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Trumbull Transit board decides against hiring attorney to defend concerns
By Ed Runyan
NILES
The board of Trumbull Transit, the county’s public transportation service, met to hire an attorney with expertise in transit issues Tuesday to help it address concerns being raised on multiple fronts – but decided to hold off.
One of the board’s concerns is that the Federal Transit Administration wants to meet with it in the coming days to find out if Trumbull Transit will soon have a permanent administrator.
Another concern is that the county commissioners have asked the county prosecutor’s office to ask the Ohio Attorney General’s office for a legal opinion on whether one of Trumbull Transit’s funding mechanisms is legal.
Trumbull Transit chairman Bob Faulkner said he wanted to hire Atty. Steve Diaz because, “We need some help.”
But Mark Hess, the interim transit administrator, said he and commissioners Frank Fuda and Mauro Cantalamessa are against hiring Diaz.
Hess, who was the permanent Trumbull Transit administrator for many years, said there’s no reason to have an attorney present for the meeting because the issues will be “technical,” not legal.
Hess said there’s a chance a new transit administrator will be hired very soon because a finalist has been found, and two of the three commissioners want to hire him.
Board member Marlin Palich expressed frustration that the county commissioners want another legal opinion on whether the transit system can legally use money from the county senior-services levy to run the transit system.
The commissioners penned a letter to county Prosecutor Dennis Watkins on Sept. 28 asking that it ask the Ohio Attorney General’s Office for an opinion on whether it is legal.
Palich said if a ruling indicates that about $425,000 per year in seniors-levy funding cannot be used for the transit system, it will be the end of the transit system.
The prosecutor’s office issued its own legal opinion May 15, saying it could find no case law directly addressing that issue.
But the county commissioners have given seniors levy funding to the transit service for a decade, and the Ohio Auditor’s office has apparently never had a problem with it.
As part of the campaign to get voter approval of the senior levy, proponents promised that rides for senior citizens would be $2 one way. Trumbull Transit also provides rides to other populations who are not senior citizens.