarah Fowler of Ashtabula, for 7th District Ohio Board of Education, and Marty Nosich for judge of the Trumbull County Eastern District Court in Brookfield. The candidacy of Marianne James of Niles for Ohio Board of Education was denied because she did not provide a sufficient number of valid petition signatures.
The board said 258 people had used absentee/early voting as of Monday morning to cast a vote in the TJX referendum in Lordstown. The results of the early-voting ballots will the first ones tallied after the polls close this evening. All voting today will take place at the Lordstown Administration Building.