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2/14/1996 by Bob Fitrakis
Recently, a white suburban woman who refused a lawful request to sign a traffic ticket became a cause celebre when she threw a fit about being groped by the police. Obviously she's never exercised her First Amendment rights at a Klan rally where groping is the order of the day. Her story is news precisely because it is so unlikely. But what about the more common and constant victims of police abuse like Rashad Grayson, his parents and little sister, who are just a few of many African-American citizens currently suing the Columbus police for abuse.
On August 15, 1993 at nine in the evening, the 13-year-old Rashad was admittedly in front of his house playing with fake nunchakus, a harmless plastic toy with foam-rubber covering. One of Columbus' newest and finest police officers, Samuel Feldman, was out to make perhaps his "first arrest." According to Feldman's deposition on file in Franklin County's Common Pleas Court, he had just finished his probationary "coaching" period. He had already been suspended for 10 days during that probationary period for an "unreported use of force" violation.
Now Feldman was on his own and he knew a criminal when he saw one. Feldman decided to arrest Rashad for "disorderly conduct." Feldman, who admits under oath to having played with real nunchakus himself while a teenager, found Rashad to be "recklessly engaged in some type of turbulent behavior." The white Feldman, "considered Rashad a suspicious person" because he was swinging his toy nunchakus in a "proficient manner." He also assumed that there might already be an unseen "possible victim." Officer Feldman explained his theory of probable cause: the black youth "could have used the nunchakus on this person" who didn't exist.
"Bad boys, bad boys, whatchya gonna do when they come for your toy nunchakus?" Rashad did nothing but comply with the officer's deranged prejudices, but his parents made the mistake of questioning Officer Feldman's actions and attempting to videotape the arrest. By the time it was over, Rashad's mother, who was videotaping, was tackled, his sister was Maced, and his father, Samuel Grayson, was beaten with a police baton. The "suspicious" Rashad was quickly forgotten as up to 30 police officers and a helicopter cordoned off the area and his family was dragged off to jail. The police later returned and arrested Rashad for "disorderly conduct."
Rashad was acquitted of this charge and the prosecutor's office refused to bring charges against his parents. This is a far more common scenario in Columbus, but not as sensational as a black cop arresting a white, middle-class woman.
We live increasingly in a police state as politicians whip up irrational and emotional fears of "bad boys" with black faces. We're convinced we need 100,000 more cops on the street even though per-capita violent crime has declined since the early '70s and is no higher than it was in the early 1930s. The prison industrial complex is involved in promoting a new, dehumanized, all-powerful, all-consuming enemy. And it is disproportionately minorities and the poor that are the victims of overzealous police tactics. A few years ago, a survey showed that two-thirds of Americans didn't think a police officer should have to have a search warrant to enter the home of "a suspected drug dealer."
If police officers want to be respected, they ought to respect our Constitution and our fundamental human rights. They ought to be required to continue their education, particularly in liberal arts. A decent Social Problems class might help offset their authoritarian mindset that has been documented in study after study. Police, whether they like it or not, are the foot soldiers defending American liberties. But now, with the Cold War over, there appears to be an "enemies gap." With no Soviets to hate, we've turned a lot of that savage aggression inward towards our own citizens. The real lesson of Waco is the eerie similarity between the bomber pilot in Vietnam who said, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it," and the militarist in the law-and-order establishment who argued that they had to kill the kids in order to save them from Koresh.
This helps to explain state Attorney General Betty Montgomery's new "air force." You may have seen the blurb a few weeks ago about Betty copping three 1970s-vintage military copters for the War on Drugs, specifically marijuana, the demon weed. There's never been a more stupid, misguided and unwinnable war than the one against pot. And if the cops took my Social Problems course, they would learn that most addiction and drug abuse is legally prescribed or purchased at the liquor store. If Jesus had rolled one up after the Last Supper, sucked it into his lungs and passed it around to his disciples and proclaimed: "This is the breath of my life, this do in remembrance of me," those copters would be out searching for stills instead of hemp stalks. And Betty Boop would be pledging a zero-tolerance policy against alcohol and soliciting campaign contributions at Three-Reefer Power Luncheons.
Dr. Robert Fitrakis is an associate professor at Columbus State Community College.
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2/16/1996 by Bob Fitrakis
It's two days before the New Hampshire primary, and Bob Dole looks politically dead. Despite a poll or two that still shows him ahead of Pat Buchanan by a few percentage points, even the staunchest necrophile can't repress the urge to hold old Bob down and drive a mercy stake through his heart.
As an old axiom goes: When there's no more room in hell, Bob Dole shall walk the Earth. The man's obsessed. Twenty straight years of imbibing that juiced-up presidential-wannabe adrenaline and spewing the pollsters' spin has left an ugly corpse.
Both Pat Buchanan and Steve Forbes cry, "Let the politically dead bury the dead." Buchanan, make no mistake, sounds like the direct linear descent of that old evangelical Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan. Yeah, I know, there are echoes of Huey "The Kingfish" Long, the assassinated former governor of Louisiana, tossed in for Southern consumption. But Buchanan will score well in New Hampshire because he has resurrected that old Bryan plea: "Do not crucify the American people on a cross of gold." He represents 1890s populism in its purest form, which is infinitely preferable to the 1880s Social Darwinist rhetoric of Newt Gingrich.
As a former platform spokesperson for Governor Jerry Brown in 1992, I recognize and cheerfully encourage Buchanan's economic railings against Dole as "Mr. NAFTA," "Mr. GATT" and "Mr. Mexico Bailout." And I'm fearful of his social policies that take us back to the pre-Scopes Monkey Trial era of prejudice and bigotry. Many of Pat's followers are homophobes, believing that sex between consenting adults of the same gender is an abomination. But so's eating pork, according to the Old Testament. I'd have more respect for these people if they gave up gay-bashing and chained themselves instead to the doors of Bob Evans restaurants. And my pot-bellied pig Iggy feels the same way. I've waited my entire adult life for a progressive major party candidate to take on the Fortune 500 and the new robber barons. What do I get? The social reactionary Pat "The Born-Again Populist" Buchanan.
So the Buchanan mob chases Bob Dole around New Hampshire with torches and pitchforks, repeatedly jabbing the senator on his weak economic left side. Meanwhile, Steve Forbes levels media blast after media blast on Dole's capitulation to the Christian Coalition and its Shiite social agenda.
Last Friday, at a "God and Country" rally sponsored by the Christian Coalition in New Hampshire, Buchanan stole the show. He gave Ôem that old-time religion. Our own deficit hawk and political nemesis of mine, John Kasich, bombed, so to speak. One-note Johnny hammered away at balancing the budget, yet clearly was not filled with the spirit as he spoke woodenly of the "Judeo-Christian tradition." Kasich found it hard to keep a straight face while preaching that the Holy Spirit descended onto the founding fathers in Philadelphia in 1787 and wrote the Constitution as a "Christian document." Kind of hard to imagine the Holy Spirit whispering to James Madison, "Count the blacks as three-fifths of a person for purposes of taxation and representation." Kasich spoke zealously of the need to get government out of people's pockets; the divorced Kasich just couldn't work up a sense of righteousness about putting bureaucrats under people's beds to monitor their sex practices. He gathered only faint applause from an audience that looked like rejects from the Rush Limbaugh TV show. As I look into the crystal ball and say the words "Abra cadaver" I see Dole being cremated, I mean creamed, in New Hampshire.
Where does that leave Governor Voinovich? Off the short list for V.P. Voinovich is a younger version of Dole, and Mayor Lashutka the evil prodigy of a Voinovich-and-Dole cloning experiment gone bad. If you saw Voinovich's shtick during last week's State of the State address you couldn't have missed his incredibly sincere attack on casino gambling as anti-family and anti-jobs. The guv's solution to creating more jobs: build more prisons and bring in a multi-state regional nuclear waste dump. I'd rather take my chances with the Mafia and casino gambling than go along with the guv's radioactive family values.
Voinovich also pressured Ohio House Republicans to kill the concealed-carry bill last week. This alone may be enough for grassroots gun activists to pull the plug on Bob Dole if he's still on Voinovich's political life-support system by the time the March 19 primary rolls around. The guv gave one of the strangest and most hypocritical reasons for opposing concealed-carry for law-abiding citizens. It seems that under his Republican administration, Attorney General Betty Montgomery has only computerized 80% of Ohio's arrests--leaving 20% of those arrested out of the statewide computer system that does record checks for felons under the federal Brady Bill. So, potentially 20% of the felons could purchase guns. Thus, the rest of us who aren't felons, but law-abiding citizens, can't carry guns to fend off the 20% that potentially can buy guns as felons. Incompetence, be thy name. Or is this another example of the guv doing less--and I mean a lot less--with more?
Bob Fitrakis ran for Congress in the 12th district against John Kasich in 1992.
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2/28/1996 by Bob Fitrakis
The Big Guy--the Mayor of Mayors--got a bit testy last week when people in wheelchairs finally called him on the carpet over at City Hall. Greg Lashutka's claim that the Americans with Disabilities Act constitutes an evil "unfunded mandate" is ludicrous. In Lashutka's analysis and rhetoric, any federal law requiring state or local action that isn't paid for with federal funds is an unfunded mandate--even those that advance civil rights or protect the environment.
By the mayor's logic, the Emancipation Proclamation issued by Abe Lincoln would be the mother of all unfunded mandates. Think of the cost to those god-fearin', hard-workin' slave owners. And what about the Civil Rights Act of 1964? How dare the federal government make state and local governments pay to take down those "Colored Only" signs? Maybe the mayor could lead his able-bodied supporters in chanting "End Curb-Cut Oppression Now!"
Lashutka did the right thing by appointing one of the megaphone-toting demonstrators to a city advisory board on disabilities. But this doesn't solve the problem that the mayor's politics presents. Lashutka's endorsement of Newt Gingrich's Contract with America directly threatens the freedom and independence of people with disabilities. The anti-Gingrich protest last week that drew some 400 people, primarily union members and the disabled, got to the crux of the issue. It isn't about balancing the budget; it's about values and power. The Gingrich and Lashutka call to return funding to the states would end the federal mandate that allows disabled people to choose whether or not they wish to live on their own or in a bureaucratic institution. In line with Lashutka and Gingrich's "state's rights" slogan, the Wisconsin state legislature is already cutting Medicaid funding that allows disabled people to live in their own homes and is forcing them into nursing homes. These homes, of course, will be "privatized" and run by wealthy donors who understand the evils of "unfunded mandates."
While the Newtster and the Big Guy spout off about fiscal responsibility, the nursing homes owned by their backers will cost us significantly more tax dollars in the long run. Doubtful, are you? Businessweek pointed out last year that "The State's-Rights-Minded House" under heavy lobbying from baby formula makers, eliminated a rule requiring competitive bidding when states buy infant formula for the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutritional program. In 1994, the federal government saved an estimated $1.1 billion through its federal mandate that required competitive bidding. Prior to this regulation, only half the states required competitive bidding. Yes, attack the federal government and bring back the good old days when taxpayers paid $2.10 a can for Enfamil instead of 20 cents.
On Voino-vouchers and homo-necro-zoophiliacs
The happy-face world of Governor George Voinovich and the Wolfe Family Newsletter editorial board envisions nice, clean, middle-class Christian parents of white kids using our tax dollars in the form of an educational voucher to be redeemed at their choice of a public or private school. Buffy and Jody will use the funds to attend the local Leroy Jenkins or Billy Wasmus Christian Academy. And their parents will happily go to the polls in 1998 and vote for Voinovich for Senate. The guv's current experimental pilot project is based on this scenario. But what will happen when reality sets in? The largest private inner-city school programs will undoubtedly be run by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. I'll use my Ph.D. to set up my Anti-Plutocracy School in Columbus--that will include a mandatory year of analyzing the selfish motives of the Wolfe family. Get the picture?
For years, Protestant fundamentalists have claimed that they alone talk to God on his private phone line and God wants them to have their own schools. Unlike the Catholics who set up their own schools in line with the First Amendment--you remember, "Congress should make no law establishing a religion..." --far-right religious fanatics have convinced the guv to mingle church doctrines and state tax dollars.
Still, they shall reap what they sow. The situation in Salt Lake City last week illustrates the problem. Fundamentalists complained that Christian kids were being discriminated against in public schools so Congress passed the federal Equal Access Act that rightly requires that all extracurricular school clubs be treated equally. Fundamentalist Christian clubs and, lo and behold, gay and lesbian support groups, benefited. In our system, one that values fairness and equality, this was predictable even in Salt Lake City. Student groups flourished; that is, until the school board voted to ban all extracurricular clubs. Meanwhile, the Utah State Senate passed a bill prohibiting teachers from condoning "illegal conduct in schools," a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate faculty from sponsoring gay clubs. Hundreds of students staged a walkout and demonstration in defense of the First Amendment and demanding the separation of church and state.
U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wants a limited ban of "just sexually oriented clubs." This would equally ban those who advocate sex with dead animals of the same gender, Ronald Reagan's old "Just Say No to Sex" clubs and the evangelical right's "True Love Waits" that promotes abstinence and chastity.
If our multi-cultural, heterogeneous society is to succeed, we must be bound by an abiding faith in the Bill of Rights and fundamental fairness to all groups. And those like Pat Robertson, who demand that teachers have the freedom to keep the Bible on their desks, must also concede the right for them to keep a book promoting Satan on their desks. That's why we separate church and state.
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3/6/1996 by Bob Fitrakis
San Francisco--Imagine my surprise while I'm sitting in a workshop called "(Un)covering the Environment" at the Media and Democracy Congress in San Francisco when someone hands a fax to the moderator--Columbus' own Mr. Greenpeace, Harvey Wasserman--about the trash-burning power plant back home.
Harvey excitedly relayed the tortured tale of the trash-burner and the good news that Michael Long, executive director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, has recommended turning it into a recycling facility. The bad news is that Columbus Mayor Biggus Guyus--a.k.a. The Crazed Anti-Green Cossack--is not happy with the proposal.
But Mayor Lashutka, even in his Buckeye football days, is usually slow off the line. Remember, he was the last person left in Columbus leading cheers for Battelle's proposed radioactive and toxic waste dump on the banks of the Olentangy River. Battelle had changed its mind and had come up with a more innovative approach to the problem while the mayor was chanting, "Give me a T, give me an O, give me an X..."
Plus the mayor's got a good reason to be pissed. Long's essentially embracing the proposal of Lashutka's electoral opponent, Bill Moss, who had the good sense to have Wasserman write his environmental policy statements. Lashutka prefers the advice of paid propagandists, like Kay Jones, in today's multi-billion-dollar liars-for-hire PR industry. After William Sanjour of the U.S. EPA publicized that Columbus' trash-burner was spewing the highest amount of deadly dioxin ever recorded, Jones was brought in to put a positive "spin" on the story. What Jones did in Columbus in cooperation with our mayor is simply a small part of a much larger corporate-sponsored and financed anti-environmental backlash. A must-read for anyone concerned about the fate of our little green planet is Toxic Sludge is Good For You!: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry by John Stauber, who also spoke at the environmental workshop, and Sheldon Rampton.
Environmentalism, following the original Earth Day, was nearly next to godliness. Now what was once universally regarded as a noble cause is often portrayed as a sinister conspiracy of tree-worshipping pagans or anti-economic-growth fanatics. All too often the mainstream media buy the simple-minded spins put forth like, "The issue here is jobs vs. the spotted owl." Ecology isn't that easy. Yet where can we go for complex answers?
A recent study shows that 60 percent of the population gets all its news from TV, but who owns TV? The megacorporations Westinghouse, General Electric, Disney, Time-Warner and Rupert Murdoch decide what you see and hear based on their economic self-interest. Environmental panel member Karl Grossman, founder of Enviro-Video, pointed out that 85 percent of the nuclear plants in the world are built and designed by Westinghouse or GE. Are they likely to tell us horror stories about potential nuclear holocaust, like the Cassini Mission, that Grossman related at the conference? A public document published by NASA in June 1995 states that if the Cassini Mission, a satellite to be launched in 1997 that includes a payload of 25 pounds of plutonium, misses its mark during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, "approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time of the swingbys could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure."
Grossman's Enviro-Video Nukes in Space tells of this and other potential nuclear nightmares the corporate media conveniently ignores. For example, Grossman told us the makers of the Academy Award-nominated Apollo 13 made an "artistic decision" to leave out the fact that there were 8.3 pounds of plutonium in that capsule hurtling towards the Earth. In Columbus, the only TV station that plays Grossman's videos is the public access channel, ACTV Cable 21. That's also where Harvey and I co-host our muck-raking show, From the Democratic Left.
Public access is our electronic soapbox. It is the antidote to commercial corporate programming. It is the only genuine expression of democracy on TV. Perhaps that's why it's currently under fire from Lashutka appointee Maureen Conley, Columbus' City Administrative Services director. Conley is not happy with some of the current programs seen on ACTV. No wonder, it's the only station where she and her boss are routinely criticized and the full, rich reality of Columbus' many voices can be heard, uncensored.
Whether it's coverage of the trash-burner or nukes in space, if we are to be an informed and educated citizenry, we must preserve the last bits of free, unspinnable, non-corporate, non-commercial spaces be they in the alternative press or public access TV. That's what I learned at the Media and Democracy Congress.
3/13/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Did you ever notice that if you look at Mayor Lashutka quickly from the side he looks a lot like former Soviet premier Brezhnev? When Greg speaks, it's Leonid without the charisma. More importantly, the mayor's policies are that same drab, debilitating 1970s Soviet gray. Hyperbole, you say?
Communism is known for its vehement disdain for free speech; recently so is the Lashutka administration. Last week, Maureen Conley, director of Columbus' Department of Administrative Services, was quoted as saying that "the original intent [of public access TV] doesn't matter." She concedes that the original intent was the exercising of free speech. Maureen, and we presume the mayor, wish to go "forward" into a brave new world where the public's voice is controlled. This wasn't always the case. Just a few short years ago, the mayor made a public service announcement for ACTV, Columbus' public access channel: "...In today's democracy, the television camera is as important as the quill pen was to the founding fathers. ACTV is your TV, it's your soapbox, your stage, your talk show. Make freedom of speech part of your daily life...."
Arbitrary and oppressive administrative fiats are now Lashutka's style. Leonid would be impressed. Conley claims that "currently the cable access channel, according to our cable providers, is one of the lowest-viewed channels on the spectrum." Yet, Warner Cable's PR and marketing departments claim that no such data exist. One would think that Conley, as a former employee of Warner Cable--now charged with negotiating their contract with her current employer, the city--would know this. Or does she have a special relationship with Warner Cable that gives her access to secret information denied the public? More likely, Warner Cable's attitude toward cable access--they could be making money off the channel--colors Conley's opinions now that she oversees ACTV's budget at City Hall.
Anyway, maybe it's just Lashutka reverting back to his glory days when he chaired Citizens for Bork. You remember Bork? Reagan's Supreme Court nominee who argued the doctrine of "original intent"--that the First Amendment only applies to the national government but not the states. And now it appears that it doesn't apply in Lashutka's Columbus.
And what about Lashutka's trash policy? When Michael D. Long, director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, demonstrates that it's far cheaper to let the free market work and bury trash in the Franklin County landfill at $13 a ton, the mayor tells him to shut up and burn it at $32 a ton. Lashutka demands that Congress impose a costly and unwarranted "unfunded mandate" on local governments by enacting "flow control."
Just like Soviet industry, Lashutka insists on a Brezhnev-era "command economy" measure to protect his inefficient, wasteful and polluting trash-burning power plant. And just like Soviet Communism, he's willing to destroy the environment and poison people to promote the bankrupt and backward policies of his regime.
Now, if we can only get the Wolfe family lapdogs on the Dispatch editorial board to denounce Lashutka's communism like they recently denounced Gus Hall, chairperson of the Communist Party USA. But both the mayor and the Dispatch editors conveniently ignore or rewrite history. Whether it's belief in Bork one day or free speech the next, reality is twisted for political expediency.
The Dispatch editors write: "As Hall entered his golden years, a million, perhaps even three million, Cambodians were being murdered by their communist Khmer Rouge countrymen..." implying that there was a world Communist conspiracy. In reality, the U.S. was backing Cambodia's leader Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killers--they were Henry Kissinger's guys--because they were Chinese Communist allies. The Soviets opposed Pol Pot and supported the Communist invasion to overthrow him. Moreover, the Dispatch turned a blind eye to Communist Chinese human rights abuses and shilled for their Son of Heaven exhibition in Columbus, even after that government ran over unarmed, peaceful and democratic students with tanks in Tianamen Square.
The Dispatch and Lashutka both understand and apologize for Chrysler's need to build Jeeps in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the company can hire virtual slave labor for 40 cents an hour, that will surely lead to the inevitable closing of the Jeep plant in Toledo. Just last year, the Dispatch wrote glowingly of Governor Voinovich's trade mission to Communist China where he personally negotiated sweetheart deals for major political donors, even though Amnesty International cited that country for "human organ harvesting" from political prisoners. But the authoritarian government that presides over more than a billion potential Chinese Wendy burger scarfers can't be all bad.
The Soviet Communists rightly fell because they were undemocratic, bureaucratic and serving the interests of a small elite. Meet the new Columbus communist boss, same as the old Russian boss. Republished @ 3/30/2026 www.fraudbusterbob.com
NO MARCH 20TH: SHOULD BE
Bob Bites Back: Barry Humphries, Campus Partners, and developing “real” communities
3/27/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
The Big Chill may be over in Columbus. Things are thawing out and some progressive seeds are being planted. Can the revolution be far behind? Well, if it's the Hemp Revolution, it's on this weekend at the Wexner Center from the same people who brought us the provocative Panama Deception. Since both President Bill and Speaker Newt are admitted former partisans of the hemp plant flower, it would be the perfect bipartisan family outing. The many uses of the hemp plant and the demonization of marijuana are well documented in the film. It's enough to invoke vague and hazy memories of Jack Ford--son of the Republican President Gerald Ford--on the cover of Rolling Stone claiming that the White House was the best place to smoke dope.
The war by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s against hemp--that led to such absurdities as the Smithsonian changing displays to avoid mentioning sacred American documents were printed on hemp paper --was little more than a political ploy to disenfranchise New Left activists from the late '60s and early '70s. But who would've thunk that hemp seeds would be sprouting here in the capital city with The Ohio Industrial Hemp & Medical Use Coalition?
Started by a couple of local college students, the coalition is already in the process of collecting signatures to legalize the industrial and medical use of hemp. If you want to check out this new breed of hempster, stop by their table at the Wexner Center after you participate in the Hemp Revolution experience.
It's the Green Revolution that's driving the hemp revolt. Eventually, there'll be an eruption in local Columbus politics. The recent Central Committee elections in the Franklin County Democratic Party provided a few minor tremors. Two members of the Westerville Social Action group won seats on the party's endorsement body. And there was a virtual war in Clintonville's 18th ward.
The grassroots-oriented and liberal-leaning Clintonville-Beechwold candidate prevailed over an even more progressive Steve Kanner with the Party's candidate coming in a distant third. And the ever-affable and unrepentant liberal Tom Erney won in the 19th ward. There's already talk of forming an official Progressive Caucus (slogan: "We're PC") in the County Party. Such a coalition could force the Dems to go on record on issues like the Hemp Initiative, the nuke dump, recycling, and human rights issues--slave labor in Burma, or political prisoners in China or sweatshops in the maquilladoras in Mexico. Not that the latter will matter much politically unless the caucus can tie it to concerns in Franklin County. Well, it could get interesting. I always say politics doesn't have to be boring or cheesy.
Speaking of non-boring, Bill "a rolling stone gathers no" Moss, running as an Independent for the U.S. Congress 12th District, could ignite a populist spark. And as those Maoists used to say, "One spark can start a prairie fire." Moss's peculiar mix of pro-second amendment rhetoric, environmentalism, and anti-NAFTA and GATT sentiments will draw considerable media attention in a district that's nearly a quarter African-American. Some suggest that this is Bill's version of "The Big Payback" to Cynthia Ruccia, the Democratic candidate for the 12th District, who dropped out as fund-raiser for Bill's mayoral campaign last year. Word had it that Franklin County AFL-CIO leader Bill Dobbins leaned on her to quit the campaign. Dobbins is best known for complaining that "blacks are trying to take over the party here." Which reminds me of the story of the local machinist leader who told me when I was running for Congress in 1992 that the biggest problem facing his workers was that they had lost their right "to call a queer a faggot." Ain't a gay conspiracy moving your jobs overseas, brothers and sisters. And unless labor in Franklin County gets a lot more progressive, they'll be losing elections for another 50 years: "Son, don't tell me how to run elections. I been losin' Democratic elections in Franklin County since 1943."
Republished www.Fraudbusterbob.com
Bob Fitrakis was elected as a Democratic Central Committee member in the 55th ward.
Republished @ 3/30/2026 www.fraudbusterbob.com
4/03/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
You're in the booth this fall. You scan the names for President: Clinton, Dole, Nader, Buchanan, Perot. For the first time, instead of voting for the mainstream, we may have the choice of the radical left, right and center respectively.
Nader's already on the ballot in California and the Northeast Ohio Greens are pledging to put him on the Ohio ballot as an Independent. Perot is hinting he wants to run, mostly by shouting to anyone who'll listen: "Draft me!" Whether or not Buchanan ends up on the ballot depends on how much Dole dumps on him at the Republican convention in August. Pre-existing right-wing parties with ballot status like the U.S. Taxpayers Party could provide safe haven for the routed Buchanan Brigades and the troops necessary to get him on the ballot and turn out the vote.
If Clinton runs to the center with nothing new to say this campaign season, many progressive Democrats like myself will have little trouble pulling the lever for perhaps the most principled man in American public life--our beloved Ralphie. Sure, we understand that Newt Gingrich recently led the "barbarians to the gate," but his social Darwinism and his George Wallace with a Ph.D schtick seems like a spent political force. If Dole runs as a centrist also, it won't matter that much whether Bill or Bob is the Presidential caretaker. As corporations continue to downsize, rightsize, riff, pink slip and write off U.S. workers, Bill will, no doubt, feel our pain more than Bob. But unless he proposes to do something about it, as Ralph, Pat and Ross surely will, there'll be a proverbial plethora of third party votes.
In mid-February, the Labor Department reported that median wages for fulltime male workers is almost nine percent less than it was in 1979. The New York Times points out that pay for top level corporate executives has "soared to nearly 200 times that of the average worker, compared with only 40 times that of the average worker two decades ago." The arrogance of the corporate elite in the global economy is now well established. Steven Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley predicted a "worker backlash" even before Buchanan rode the NAFTA issue to a shocking political upset in the New Hampshire GOP primary. NAFTA now stands as a metaphor for economic despair and anxiety. While it didn't start the trends toward lower wages, NAFTA sure as hell helped accelerate them. It's a manifestation of the greater problem of top-down corporate control and undemocratic dominance over our lives.
On January 1, 1994, when NAFTA--a truly strange and bizarre idea to merge the world's most advanced high-tech economy with a third world country--was implemented, what was then a small trade surplus with Mexico is now a $15 billion a year deficit. Clinton took a bundle of money from the notorious K Street international trading crowd--essentially Dole's donors--to push a conservative multi-national corporate pact that won more Republican than Democratic votes in the House. The President conveniently points to the European economic community as precedent. Yet he fails to mention that the European Common Market was put together over a couple of decades and it includes all first-world developed countries, a freely elected European Parliament as well as continental environmental and worker safety standards.
The NAFTA issue isn't going to go away. A recent poll shows that 55 percent of U.S. citizens now regard NAFTA as a bad deal. In fact, anti-NAFTA sentiment is what's creating the openings for Nader, Perot and Buchanan in presidential politics this year. It is vitally important to understand why each is opposed to the pact that both Clinton and Dole promote.
Loss of the U.S. manufacturing base is why Perot's followers, despite the failure of his Reform Party to gather enough signatures, are motivated and most likely to place his name on the Ohio ballot as an Independent come August. His being a wacky and semi-paranoid billionaire aside, Perot, while on the Board of General Motors, consistently fought to keep auto manufacturing in the United States. Perot upholds the tradition of Henry Ford. Fordism, while not in and of itself progressive, argued that a stable middle-class society can only be achieved by paying stable middle-class wages. Perot is not overly concerned with the human rights abuses or ecological disaster associated with NAFTA.
Nationalist and isolationist voters, prone to Buchanan's appeal, are driven by anti-immigrant hysteria and job loss. This "Fortress America" national front sees not the exploitation of U.S. and Mexican workers and environmental degradation, but hordes of little brown people swarming our territory and taking our jobs. They need to realize that what we call the southwest United States was formerly the northern half of Mexico prior to the Mexican-American War. And the real enemy are those in the corporate boardrooms who are equal opportunity debasers and degraders of workers and the environment. It's not likely that a "Know-Nothing" coalition uniting xenophobe and homophobe is the future of U.S. populism.
Nader, on the other hand, will show real compassion, not only for the nearly one million estimated U.S. workers who have lost their jobs due to NAFTA, but for the even more unfortunate Mexican workers being mercilessly exploited by U.S. corporations in the sweatshops known as the maquilladoras. And he'll also eloquently speak out against the factories spewing toxins that know no border.
--Bob Fitrakis visited the maquilladoras in January 1993 and co-produced a video entitled The Other Side of Free Trade.
4/10/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Building community begins with the assumption that everyone belongs, nobody is to be excluded. Campus Partners' final plan submitted last week is the opposite: it's about economic and class apartheid; of favoring chain restaurants and corporate anchor stores over independent small businesses.
The plan seeks to build a fortressed community with "gateways," "calming zones," and "defensible street closures." This is arrogance and snobbery. It's an attempt to protect the "right" people and keep the "wrong" people out. This is why the Frumpies on the Campus Partners staff (Formerly Radical Upwardly Mobile Professionals) and their apologists are personalizing their attacks against me. I'm sure they've got dozens of affidavits proving that I soaped myself excessively in the shower in ninth grade, but these attacks don't change the substance of their "master plan" for the campus master race. For those of you who haven't read it, it's available at a few campus area libraries and I've included page references.
Barry Humphries and his Frumpies have decided that they don't like the campus area as it is, so they want to knock it down and bring Disneyland planning to the area. And I don't exaggerate here, they state: "...The remaining 50 percent of the structures in the [High Street] corridor lack significant detail for reuse potential when the cost of renovation or their ability to provide appropriately sized retail floor plates is considered." (15-9) They don't like the businesses in these buildings, and they don't adapt well to suburban strip mall taste and requirements, so they'll be knocked down if they're not accidentally burnt down.
They have three themes. First, in south campus where Papa Joe's conveniently went up in flames, they want shopping and dining. They envision "better quality" restaurants (pg. 15-6), "higher caliber" bars (pg. 15-10), and nifty stores like "The Gap" or "The Limited" (pg. 15-6). Excuse me, if the Gap or the Limited want to come into the area, let them do it with their own resources and not with public welfare checks provided through Campus Partners. Oh yeah, they also think the area needs "larger record stores" (pg. 15-7). This is absurd. The campus area is home to the few remaining independent music stores in Columbus. Any attempt to drive out the likes of Used Kids would be a cultural crime against humanity.
Second, the Partners want "to create an art theme at 15th and High." This will include a new performing arts center on the east side of High, presumably to compliment the already existing Wexner Center and Mershon Auditorium across the street. It's also a good excuse to tear down a bunch of buildings that are being used improperly by the riff-raff in the neighborhood, according to Campus Partners' criteria.
Third, and even more absurd, the Partners are planning an "international" theme for the Lane-High area. Their plan will destroy perhaps the most ethnically diverse neighborhood strip in all of Ohio: name another strip in Ohio that has affordable real Chinese, Indian, Korean, Ethiopian, and Mexican restaurants in such close proximity. Most likely they will remove this actually existing cultural diversity and replace it with the food court at Lane Avenue Shopping Center, or Chi-Chi's.
As Randy Morrison of the Godman Guild pointed out in his comments on the Campus Partners plan, the plan requires massive "displacement" and another plan is needed to "mitigate" this. Campus Partners is undertaking an ethnic and economic cleansing of the university district. This sounds like the preferences of middle-aged, middle-class former students, not the actual students who have different tastes and limited incomes.
The plan is so vile and pernicious that Barry Humphries, the infamous demolition man from the Battelle neighborhood, needed to hire Frumpies to cover the destruction of some of the last remaining culturally diverse "free spaces" from the student movement of the 1960s. Those who built bridges 25 years ago to other ethnic and racial communities are now using their progressive credentials to blow them up. While muttering to themselves that they are still "stardust and golden" they are destroying the campus area in order to save it.
A basic definition of theft is taking something that doesn't belong to you. Campus Partners is planning legally sanctioned criminal activity. Their Disneyesque centralized planning will destroy businesses and private property they deem unworthy. It will eradicate the organically grown culture, flavor, character and mystique of the campus area and replace it with plastic suburban sterility. They now look to the Ohio State Board of Trustees for their blessing--a board whose membership constitutes Ohio's "power elite," essentially the same class of people who deforested Franklin Park, sterilized the North Market and homogenized the Ohio State Fair. But this will be their greatest criminal caper.
It's not too late to stop the insanity. People opposed to this plan need to rise up and use any means necessary to make your voices heard.
4/17/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
"Seek and ye shall find," the Good Book tells us. As we approach Earth Day, we should applaud those students who staged a two-day sit-in in front of OSU President Gordon Gee's office to elevate the issue of developing the wetlands at the Firestone estate in the Akron area.
The fabulously wealthy Firestone family, of tire fame, kept the land in pristine condition as a riding retreat. The family's fortune allowed it to preserve some of Ohio's most spectacular remaining wilderness. But, it's not simply the wilderness--that includes century-old white oak and tamarack trees--that makes it unique. It's the five bogs on the property, some of the last in the state, that propelled the students to action.
Those familiar with Ohio history know that the European settlers, in less than two centuries, have filled in 90 percent of the state's original wetlands. Take a look sometime at 19th century maps of Ohio. You may find that your favorite mall or fast-food franchise is sitting on a former swamp site or built over an old creekbed. Early settlers, to say the least, were not as eco-friendly as the Native Americans they were brutally driving out. Neither did the settlers understand the intricate and delicate role of wetlands in our ecosystem. Earth scientists often describe the wetlands as a giant sponge that absorbs excess water from heavy rains. Most agree that the recent devastating Midwestern floods were caused in part by the loss of such a high percentage of original wetlands.
In September 1994, The Ohio State University purchased 1,500 acres of the former Firestone estate for $5 million--a rock-bottom price provided for in Raymond Firestone's will. OSU trustees and President Gee, in the cynical tradition of quick-buck, megaversity land speculation, saw the chance to sell it for $15 million. Amidst allegations that the $5 million to purchase the land was improperly diverted from a university endowment, OSU strangely contracted with the Galbreath Company to sell the land. Those of you into scandals of the rich and famous may recall that the Firestones and the Galbreaths were merged by marriage. Not too long ago, the Firestone heirs were suing their in-laws in one of those nasty "you're fleecing poor senile granny" suits.
The Galbreaths had just the right stuff to sell this hot new piece of property, according to the OSU board of trustees. Don't look for any environmentalists on that board. Any analysis of the social class of the trustees gives new meaning to the tired old Marxist cliche "executive committee of the bourgeoisie." So, when Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) members met with OSU's Firestone working group, chaired by Trustee David Brennan on November 30, 1995, they were given a lesson in Classical Capitalist Economics 101. The students were told the university had one priority and one priority only--maximum economic gain. Some of the students believing that the university served other functions as well, say, educational, inquired as to what they could do to help preserve the wetlands. But there was only one correct answer on the pop quiz, and one university official supplied it, "Find someone with $15 million."
Even more disturbing, the local Bath Township trustees want to designate the land as a natural preserve to be utilized for educational and research purposes. Thus, The Ohio State University, the flagship and pride of Buckeye higher education, finds itself pitted against 10 other Ohio educational institutions that want to use the land as an outdoor lab. This list includes the University of Akron, Kent State University, Oberlin College, John Carroll University, Baldwin-Wallace College, and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, among others.
OSU has gone into maximum spin control mode in order to obfuscate this issue. University officials claim that they have "sought and considered seriously the concerns of residents of the area surrounding the Firestone estate." Moreover, they claim that they are "very sensitive to community and environmental concerns." Yet, rhetoric aside, OSU has steadfastly refused to put any restriction on the land's development. So they kill all the beavers, we get the bucks, buckaroo.
Recently in Ithaca, New York, home of the prestigious Cornell University, Wal-Mart tried to develop a similar wetland site. Only the well-organized outrage of the local citizenry prevented an environmental catastrophe.
OSU Executive Director of Communication Malcolm Baroway authoritatively intoned that it would be wrong for OSU to put restrictions on the land since it was protected by "federal EPA law." Those of you who follow such things know that ever since George Bush allowed Vice President Dan Quayle to run amok with his Council on Competitiveness, federal wetland laws have more loopholes for wealthy developers than does the U.S. tax code. A developer is allowed to swap one wetland for another. Indeed, they're allowed to dig a big hole in the ground, let it fill up with water in some suburban industrial park, call it a wetland, and exchange it for the likes of the bogs on the Firestone estate. Quayle in his genius, pretty much defined any standing water for more than a few days as a wetland. By Quayle's definition, I could swap my basement for the Firestone wetlands and probably get away with it.
SEAC's successful sit-in resulted in an open forum being scheduled for tomorrow, Thursday, at 3 p.m. at the second floor conference theater at the Ohio Union, which President Gee has promised to attend. SEAC has found the courage of its convictions to take on the holy of holies, OSU. And as the Good Book also points out, a basic definition of righteousness is speaking truth to power. May truth prevail this Earth Day.
4/24/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
The death penalty is primarily political. It's about power: who gets killed; and who gets elected prosecutor, judge, attorney general and governor. You may recall our own Dewey Stokes, Franklin County Commissioner, ran pro-death penalty commercials although it is totally unrelated to his office. No doubt Dewey wants to fry all the Hueys and Louies on death row, but what about Attorney General Betty MontgomeryÑ "The Great Expediter"? Betty wants to hide "the dirty little secrets" of Ohio's death row by speeding up the executions. But those of us who are more concerned with justice than expediency, or Ms. Montgomery's political future, need to expose her secrets.
Secret #1. Tony Apanovitch, a small time crook, stands convicted of rape and murder based on circumstantial evidence. Apanovitch is a top priority of the Central Ohio Amnesty International organization. The prosecution withheld crucial evidence that surely would have caused a jury to conclude that there was "reasonable doubt." For example, Apanovitch voluntarily supplied hair, blood and saliva samples to the police. Police investigators recorded that the samples were "not consistent" with the killer. A hair found on the victim did not match hers or Apanovitch's. But the hair was consistent with a serial rapist that had attacked and brutalized six women in the same neighborhood. Also, police investigators confirmed Apanovitch's alibi of his whereabouts the night of the murder, but failed as required under law to inform Apanovitch's lawyer. Moreover, the prosecutor, eager for a win, misinformed the jury about the odds of Apanovitch's semenÑ"type A"Ñbeing found in the victim. It seems the prosecutor failed to mention that the victim was also a "type A" secretor, making the evidence meaningless. Apanovitch has been on death row for 12 years, and is seeking a new trial that would undoubtedly free him.
Secret #2. John G. Spirko Jr. was convicted on circumstantial evidence of murdering Elgin, Ohio's postmaster Betty Jean Mottinger. Unlike the O.J. Simpson case, there was no physical evidence linking Spirko to the death scene. Former Ohio Public Defender Randall Dana stated that public defenders were "...convinced that, for whatever reason, the Postal Department had set about proving this guy did it ÑSpirko did itÑwhen in fact, someone else was guilty." Former investigator Chester "Briss" Craig produced a notarized affidavit dated March 17, 1988 from William Green, a prisoner in the Marion Correctional Institution, swearing that his cellmate, John Willier, confessed in the great detail to the killing of Betty Mottinger. Green's affidavit reads: "When John Willier related this aforesaid account of the kidnapping and killing of the post mistress to me, he was crying and appeared to be in an emotionally overwrought state." Spirko was scheduled to die on January 5, 1995, but received a stay of execution and his case has since been picked up "pro bono" by a prominent Washington, D.C. firm.
Secret #3. There may be at least 14 other Apanovitchs and Spirkos on Ohio's death row. In January 1992, Chester Craig filed a formal complaint with the Ohio Inspector General that reads "Some of our investigators previously assigned to Ohio Public Defender's clients before they were convicted had not met with or conducted any kind of investigation on behalf of these clients...." Craig has personally identified to this writer the names of the following death row inmates who may not have received due process as required by the U.S. Constitution: David Steffen, Ernest Martin, John William Byrd, Michael Bueke, Billie Joe Sowell, Robert Buell, Gregory Esparza, Donald Williams, William A. Zuern, Rhett de Pew, William Wickline Jr., Alfred J. Morales, Martin Rojas, and Jeff Lundgren.
Craig claimed, "...Many of these clients, mostly black, indicated they had never heard the name of the investigator mentioned and that they had never met with such person." Craig concluded that investigators for the Public Defender's Office where he was a supervisor, "were turning in false time reports and were not providing the support services to the attorneys as required." A 1994 report by the Office of Investigative Services substantially supports Craig's allegations. Additionally, Linda Leisure, who worked for one of the investigators, told the Columbus Free Press in January 1995 that she was asked "to falsify time reports and interviews on these murder cases."
Unlike O.J., who with six lawyers and millions of dollars won acquittal, or the Menendez brothers, whose vast fortunes allowed them to skirt the death penalty despite their confessions, Apanovitch and the others who have little money cannot afford simple justice under our system. They can't buy the Dream Team lawyers, expert witnesses and top notch investigators. If O.J. were poor, all an Ohio prosecutor would've had to say to a jury is: "This is undeniably the hair of a black man in this glove." Guilty as charged. And he would've gotten the death penalty for killing an upper-class white woman. If his victim had been another poor black man, maybe he would have gotten four years in prison.
That's why we need to go slow, despite Betty's political ambitions. If she had her way, both Apanovitch and Spirko would be dead by now.
Bob Fitrakis presented an anti-death penalty plank at the 1992 Democratic Platform hearings on behalf of Governor Jerry Brown and, after the plank was disallowed, sued the National Democratic Party and presidential candidate Bill Clinton.
5/01/2002
by Bob Fitrakis
It's the end of the campus as we know it, and I feel slimed.
If you really want to know what Campus Partners is all about, don't buy their hype or PR spin. Instead, read Graydon Hambrick's article, "A New Campus Partnership" in the April 1996 Ohio State Alumni Magazine (OSAM). It reveals the real agenda; it's the smoking gun.
Campus Partners portrays itself as just another non-profit organization seeking to promote community cooperation. In reality, it's a "redevelopment corporation"--they prefer the term "revitalization"--similar to the one that wired the City Center mall deal. As Hambrick puts it, "As such, it is allowed special legal privileges." Indeed.
Recall the City Center development. In 1977 the city of Columbus purchased $26 million in land and leased it to the Capitol South Community Urban Development Corporation, which in turn subleased the land to billionaire mall developer Al Taubman. Before Taubman built the City Center mall, city and state government officials combined to legally declare the downtown area "blighted" and a "slum." Columbus Monthly reported that approximately $80 million more in non-repayable public tax expenditures flowed into the mall's development. When subleasee Taubman began to rake in the dough courtesy of the public's largess, Capitol South owed the city some $67 million. This is an old game. As Robert Goodman illustrates in his book, The Last Entrepreneurs, billionaire developers like Taubman and Max Fisher--yes, they just named the business school after Fisher at OSU--know how to get taxpayers to provide the "risk capital" for major for-profit private development projects.
Both Taubman and Fisher are good friends of fellow billionaire and OSU Trustee Les Wexner. A senior OSU administrator admits that Les Wexner is stirring the pot on the Campus Partners redevelopment. Despite the fact that there was neither a "needs assessment" done nor any need for a performing arts center at 15th and High, Wexner, according to sources, doesn't like the view from the Wexner Center east across High Street.
Hambrick writes that OSU President Gordon Gee "....has 'other commitments' from businesses that he is 'not ready' to speak about, and that Ohio State Trustee Leslie Wexner, head of the Limited clothing empire, has shown an interest in the High Street development." (p. 27, OSAM) No doubt.
In the late '70s in Detroit, Taubman and Fisher managed to talk the bankrupt city into giving them $100 million in prime riverfront land for the development of the Riverfront West luxury condominiums. Next, they had the state legislature pass the infamous "Max Fisher law" that created a 24-year 50 percent tax abatement for the property--twice as long an abatement as any in Michigan history. Then, they used their political connections with the Reagan administration to use the city's federal mass transit money to build a people-mover that runs from the Riverfront West complex, where the wealthy live, to the Renaissance Center, where they work, and the Greektown restaurant strip, where they eat. So, it's now possible to live in luxury and work in Detroit without ever setting foot on a city street. I'm sure that Les' buddies have relayed this "success" story to him.
I have no doubt they're planning a similar carnage in the OSU area. As Hambrick notes, "A special improvement district along the High Street strip will be created under Ohio law." This is the same tactic Wexner used in New Albany. Say goodbye to Stache's, Monkey's Retreat, Used Kids and the like, because the alumni are being promised: "spiffy and modern businesses and galleries, a variety of restaurants, decent housing full of enlightened people...." (p. 27, OSAM)
Hambrick goes so far as to call Gee's and Wexner's New Campus Order a "Garden of Eden." And who are we to argue, since they're planning ". ..art movie houses, a bowling alley, clothing stores run by national merchandisers [read: Leslie Wexner], maybe even sports bars such as they have in the 'burbs." (p. 26, OSAM) Be still my heart!
And Gee just keeps on giving and giving--of course, maybe it's because he recently got that huge raise engineered by Les. Gee admits it'll even be better than the 'burbs because OSU's planning on returning to "a modified in loco parentis." Thus, Papa Gee and Uncle Les will protect students from the harsh realities of campus life. Gee assured the alumni in finest democratic fashion that: "I have no intention to make [student life] boring.... [But] there will be no plebiscite on the fundamental issue of change." That means, to the unenlightened, there won't be a student community vote, we're jamming it down your throat.
In an area bounded on the north by the Glen Echo ravine and Fifth Avenue on the south, stretching from the Olentangy River on the west and the Conrail tracks on the east, they're planning to build their Brave New Campus World.
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5/08/1996 / by Bob Fitrakis
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5/15/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Thomas Jefferson said "Where the press is free, all is safe." But what happens when the only daily newspaper in a large metropolitan area is a monopoly owned by a super-rich family that sees its mission as systematically distorting the news to protect other plutocrats? You get The Daily Distortion.
A recent mega-distortion and an omission illustrate the type of reporting our own Wolfe Family Newsletter is renowned for. On Friday, the Dispatch placed a small blurb on the business page concerning Columbia/HCA Health Care Corps' buying of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio. The Cleveland Plain Dealer rightfully placed it on page one.
Columbia/HCA is a $20 billion company that in less than a decade had merged with over 347 hospitals and 125 outpatient centers and home care services. Its president and CEO, Richard Scott, has previously vowed in the pages of the Dispatch to invade Ohio and "...be across the state in every nook and cranny." Think about it. The Daily Monopoly just buried the unprecedented merger of the country's largest for-profit hospital corporation and Ohio's largest non-profit medical insurer. Of course, this is the same paper that put the Rodney King verdict that led to the L.A. riots on page two and Magic Johnson's AIDS confession in the Sports section.
In a preliminary article, the Plain Dealer noted that the Columbia/HCA deal with Blue Cross was "a move that promises to change the face of health care in Ohio." Somehow, the Dispatch missed that point. On Friday, the Plain Dealer highlighted the outrageous fact that Columbia/HCA plans to pay Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio's top three executives $15.5 million dollars; the Dispatch casually mentioned it. The Plain Dealer reported that "Deep in the government filing made yesterday, Columbia said it had options to buy the remaining 15% of Blue Cross business for $1." The Dispatch failed to note this.
You may be wondering what else they failed to mention. With very little effort, I turned up a variety of information about Columbia/HCA. The best single source is the Cleveland Free Times article of May 6 entitled "Prescription for Profit." Here's a partial list of interesting tidbits you won't read in the Dispatch about the deal:
· State officials in Florida, the U.S. Attorney's office and the U.S. Justice Department are looking into allegations that executives at one hospital courted by Columbia/HCA undervalued its assets to facilitate the sale in exchange for a big buyout like the one that just occurred in Ohio;
· Policy holders and consumer advocates are already charging that the $299.5 million purchase price is "too low," and have filed a class-action suit in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas where they're represented by former U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum;
· The Volunteer Trustee Foundation for Research and Education, which represents non-profit hospital boards, has criticized Columbia/HCA's pattern of acquiring non-profit facilities by putting up only "a small amount of money" and buying off the chief executives;
· Columbia/HCA not only canceled its advertising in the St. Petersburg Times after the paper ran an editorial questioning its business practices, it also ordered that all copies of Florida's second-largest newspaper be removed from the hospital's paper racks;
· Last year when Columbia announced its first purchase of a Ohio non-profit, the Cleveland-based Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, the entire Sisters board was removed. Robert Rownd, a former board member, claims that Peter Reibold, the president of the Sisters health system, orchestrated the deal for personal enrichment. Reibold now works for Columbia/HCA.
And the list could go on and on. In essence, you've got the country's greediest medical mega-corporation buying up Ohio's leading non-profit medical insurer by buying off its top executives. Wonder how the Daily Monopoly will report it when Columbia/HCA comes calling next in Columbus?
So, it's not just twisted and distorted daily news that should concern you, but glaring omissions. On May 1, both the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran articles on the Ohio Community Reinvestment Project's statewide report entitled "Little Interest for the Poor." The study provided an analysis of performance by Ohio banks regarding the yields paid in 1995 on interest on lawyer's trust accounts (IOLTA) that fund access to legal services for low-income Ohioans.
Under Ohio law, banks are required to pay interest on these accounts that are entrusted to attorneys by their clients. Legal codes of ethics prohibit the attorneys from benefiting from such bank accounts.
The report found that Columbus-based Banc One Corp. and the Huntington National Bank were among the worst in the state, paying only 1.5% net yield to benefit Ohio's poorest people. Both banks are among the 20 largest in America. By contrast, Commerce National Bank, a smaller community bank in Worthington, is paying a yield to the poor nearly twice that of its much larger rivals. Star Bank of Cincinnati, with numerous central Ohio offices, offered the best yield of 4.8%. Star Bank turned over an outstanding $382,929 on a balance of $7.9 million to help fund critically needed legal services for poor people.
Bill Faith, a spokesperson for the Ohio Community Reinvestment Project, a statewide coalition of groups pushing banks to meet the credit needs of poor and minority people, stated, "With a few notable exceptions, banks are paying paltry interest on these accounts." Besides Star Bank, Faith also called First National Bank of Ohio, "exemplary."
Now, what we need is a study rating the major newspapers of Ohio. I suspect I know which one distorts and omits the most vitally needed news.
5/22/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
The action was in the streets, and parks, last weekend. In Westerville, 50 or so activists from the Westerville Social Action group and Amnesty International exercised their First Amendment rights by demonstrating in front of Rep. John Kasich's house and then marching down Main Street. They want Mr. Budget-Cutter to wield his ax and topple the notorious School of the Americas (SOA)--School of the Assassins. In Franklin Park, the African-American community and guests celebrated the heritage of Malcolm X, and up on campus at 16th and Waldeck--the original site of Community Festival--Anti-Racist Action (ARA) staged a very successful second annual Anti-Fest.
A common theme ran through these three events: the streets and the parks belong to the people, all the people.
Kasich's house looks like it was built for a Hollywood movie about a wholesome and earnest young politician. That's probably why the Congressman purchased it. So, imagine his surprise--no, he wasn't there as usual--when he hears about an actual group of earnest and wholesome young neighbors of his calling his ethics and morality into question.
One notes Johnny has made a career out of trying to balance the U.S. budget, yet he conveniently continues to ignore the School of the Americas located in Ft. Bening, Georgia. The School recently underwent a $30 million renovation at taxpayers' expense to better house the legions of murderers and assassins it trains. The official purpose of the School is to train Latin American soldiers in combat skills such as counter-insurgency operations, sniper fire, commando tactics and psychological warfare. But, wherever the graduates of the School go, atrocities and torture follow.
General Manuel Noriega is a graduate and so were over 60 Salvadoran officers cited by the 1993 United Nations Truth Commission Report for butchering civilians; two out of three officers cited in the assassination of Archbishop Romero were graduates; three out of five officers cited in the rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen were alumni; 10 out of 12 officers cited in the El Mozote massacre of over 800 civilians held diplomas from SOA; and 19 of the 26 officers responsible for the slaughter of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were educated there.
Alas, U.S. tax dollars at work, training between 700-2000 Latin American assassins a year. Most recently, Julio Roberto Alperez, who ordered the killing of U.S. citizen Michael Devine in Guatemala and Efrim Bamaca, husband of U.S. citizen Jennifer Harbury, calls SOA his alma mater. Harbury reported the last time she saw her husband, he was being blown up with various gases, his body four times its normal size, as he raved unintelligibly. In a recent Dispatch editorial, the paper rightly criticized Clinton for his failure to bring Alperez and other Guatemalan "allies" to justice. Now, if only they would hold their boy John equally responsible for funding the criminals, or at least cover the event like a normal paper. Westerville Social Action is asking citizens to write or call Rep. Kasich and tell him to support House Resolution 2652, a bill proposed by Rep. Joe Kennedy to close the School of the Americas and demand that we spend "Not a Dime for Death Squads."
Many of the activists went from death squad protests to dancing in the streets and parks on Saturday. Talk about a "pro-life" celebration; that's what you got at the Anti-Fest. It was a racist's nightmare with interracial mingling, cavorting and boogeying in front of various people's gods. The event started off with a certain amount of apprehension and fears that the Columbus police riot unit might show up uninvited. OSU President Gordon Gee's office, in his attempt to re-establish in loco parentis ("I'm your daddy") policy, demanded a meeting with ARA organizers. Jim McNamara, ARA leader and local attorney, declined the invitation. "I told him I'm 46 years old, I've got kids who've graduated from OSU. Why do I need to meet with the president's office? This is my neighborhood in the city of Columbus. I'm not a college student," said McNamara.
At the street fest, inevitably, talk turned to the topic of Campus Partners. Seems my penpals in the Glen Echo South Civic Association are sitting down in a neighborly fashion with the dissident Common Grounds Forum group and appear to be working out their traffic problems. Also, University Area Commissioners report that finally, after a year and a half, Campus Partners staffers are seeking real input from the neighborhood. Some small businesspeople originally opposed to the plan appear willing to compromise in exchange for Pearl Alley becoming a real street and some assistance in redeveloping their businesses there.
On the other hand, the Stache's/Monkey's Retreat complex is reportedly scheduled for demolition next year. Yet, if the streets still belong to all the people and the campus community organizes, who knows, pardner?
Bob Fitrakis ran for Congress against John Kasich in 1992.
5/28/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
From Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium to Columbus' Riffe Center, anti-Semitism is in vogue. But in the state capital, instead of chastising the bigot, we literally fire the messenger. Ask Devon Rice.
On May 8 at approximately 8:30 a.m., Rice, a messenger with the Legislative Service Commission, was delivering forms to House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson's office on the 14th floor when he heard Ohio House Sergeant-at-Arms Robert Foster loudly proclaim: "The Jews are just like the Democrats, all they do is whine."
After Foster "repeated himself several times," Rice confronted the Statehouse official and said, "Could you do me a favor, next time you make anti-Semitic remarks, could you lower your voice so I don't have to hear you?"
Rice says Foster initially denied that his remarks were anti-Semitic and reluctantly offered a half-hearted apology. Rice then dashed off a letter to Speaker Davidson (R-Reynoldsburg), informing her of the incident and stating: "As a citizen of Ohio, as a human being and as a 'Jew,' I felt compelled to inform the gentleman that I heard him, that I was offended, and that his behavior was intolerable." Foster was sitting at his desk in the reception area at the time the remarks were made.
Rice wrote "I personally do not care what the Sergeant-at-Arms says at home, at a bar, or on the golf course. However, this type of behavior clearly has no place within his official capacity as an employee of the Ohio House of Representatives. His behavior was, aside from being ignorant and offensive, unprofessional."
Speaker Davidson seemed to concur. She ordered an immediate inquiry into the matter. Foster admitted that he had called two specific groups--the ACLU and the Jewish Defense League--"whiners just like the Democrats." Foster denied he ever referred to "Jews" specifically. Nevertheless, Davidson concluded in a letter dated May 15 that Foster's conduct was "entirely inappropriate and should not be condoned in the House of Representatives." Davidson directed Carol S. Norris, the executive secretary of the Ohio House, "to verbally reprimand Mr. Foster for his 'inappropriate' comments." A copy of her letter to Rice was forwarded to the director of the Legislative Service Commission, Robert Shapiro. Within a week, Rice was given his six-month evaluation and told that his services would no longer be needed after the session ended.
Instead of talking to Rice face-to-face, the evaluation from his immediate supervisor Eric Rodriguez and Office Manager Cathy Kamer was simply left on his desk. Rice claims every time he was five minutes late was suddenly highlighted, although no one had ever spoke to him about tardiness before. And, curiously, a vague reference to having "gone above a supervisor on one occasion . . ." appeared.
Rice resigned after the evaluation, rather than finish the session, and he requested an exit interview with Kamer and Shapiro. When he showed up at the appointed time, he found State Trooper Sergeant Moore waiting to escort him out of the building. "It's insane. The trooper threatened me with arrest," Rice offers.
Shapiro acknowledges that he saw Davidson's letter, but refused to give Kamer's or Rodriguez's names when asked who evaluated Rice or whether they had seen Davidson's letter. "I'm not going to help you, you'll have to find out yourself," Shapiro told me. Shapiro has recently been under fire for withholding corporate donation information from the press and the Legislative Service Commission is still recovering from the recent Puerto Rican junket scandal.
Shapiro claims he was unaware of the state trooper incident and suggests "not so convincingly" that Rice's evaluation had nothing to do with the letter. A true professional.
The Wolfe Family Newsletter writes: "Party politics didn't come into play when the Columbus Board of Education unanimously tapped the Reverend Leon Troy Sr., a Republican, this week to fill a Board vacancy." Oh? The Daily Monopoly had been touting Troy as above the fray. That's the usual B.S.. What was left out of the reporting was the fact that the late Sharlene Morgan was a progressive Democrat and Troy fought against her and sided with the Chamber of Commerce on most key issues.
Recall Superintendent Larry Mixon's on-and-off again "resignation." As Bill Moss stated at the time, "Troy was the Chamber and Dispatch's front man" to silence the progressive anti-tax abatement block on the Board and to get Mixon to stay.
Sources in the Franklin County Democratic Party claim that school board members Loretta Heard and Mary Jo Kilroy were against Troy's appointment in executive session and Karen Schwarzwalder was "up front" about her support. But it was school board President Mark Hatch"described by a Democratic Party staffer as a "weasel","who never came clean and cut a deal behind closed doors."
Hatch has a history of double-dealing and stabbing the local Democratic Party in the back. Remember his vote for the Republican Bob Teater that denied Mary Jo Kilroy the school board presidency a few years back?
As for Kilroy, who rallied her progressive supporters this past campaign by denouncing the Republican agenda, she's got some explaining to do. But, she wasn't in the mood. When asked to explain her public support and vote for Troy, she commented, "I'm not interested in the story." Of course. Can charges of "sellout" be far behind?
Bob Fitrakis ran for Columbus School Board in 1995.
6/05/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Put a hundred of "Columbus' finest" in riot gear and you can count on a riot--usually a police riot.
The police tactics on Friday, May 17 are simply the last in a long series of police-instigated rioting and misconduct in the campus area. Last Friday, May 31, I spoke with a dozen students and a lizard exercising their First Amendment rights on the northwest corner of 12th and High. Their demonstration posed a simple question: "Is South Campus a student neighborhood or a penal colony!?"
Neither. It's condemned and occupied territory, thanks, in part, to the hysteria whipped up by Campus Partners. All that "neighborhood in decay" rhetoric has been taken to heart by the Columbus Police Department.
Tom Vigarino, one of the first arrested on May 17, reports that he was "tackled from behind by a couple undercover cops" that he never saw and who have failed to identify themselves as officers. As they beat him, he recalls one of them warning, "Motherfucker, don't ever come back to 12th again!" Vigarino, who lives two blocks away on 10th, wonders why he can't walk the streets in his neighborhood. He is charged with "rioting" for allegedly throwing a bottle at the police, a charge he and various witnesses vehemently deny.
Other witnesses report that police officers purposely shoved Shomas Jones, a third-year criminal law major, over a chain-enclosed planter. Jones was attempting to videotape police activity, and as he lay defenseless on the pavement he was repeatedly Maced and his camera smashed. When police returned his tape, the video had been erased. Another triumph for the Columbus police's interpretation of the First Amendment.
The police then beat, Maced and arrested Chris Wisniewski, a fourth-year journalism student, for complaining about Jones' treatment. "I was knocked flat on my ass from behind. We were in back of the police by High Street watching what they were doing on 12th, away from the action, and they just turned on us because Shomas had a camera," recalls Wisniewski.
Wisniewski says he was taken to the Zettler Hardware parking lot near campus and held. When students complained about their treatment, they were met with the flippant comments of officers, including one who encouraged others to "get 'em riled up, so I can Mace 'em again."
Writing in the Lantern on May 24, Eric Sims, a senior majoring in journalism, recounts how he and a friend were accosted while walking to a convenience store on May 17 by police who offered helpful hints like "...What the fuck do you think you're doing? Turn around, NOW!"
"They chased the students down, beating the ones they caught, Macing the others. Students were screaming and almost trampling each other to run back to their houses," wrote Sims.
The students all tell the same story. No problems, no fights, prior to the police invasion. In fact, area residents had complied with earlier police requests to use plastic fencing to contain their guests and even made public announcements over a PA system asking residents to cooperate with police. Only after the police actions were bottles thrown and items set on fire. But, that must be put in the context of the indiscriminate beatings, excessive Macing and random assault with "knee-knockers"--rubber riot bullets--and other anti-riot devices. Throw in the mounted riot police and cop helicopter and you've got the makings for police-state mayhem. But, the students are fighting back.
The demonstrators announced the formation a new and long-overdue organization: Copwatch. They plan to monitor police activity and take legal action to prevent what has now become a long stream of abuses.
Let's recall the most obvious. After Ohio State's last big win at home over Michigan, unlike other universities that enjoy victory celebrations, Columbus cops Maced the hell out of celebrating fans attempting to tear down the goalpost. Last spring, riot police Maced and brutally beat Antioch students for holding a peaceful demonstration at the federal building opposing cuts in student loans. And last fall, police fired tear gas canisters and "knee-knockers" indiscriminately into south campus streets and residences making the air in a four-square block area virtually unbreatheable, and then beat and arrested students fleeing to fresh air.
The seeds of the problem germinated in bad social policy. First, an asinine decision to raise the drinking age. This only makes sense if raising the drinking age means that the students would comply; they won't. College students always drink alcohol. If the drinking age is 18, they drink it in local bars; if it's 21, they drink at house parties. If you close and burn down the bars, they'll drink in their cars and alcohol-related fatalities will rise. In our society, it's a rite of adult passage. The college and the city should be promoting responsible drinking, not police rioting.
What message was being sent when the police department decided to crack down on "drunk walkers" in the campus area a year or so ago? Again, why not crack down on drunk walkers at Christopher's after the Ohio legislature adjourns on any given day? If the police would contact me, I could gladly give them the names of a few senators and representatives I've never seen sober.
Stop the police repression and brutality. Have the police read the Constitution. And if this is what the Columbus Public Safety Department means by a new policy of "community policing," I wonder about their definition.
06/12/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Helluva way to kick off Gay Pride Month. For the fourth straight year--and I do mean "straight"--Ohio's Executive Committee of the Bourgeoisie (aka Ohio State University trustees) refused to consider health insurance coverage for the "domestic partners" of graduate assistants.
Domestic partners are couples in committed monogamous long-term relationships attested to by affidavits, who, for legal (read gay and lesbians), philosophical or financial reasons, aren't married.
Students for Domestic Partnerships, however, did not go quietly this time. Yes, Les Wexner and all those incredibly important and pious people on the board could clearly hear the megaphone chants: "Hey, hey, ho, ho, homophobia has got to go!"
The exchange between admitted "queer" advocate and graduate student, T.J. Ghose, and Les Wexner was a classic. The immaculately tailored Wexner was unruffled by the impassioned plea from T.J. But Les did offer to allow T.J. to address the board at the next meeting just before security ushered him out of the building.
Take him up on it, T.J.! But don't concern yourself with the facts. You know that many other universities already offer domestic partner coverage including Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Illinois, Wright State, etc. Or that the coverage would not use university funds, but simply add 49 cents of each paycheck to individual premiums paid for out of the employee's profit. Or even that the school has a non-discriminatory policy that includes sexual orientation that they are clearly violating.
No T.J., you're dealing here with very sophisticated people. Tell 'em that it's been helping Michigan recruit promiscuous football players prone to "shacking up," and that Ohio State will return to the glory of yesteryears if they'd just get on even footing with those devious and perverted Wolverines.
George is my shepherd
While I'm on the subject of important, pious and pompous people, how 'bout our guv? I'm still adjusting to the fact that he proclaimed me and other Ohioans part of his "flock." I've been waking up in the night screaming, but I'm trying to work through it with Hannibal Lecter.
I've been saying a little prayer each night: "George is my shepherd, I shall not want, he leadeth me to the state Lotto terminals, he taketh me to lie down in green radioactive pastures, he tempts me with his privatized liquor stores, he teaches me to take the Lord's name in vain.
"And though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil. For I know it is called the Statehouse and my shepherd has etched the words in stone 'With God All Things Are Possible.' And he shall dwell in this House of hypocrisy all the days of his life."
Machiavelli, who wrote The Prince, the primer on modern power politics, suggested that political leaders should make great public displays of their religious conviction while privately pursuing ruthless amoral political agendas. At least the governor's well-read. Another reason Bob Dole should take our devout shepherd from us and anoint him a VP.
Last thought on Dole: In America we cherish equal rights. Both the living and the undead have the same right to pursue high office. In Dole's case, though, there probably should be law requiring him to wear a cape.
Look Out Bosses!
The Labor Party Advocates became The Labor Party last weekend in Cleveland. They're not running candidates yet, although there were current and former presidential hopefuls in attendance. Ralph Nader was there and signed off on the Green Party's efforts to place his name on the Ohio ballot as an Independent. Jerry Brown was in high spirits as he passionately denounced the "corrupt two-party system." In a chat with the decidedly un-Voinovichy Brown, I learned among other things that the former California guv's Oakland commune now houses some 20 members.
Brown pointed out that two words were missing from Clinton's Democratic Party Platform in 1992, and most likely will be again in '96: "unions" and "justice."
Ironically, just as 1,500 enthusiastic unionists were founding a new Labor Party, the AFL-CIO endorsed President Clinton earlier in the presidential election year than any time in its history. The fact that Mr. NAFTA, Mr. GATT, Mr. Bill is once again the AFL-CIO leadership's darling did not sit well with the delegates.
A large contingent of striking Detroit Free Press and Detroit News newspaper people rocked the hall with their militancy. The Labor Party endorsed a nationwide march on Detroit to support the 2,000 workers well into their 11th month on strike. As a Detroit native, I can't wait.
In anticipation of the coming hot time in the motor city, delegates practiced for the upcoming event by marching on Cleveland City Hall and heckling Cleveland's Democratic mayor, Michael White, after he suggested doing away with Ohio's public employee organizing law.
But the biggest drawback to the new Labor Party is its top-down approach. A skeptical press corps worked up a list of jokes. "What's the difference between the Labor Party and the Catholic Church?" "One's a male-dominated, undemocratic, patriarchal organization and the other is run by the Pope."
Ouch.
6/19/2002
by Bob Fitrakis
Columbus Police Chief James G. Jackson should do us all a favor and resign. No, not because of the obviously botched handling of the Columbus Police Commander Walter J. Burns case. We can rest assured that Assistant Safety Director David Sturtz will conduct a fair and thorough investigation. When Sturtz was Ohio's Inspector General, his investigations were beyond reproach and models to be emulated by other public officials.
Jackson should resign because he's failed the citizens of Columbus by creating a police department that charitably could be called the minor league, AAA squad to the L.A. Police Department. Sure, there are minor differences. The LAPD has a reputation for beating and harassing primarily minorities. The more enlightened Columbus police are equal opportunity Macers and muggers.
Columbus Safety Director Thomas W. Rice is admirably trying to prod Jackson into current professional practices such as community policing. But Jackson resists and seems to wax nostalgic for the good old days of the rubber hose and policemen as unaccountable thugs. Let's briefly recall some of Chief Jackson's most notable recent accomplishments: indiscriminate Macing of OSU football fans following the last win against Michigan at home; the beating and Macing of lawfully demonstrating Antioch students; at least three major street clashes since October between Jackson's police and south campus area residents; and continued charges of discrimination from the African-American organization Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER). His inability to control his police force is an embarrassment. Inaction Jackson's tenure has truly been a disaster.
Jackson is partly the product of a flawed system. Columbus, unlike other major cities, lacks any form of civilian review of police. Plus, Jackson does not serve at the pleasure of the safety director or mayor, rather he has civil service protection. This is the worst possible combination of policies. And Jackson has taken advantage of it, and sent a message that the small percentage of rogue and unprofessional cops will be pampered and protected.
At the June 12 University Area Commission (UAC) meeting, the commissioners unanimously endorsed "the community review of police" as part of Campus Partners "Final Final Draft" plan for campus revitalization. One commissioner joked, "If we call for this, should we also ask for witness protection programs to hide us from the police?"
Richard Talbott, a university area developer and commissioner, is a strong proponent of "real community policing like they have in New York.
"What we have in the campus area is the 'Barney wave'... cops still in cruisers roll by at 20 mph and give you the fake smile and the silly purple dinosaur salute," he said.
Talbott describes himself as a "dyed-in-the-wool Republican," but agrees with the other commissioners that the cops are out of control in the south campus area. As another commissioner put it, "They're arrogant. You see them prancing through the bars, chit-chatting with the girls while someone's being mugged around the corner."
Talbott keeps a tear gas canister and a handful of "knee-knockers"-rubber riot bullets-from the most recent police/student clash as a reminder of the problem.
Commissioner Steve Nicol, who manages apartments and lives on 12th Avenue-ground zero of the student ghetto war zone-points out that "the tear gas goes through the walls." Thus, those not battling the police are forced out of their apartments and subjected to the indiscriminate Macing and beating. Both Nicol and Talbott report that they own some 700 feet of orange plastic fencing that they'll deliver to any tenants having a party. Both insist that students have made a sincere effort to check I.D. and keep uninvited guests off private premises. Police demanded this "appearance of order" but still they attack in their riot gear.
Another commissioner, Joe Jackson, a real estate agent, believes that the police are out of line and that the students have become "an easy target." Brad Miller, owner of Maxwell's, echoes this view. The south campus students have been "targeted."
If you talk to the students who live and drink in the area, the first thing that strikes you is how un-radical and un-militant they are. For the most part, they're business majors and accountant wanna-bes who find themselves reluctantly drawn into the fray by circumstances beyond their control.
These students are not the self-proclaimed "vanguard of the revolution." I know, because I was one. Yet, just as in the late '60s and early '70s, the present repressive tactics of Chief Jackson will inevitably lead to rebellion. President Gee and Campus Partners' recent "temperance crusade" has fanned the flames and inadvertently promoted this outdated and unacceptable police conduct. Still, it is the police chief who is ultimately responsible.
That's why Jackson must resign. He has made every cop a criminal and suspect in the eyes of a marginalized community that will only be able to reduce its crime rate if trust and true community policing exist-concepts alien to Jackson.
6/19/1996
FEATURED ARTICLE : Color it Bold
By Bob Fitrakis and Sally MacPhail
This week may mark a watershed in the history of The Ohio State University as the University Area Commission, Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment, the Columbus Development Commission and the Columbus Historic Resources Commission are all slated to take action on sweeping recommended changes for the neighborhoods around the nation's largest campus. If endorsed by those agencies, the proposal will be sent on to City Council and the OSU board of trustees for action later this summer.
On the table is the alternately bashed and ballyhooed University Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan, a 250-page document drafted by Campus Partners that addresses just about every aspect of off-campus life from trash collection to land use, from drinking and drug abuse to community schools. Critics say that what's really behind the revitalization plan is gentrification and homogenization of a unique multi-ethnic urban community; proponents feel that the plan will encourage reinvestment-financial and philosophical-by present and prospective businesses, residents, students, and the university itself.
An indication of the heated dialogue surrounding this plan is that a Final Draft of the Revitalization Concept was issued April 1, 1996; on June 7, following over 20 hours of meetings in the month of May alone by the University Area Commission, Campus Partners issued a "Final Final Draft" that contains extensive changes.
Among those changes is one that exemplifies the purpose of the plan: "Recommendation 6.1.3: The Ohio State University should demonstrate its commitment to increased homeownership programs by considering the purchase of a residence for the university President within the University District." To relocate the president from Bexley to what critics and residents alike say has become a problem area would be a bold move, and one that drafters of the Campus Partners plan say would show the university's commitment to the area.
"I made this recommendation...that we should specifically mention in the housing area [of the plan] that we immediately begin to work to find President [E. Gordon] Gee a house in the district; that if OSU is really committed to this project then their president would live in the area," explained Marc Conte, a member of the Campus Partners board of trustees who was recently awarded a master's in public policy and management. "I've lived in the area since 1988 when I came here as an undergrad, and I've even seen the decline in those eight years. And...I've seen the university not invest-or disinvest really-much less than they have been."
This theme of re-investment in the neighborhoods surrounding the campus is one that echoes throughout the latest draft of the Campus Partners plan. Statistics compiled by Campus Partners, and recent events in the off-campus area, show alarming evidence that maintaining the status quo is not working:
*A drop from 50 percent to 11 percent homeownership in the last 40 years;
*2,050 units of federally subsidized Section 8 housing, with one neighborhood claiming the highest concentration of such assisted housing in the city and the highest per capita violent crime rate in the city;
*14.2 percent more violent crime than in Columbus as a whole, and 21.6 percent more property crime;
*Three incidents in recent months on 12th Avenue involving police using riot-control tactics against students;
*The unsolved abduction and murder of a freshman in 1994;
*A drop from 49 to 39 percent in the number of students who live on- or off-campus in the 43201 ZIP code;
*A 20-year legacy of ineffective code enforcement and slum landlord exploitation resulting in unsafe, unhealthy living conditions.
While the city is obligated to address municipal problems such as crime and trash pick-up, what's pushing the university into the mix is feedback from its potential customers-parents and students who could choose to attend OSU but are not because the area where most of the students live is now considered unsafe and uninhabitable compared to accommodations offered at other institutions of higher learning. "That's the bottom line to the university," commented Steve Sterrett, community relations director for Campus Partners. Not only are "prospective students and their parents, especially high-ability students, deciding not to attend Ohio State due to a setting that is perceived as disintegrating and unsafe," as the plan states, presently enrolled "students are leaving the area; the area is not attractive to students," Sterrett commented.
Whether compelled by moral or financial reasons, Mayor Greg Lashutka and President Gee announced in September of 1994 a joint commitment to the revitalization of the area known as the University Neighborhoods, the portion of the university district roughly bound on the south by King Avenue, north by Northwood Avenue, west by the alley behind High Street, and east by the Conrail corridor. With an initial outlay of $600,000 from OSU and $187,000 from the city, a dozen or so university trustees, administrators and city officials were named to the Campus Partners board, joined in recent months by two at-large citizens and students Conte and Jennifer Nelson.
The group was led by staff President Barry Humphries, who oversaw the plan through its initial phases before departing last spring as the first "Final Draft" was released, a time that some observers saw as the turning point in the Campus Partners' planning process. What before were some isolated voices of criticism and gloom became a chorus of organized opposition when the University Area Commission got hold of the April 1 draft.
Not only did the UAC launch into a rewrite of the plan with a zeal, but for the first time, some commissioners assert, their efforts were welcomed, not rebuffed. Both Howard Skubovius, UAC president, and Commissioner Tim Wagner asserted that the whole tenor of the Campus Partners' planning process changed after Humphries' March resignation. The non-profit redevelopment corporation became much more receptive to community input, "from going through the motions to moving toward true collaboration," as Skubovius sees it.
"Until recently we never met face-to-face, we basically communicated in writing after public forum," he added. Skubovius recalled that the University Area Commissioners originally offered to serve as unpaid consultants to Campus Partners, but "Humphries never took us up on it."
Commissioner Tim Wagner credited Sterrett for setting the new tone. "Steve's done a marvelous job of redirecting and facilitating dialogue."
Others like real estate developer Richard Talbott are not as critical of Humphries. "We saw the final draft and we didn't like certain things in it. There's nothing like a deadline to stimulate discussion. Most work in any plan is done primarily at the end. We on the commission became much more aggressive after the final draft. We asked for and got face-to-face meetings." "One thing people need to understand is, Campus Partners doesn't replace the university district commission organizations, which area an umbrella organization of organizations. It certainly doesn't replace the UAC as an advisory body to the Columbus city government; it's really primarily a vehicle through which Ohio State can be involved constructively in the neighborhood," Sterrett said.
Campus Partners may have always intended to be that way, but its original Final Draft didn't always reflect that outlook. Paternalistic language found in the first Final Draft such as "The Concept is intended to receive community support leading to its ultimate adoption by the Columbus City Council and The Ohio State Board of Trustees as the [sic] major policy document relating to decisions for the University District" are now preceded by: "It is intended to provide a vision of what the District can be, and how the community can realize that vision through clear actions. It is not, however, a detailed prescription meant to solve every problem that besets the District." Another change includes the softening of term "blighted properties"-those targeted for removal-now termed "problem properties."
Gone, too, is the implication that Campus Partners will have the power of eminent domain, essentially the public taking of private property. In the introduction to the June 7 Final Final Draft is new language explaining that only the city has the right to exercise and grant the powers of eminent domain. Prior to his departure, Humphries was making a lot of noise about using the power of eminent domain to take out private businesses he felt were unfit for his campus master plan.
One commissioner called Humphries' rhetoric "inexcusable." As Talbott is quick to point out, "We're the only legally recognized body by the city; we're the recommending authority by statute in this area."
The UAC's attitude on eminent domain powers became clear after a May 15 meeting between the University Area Commission and Campus Partners that is spoken of in nearly reverent tones. Participants report that it started at six p.m. and ended somewhere around three in the morning. Call it "Lashutka's revenge" on Gordon Gee over the loss of a sports arena, as some commissioners suggest; whatever the case, it's clear that the city's stance at the May 10 public hearing hosted by the UAC emboldened the commissioners. Steve McClary, representing the City Planning Department, let it be known in no uncertain terms that the city would not be doling out its eminent domain power without "consensus" between the UAC and Campus Partners.
"I think there's a great deal of confusion on the question of eminent domain...First I think there's probably a great number of people that think Campus Partners has the power of eminent domain. At this point, they do not. The mayor has made no decision to support provision of that power to Campus Partners.... All this is to say that I think many people are under the belief that if this plan is approved that the next day, the next week, there may be somebody coming an taking their property and that simply is not the case. A great many provisions of this plan will require endless public meetings....," clarified McClary.
What the Lashutka administration did by its insistence on consensus was to further slow the out-of-control Campus Partners' bulldozing of community groups. "You know, when it finally came down to it, despite all the talk of community input, it was us, the University Area Commission with the University Community Business Association (UCBA), who did virtually all the negotiation with Campus Partners...and that was after the final draft," reflected Skubovius. "There was never the intention of using eminent domain to acquire vast lands, residential housing, and redevelop all that.... What Barry was trying to do up front...was to make sure people understood that he was serious," Sterrett said in defense of his former boss.
Whatever the purpose of the rhetoric, there seems general consensus among critics that the first Final Draft approached "redevelopment" with a "giant bulldozer," as Talbott put it. "We had a lot of that removed, and when we confronted Jim Heid [Campus Partners' San Francisco-based consultant] about demolishing up to 50 percent of the buildings on High Street, he took offense and said it was more like 45 percent. In reality it would have been well over 50 percent of the floor space on High Street," he reflected.
Talbott also emphasized that approving the plan in principle is altogether different than approving the equally important implementation. "We've never seen an implementation plan, we'd like to see it," said Talbott. Commissioners privately worry that if the plan is not phased in properly, but instead prioritizes High Street property acquisition, demolition and redevelopment, then the east campus area would follow the "Atlantic City model." As Talbott puts it, "A nice facade with everything rotting in back of it."
The Implementation Plan is the as-yet confidential companion volume to the Revitalization Concept Document. This document will outline the stakeholders in the revitalization project, the projects and their priority, their costs and a timeline, according to Conte. Though exact numbers are not yet forthcoming, OSU is trying to ward off sticker shock by allocating up to $28 million on the various projects over the next five years; $25 million is expected to be invested in certain projects, such as the acquisition of real estate, Sterrett said; $2.5 million is set aside for operating expenses and the remaining half-million is for development of the Campus Collaborative, an academic partnership involving several colleges and academic units at OSU that are charged with creating a model teaching community in the neighborhoods.
"One of the things that is critical to the success of this plan is to look at the university as a model of education," Sterrett explained, adding that "Ohio State is an enormous asset to Columbus; it draws visitors from around the world, it draws students from around the world, and the neighborhood should reflect the quality of the institution."
While OSU has long been recognized for its quality extension and agriculture programs, one of the key parts to the success of the Campus Partners plan is "to help the university understand it is an urban institution and it needs to be looking at urban problems," Sterrett went on to say. "If we're going to play a role [in the community], where better to start than in our own backyard?"
This is the first in a two-part analysis of reaction to the Campus Partners plan for revitalization of the university neighborhoods.
6/26/1996
by Bob Fitrakis and Sally MacPhail
Last week, the University Area Commission, Campus Partners for Community Urban Redevelopment, the Columbus Development Commission and the Columbus Historic Resources Commission all adopted resolutions endorsing the University Neighborhoods Revitalization Plan, a 250-page document drafted by Campus Partners that addresses just about every aspect of off-campus life from trash collection to land use, from drinking and drug abuse to community schools. Intended to encourage reinvestment-financial and philosophical-by present and prospective businesses, residents, students, and the university itself, the plan has been a source of public debate for the last few months. Critics charge that the proposed clean-up will eradicate a unique multi-ethnic urban community.
Around the Ivory Tower It is the sweeping-some might say, overwhelming-way in which Campus Partners is approaching OSU's role off-campus that has had some observers worried. One of the most vocal critics of the former Final Draft was Columbus Alive columnist, Bob Fitrakis, who called it former Campus Partners President Barry Humphries' "mission to make the campus area safe for Max and Erma's....In fact, in the original draft of the master plan revealed in November, yuppification north of campus and ghettoization south of campus were the twin pillars holding up the new campus fortress."
Asked to react to Fitrakis' comments that the plan might result in gentrification that would eradicate the campus counter-culture, Campus Partners' Marc Conte said: "I think he's pretty right. Those are pretty much my sentiments. When [other board members] ask for my opinion on retail, I say we can look at the record stores and see that the independent record stores survive, not the chain stores. People like the independent businesses, they like the uniqueness of the area; that's one of the reason we're shopping here, 'cause there's no other reason. And the other thing is that there's an incredible amount of retail diversity; now just because Target isn't up as the main sign for the area doesn't mean you can't find everything that you find at Target."
Among the major long-term projects for revitalization of the commercial strip along High Street are three theme areas-one at Lane, one at 15th, and one at 10th-that will be the "rooms" through which one progresses. At the north end, a widened and realigned Lane Avenue will mark an "expanded international village," drawing upon the mixed uses and multi-ethnic restaurants in the area. There will be an Arts Gateway at 15th across from the Wexner Center. The last and most controversial component is an entertainment/retail/office/commercial development at High Street where E. 11th and W. 10th would be realigned to meet. Among the chain ventures suggested as possible occupants of the site are Max and Erma's, The Limited, The Gap, and Urban Outfitters.
"All this talk about Max and Erma's by Campus Partners, they really don't understand the market or how to deal with the residents. What's their college-trained manager going to do the first time a member of the rugby team comes in to their upscale restaurant and pisses in a corner? How are they going to handle that? What they don't want to admit is that the bar owners know this area, we know this market and we're professionals," commented Brad Miller, owner of Maxwell's.
Conte, too, is unwilling to give in yet to the notion of High Street as a mall with major retailers anchoring it. "The problem I know we're going to run into when they want to build new structures or new businesses, to build those structures they're going to have to have a national caliber retailer in order to convince the banks that they should get more money for it. ...Wherever that happens, I've really been encouraging that that be our last resort."
"High Street has enormous potential," Campus Partners' community liaison Steve Sterrett said. He maintained, though, that "It's not working well now. Students are spending their discretionary funds elsewhere."
Miller, for one, thinks the fault for that lies with the police. "This is the hardest place in the nation to own a bar... It's a war zone. They've dehumanized the students. The police have to realize that the students are not the armies of darkness," he said. Miller argued that the original Campus Partners rhetoric about "a dangerous neighborhood in decline," has added to the south campus woes.
He pointed out that because of the conflict with the police, students are now "paying to get out of this area" and drink at places like Mekka. "It shouldn't have to be that way," Miller said.
The Columbus police take a drubbing in the Campus Partners plan, both for their lack of sensitivity toward students and their failure to follow through with the Park, Walk and Talk program designed to get officers out of their cruisers and onto the sidewalks. Mark Hatch, director of Community Crime Patrol and a member of the Campus Partners board, has already begun meeting with law enforcement and student representatives, according to Sterrett.
Campus Partners is seen by both south campus bar owners and residents as sort of a new temperance movement. At a December meeting of the Undergraduate Student Government Assembly, Humphries lectured students on partying "responsibly." President E. Gordon Gee is quoted in the April issue of the Ohio State Alumni Magazine as saying: "I have no intention to make [student life] boring. . . [but] there will be no plebiscite on the fundamental issue of change." Most of Gee's envisioned "change" has focused from the beginning on downsizing the south campus bar strip.
Gee recently told students lobbying for domestic partnership benefits that change takes time and he used Campus Partners as his analogy. "When I first came here six years ago I knew something had to be done, so every year, six years ago, five years ago, four years ago, I asked for money to do something. I finally got the money...." Gee conceded that critics may correctly view his attack on the south campus bar strip as a return to the principle of in loco parentis, the notion that the university should act as a surrogate parent to students under the age of 21.
Certainly, even under the modified Final Final Draft, the university is expected to take a much greater responsibility for its students. It calls for students to be trained for community service, for the university to assess that service, for incentives to be provided to encourage service, and for students to follow the code of conduct anytime they are engaged in a university-related activity, a modified in loco parentis.
Campus Partners' Conte agrees that the university "should definitely be taking a more active role; then how that's done is the question."
One way that the university could begin addressing the problem would start right on campus, with increased expenditures for student activities and health and counseling services. Mindbogglingly, the university spends about 10% of what similar institutions spend on alternative activities for students, according to the Campus Partners plan. As the instructional fee for students has risen, tuition costs have been controlled by keeping the general activity fee-that which pays for non-instructional programming-low. As a result, there is not much that the university provides students to divert them from haunting the High Street bars.
In the meantime, there is not one full-time person working on alcohol abuse on campus, according to Conte. "There's nobody on campus that's trying to coordinate activities to reduce alcohol usage and prevent alcohol abuse, and I think that's why we have all the problems on 12th Avenue because there hasn't been any planning.... This alcohol position was recommended to be funded as part of OSU's budget process, but the last I heard from OSU vice president on Student Affairs [David Williams] was it wasn't going to be funded."
Williams was in Africa last week and could not be reached for comment.
Despite the university's disinvestment, Conte thinks the students need to realize their responsibilities. He is encouraged by planning among off-campus student and year-round residents to meet and orient students new to the neighborhoods. The idea is to be pro-active with students moving off-campus "so you immediately make them partners in that neighborhood..... And the students need to realize that they might be here temporarily, but they're stewards of the university and the university area."
Work by Campus Partners has not been limited to the East Campus neighborhoods. Language in the Final Final Draft is deliberately more inclusive than in earlier drafts in an attempt to extend the university's responsibility to the north and south as well.
"There's still a lot of things missing," UAC's Skubovius cautioned, "particularly in the northern third of the district. A little money could go a long way." But he called the extensively revised document "more acceptable."
In the north campus area, Campus Partners initially worked closely with the Glen Echo South Civic Association. That collaboration spawned an oppositional organization, The Common Ground Forum. The Common Ground folks objected to the original Campus Partners proposal to close and redirect area streets. Joe Demshar, the owner of Top Priority Pizza, emerged as the most vocal critic of the Campus Partners plan.
"It's been mostly quiet up here since Barry Humphries' departure," he stated, although, at a May 22 meeting of the Civic Association, Demshar claimed that Campus Partners' spokesperson Julie Boyland "discredited herself." Boyland presented the Campus Partners perspective on the need for "traffic calming" and the closing of Fourth Street. "It was quite a fiasco," Demshar declared. "Julie attempted to shout down the Common Ground attorney Laura Sharp. She kept yelling: 'Where do you live? What are you doing here?'" while Sharp was presenting the less-intrusive Common Ground proposals calling for stop signs and speed bumps.
Demshar believes that the election of Jim Hubbard, of the Common Ground group, as vice president of the Glen Echo South Civic Association at a June 3 meeting signals the ability of the neighborhood to solve their traffic problems without Campus Partners' intervention. "They have nothing to do with anything up here anymore. We can solve our own problems without their involvement," he said.
Unlike the University Area Commission, Demshar is unwilling to endorse Campus Partners' Final Final Draft. "Who is Campus Partners? It's the university in drag. Why do they deserve the other side of High Street? It's a land grab by the university using a not-for-profit entity as a diversionary tactic to get involved in commercial enterprises," in Demshar's analysis. He asked, "How well managed are they? They bury nuclear waste and cadavers under the Fawcett Center and forgot about it."
Echoing the sentiments of the UAC, Demshar dashed off a list of what he sees as the real needs of north campus: "If Campus Partners, and I mean the university, wants to do something for us, let them fix our streets, improve the lighting, help us get new sidewalks and curbs, bury the utility lines, build green space, clean our streets, improve the landscape-that's what this area needs. Not the Limited!"
" As a student, I'm concerned about the displacement of people and the problems. If the rents go up, everything gets nice, and people can't afford to live here, where are they going to go?" Conte asked, raising the same concerns. "And again, [there's] this feeling that there's this assumption that there is no community here. But it is there and we threaten to destroy what communities we do have."
"I'm torn because I understand the economics of it," he continued, adding, though, "I know I don't agree with everything that's in [the plan], but I know something needs to be done," Conte concluded.
7/03/1996
Family values
by Bob Fitrakis
Hey, did you hear the one about the governor's chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, recently resigning "to spend more time with his family"? Family values, you gotta love those Republicans. I mean, here's this guy at the pinnacle of power practically deciding who gets what contract, grant, tax abatement, etc. and he just walks away because he's a family man. Right! You may have seen a strange little preemptive strike of an article in Saturday's Dispatch where "Daddy Knows Best" Mifsud called upon the Ethics Committee to investigate himself. Why? Read the Dispatch on Sunday and you won't know. But please, please, don't read Sunday's Akron Beacon Journal. It wrecks the whole "family values" spin. Seems Mr. Mifsud's then wife-to-be had some "sweetheart"-type construction-some $220,000 worth-done on her home by "minority" contractor T.J. Banks. Banks, the minority, owns the majority of the company and the Carbone family owns the rest. And, boy, coincidentally, do they get a lot of state contracts. Anyway, it's all in that awful other Sunday paper you absolutely shouldn't read under any circumstance. 'Cause, you know, sometimes a man just likes to walk away from it all and spend some time with the missus and the young'un.
And rumor has it that a former top-level Dispatch executive who was canned may also have had a sweetheart home construction deal with the ubiquitous Mr. Banks, who was building commercially for the Dispatch Printing Company at the time.
Don't fret, the Big D didn't really go liberal on us in Sunday's front page lead article. Yeah, it sounds like they're apologizing for ineffective Big Government cost overruns on the Statehouse renovation. But that's just a cover.
Their headline is a classic: "A pittance per person makes Capitol stately." They go on to tell us how the $112.7 million restoration-"64 percent higher than the estimate"-is perhaps one of the greatest bargains in modern governmental history. Their lead, "the $29 renovation of the Statehouse is complete." That's $29 times 8.2 million taxpayers.
Now, after such a bargain, it would be uncharitable to bring up the fact that they regularly chastise the Clinton administration for cost overruns on every federal building they could find. Indeed, a recent editorial complained that a building with large cost overruns shouldn't be named after the former President Ronald Reagan since he-of tripling the long-term debt from $800 billion to $2.4 trillion fame-was "a budget-cutter." And Hitler was a peacemaker.
Oh, and the Dispatch forgot to mention they own the property right across the street that zoomed up in value with the renovation. So, it's not really liberalism, just plain old socialism for the rich.
All evidence points to Columbus' Rickenbacker airport as the site of covert CIA operations during the Yugoslavian civil war. As previously mentioned in this column, admitted "ex-CIA" airline, Southern Air Transport (SAT), moved its hub from Miami, Florida ("ah, the good ol' Bay of Pigs days") to Columbus in 1995. This is the same time that President Clinton secretly authorized the arming of Bosnian Muslims, brought to our attention by Bob Dole and other Republican members of the U.S. Senate as a campaign issue. In January, Southern Air official David Sweet admitted that Southern Air Transport held contracts with the U.S. government related to the Peace Accord signed by Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia in late November in Fairborn, Ohio.
Sweet noted, according to the Dispatch, that one of SAT's "advantages" is its fleet of 15 L-100 Lockheed Hercules planes-a commercial, extended version of the military's C-130 cargo planes. Sweet praised the L-100's ability to land on "unimproved" airstrips. Loaders who worked for Rickenbacker, not SAT, report loading uniform 10,000-pound crates on the L-100s throughout 1995, prior to the Peace Accord.
I can only speculate as to what was in them. Arms for the Bosnian Muslims? No doubt SAT officials, as they're trained, will deny this and claim they should neither be tainted by their CIA ownership from 1960-1973, nor their role in the Iran-Contra scandal. Still, being ex-CIA is a lot like being ex-Mafia. Just ask Columbus' own General Richard Secord, an international arms dealer with long-standing ties to the CIA who leased a C-123 Southern Air Transport plane that was shot down on October 5, 1986 over Nicaragua and made Iran-Contra a household word. Secord last emerged from the spookworld in the early 1990s in Azerbaijan where he had ties to a U.S. oil company, MegaOil, where ex-U.S. armed forces members were paid mercenaries conducting "military training programs."
A UN procurement dispute in 1993 found that both SAT and Evergreen helicopters, another "ex-CIA" proprietary, contained more (ex-)spooks than a Jaycee's haunted house at Halloween.
In November 1993, the Los Angeles Times reported that SAT procured lucrative supply contracts to service U.S. peacekeeping forces in Somalia, including one to fly Israeli mineral water from Mogadishu to outlying towns at $30,000 a day. So, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, what's the next job? Saudi Arabia? I'd think twice before buying that property near Rickenbacker. Could be a different version of red, white, and boom!
7/10/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Tommy, George and Greg and Bob Dole would have to be an idiot to pick George Voinovich for vice president. Despite the obligatory fawning articles this past Sunday in both the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Voinovich-to borrow a phrase from President Reagan-is up to his keister in a scandal. You can bank on it. In fact, you can take Tommy (T.G.) Banks to the bank on this. Remember the name, he'll be a key factor in why Voinovich won't be selected as Dole's running mate. Or, if Dole is more out of it than he seems, why Ohio will have its own version of Whitewater. The governor, with the assistance of the Columbus Dispatch and assorted lawyers and PR flaks, are in the fight of their life to keep Andy Zajac's well-documented Akron Beacon Journal article on contract steering, published a week ago Sunday, from becoming a major scandal. The article is so explosive it would not only deny Voinovich the VP slot he so covets, but also dash his hopes for winning a U.S. Senate seat -if he's passed over by Dole-in 1998.
As mentioned last week, the Governor's Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud suddenly announced his resignation on June 24 to spend more time with his family. In reality, ace reporter Zajac had been dogging Mifsud for months about a strange, sweetheart construction deal with the Banks Carbone Construction Company. Tommy Banks, the minority owner of the company, took out two permits for an estimated $210,000 in construction on the house of one Dr. Kathy Bartunek, future wife of Mr. Mifsud.
Now, Mr. Mifsud and Dr. Bartunek claim that Tommy Banks promised to build a plush-library, office, breakfast nook, etc.-1,200 square feet, two-story home addition as well as a 1,450 square feet, three-car detached garage for only $35,000. Yep, that's right folks, for the remarkable price of $35,000. Now, according to the governor's guy Mifsud, Banks blew it, and overran the construction costs to $109,000. Nobody can explain why Banks' permits totaled $210,000. Mifsud and Bartunek have not produced canceled checks, as of yet, to show that they actually paid Banks anything, let alone the $109,000.
More curiously, after completely blowing the deal with perhaps the second most powerful man in Ohio politics, Banks went on to receive nine of 16 unbid minority contracts from the state of Ohio. A case of ultimate incompetence paying off? Hardly. Coincidence, Banks and Mifsud insist. No other minority contractor received more than three unbid contracts.
When Zajac began asking about Banks' construction job and proof of payment, Mifsud and Bartunek tried to pressure the Beacon Journal management not to publish the story. In fact, Bartunek's attorney, Megan Peters, even sent Zajac a threatening letter claiming the now-wife of the governor's chief of staff was not a public figure. Someone in the guv's office purportedly leaked the letter to a few select journalists in an obvious attempt to intimidate other reporters from jumping on the scandal. Christopher Davey of the Cincinnati Enquirer -a paper that has ignored the scandal -received a copy. Coincidentally, Davey was just hired as a communications spokesperson for Attorney General Betty Montgomery starting this week.
Meanwhile, Mifsud got Alan Johnson of the Dispatch to spin his damage control in a preemptive strike piece against Zajac's piece in the June 29 edition. Zajac's front page article appeared the next day, June 30. Johnson's piece now stands as a pathetic orphan. Essentially, the article informs us that Mifsud had called upon the Ohio Ethics Commission to investigate him and immediately clear him. Notably, the Dispatch failed to print or mention the wire version of Zajac's story the next day.
The Dispatch's attempts to paper over the scandal were soon done in by Tommy Banks. Another Dispatch reporter, John Futty, was hot on Tommy's trail in the local South of Main scandal. So, in one of the most bizarre layout decisions in Dispatch history, Johnson spun Mifsud's prenuptial agreement and no financial interest in the property angle on page two of the Metro section on July 2. Johnson's article refers to Thomas G. Banks of Banks Carbone Construction. Directly underneath Johnson's story is a continuation of Futty's front page article. Futty tells us that the same Mr. Banks, of T.G. Banks Special Projects Division and T.G. Banks & Associates, owes the city more than $12,000 in back taxes and the Bureau of Workers Compensation $131,000 in premiums. Undaunted, Banks copped the Billy Milligan defense with Futty. His evil corporate self headed T.G. Banks & Associates-it had the liens against it; the Good Tommy ran Special Projects and owed no money. And Tommy's good friend Police Chief Jackson had his police department investigating the non-profit South of Main Development Corporation, whose subsequent demise allowed Banks to take over all their construction contracts with the city.
Turns out, Tommy is also civic-minded, giving big bucks to Mayor Greg Lashutka. And the mayor's lovely wife saw fit to represent T.G. in a lawsuit. I'm also not quite sure whether it was the Good or Bad Tommy who brags about having built a garage for John Wolfe. Anyway, it seems Tommy's just one lucky guy. After all, he was awarded a big COSI contract and one of the four people voting on it was the mayor's then-Chief of Staff Bruce Johnson.
Looks like Tommy is going to do for the mayor what he's already doing for the governor.
7/10/1996
FEATURED ARTICLE
Building relationships
by Sally MacPhail and Bob Fitrakis
When the governor's chief of staff announced his resignation June 24, it took many political insiders by surprise. Though Paul Mifsud-whose hard-hitting style had earned him one of the most powerful positions in the Voinovich administration-claimed that he was leaving office to spend more time with his young family, even Republican Senate President Stanley Aronoff expressed shock at the timing of Mifsud's departure, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he had "absolutely no pre-knowledge of this."
But while GOP officials and the governor were hailing Mifsud for his years of work and integrity, questions about Mifsud's involvement with a fledgling Columbus construction company were clouding the pretty picture. A series of stories in the Akron Beacon Journal in the last few weeks has looked at the deal struck between a Columbus builder and Mifsud's then-fiancee for a two-story addition and garage on her Marysville home. The contractor listed in the building permits for the project, Banks Carbone Construction Co., has emerged from relative obscurity in the last few years to become one of the most successful minority-controlled contractors in the state. In just five years, Banks Carbone has been awarded over $3 million in no-bid contracts under the state's Minority Business Enterprise program, according to the Beacon Journal. Banks Carbone has won nine out of 16 large state construction management contracts since 1992, three times more than its closest competition; two of those nine are the $65 million Schottenstein Center arena and the $52.3 million Max Fisher College of Business at Ohio State.
Mifsud himself has since called for the Ohio Ethics Commission to clear him of any wrongdoing in what would appear to be a contract-steering mess.
While Banks Carbone continues to rack up multi-million-dollar projects at the state level, a sister company also controlled by Banks Carbone principal Thomas G. Banks was recently appointed to salvage the troubled South of Main project in Columbus. T. G. Banks Special Projects Division, Inc. was appointed by a receiver to complete the city-funded low-income housing project despite the fact that yet another of Thomas Banks' companies, T.G. Banks & Associates, Inc. has three liens totalling over $130,000 filed against it for unpaid workers compensation premiums and the city's division of income tax has two judgments pending against it for over $12,000. In addition, the state department of taxation has filed a judgment against Thomas Banks for non-payment of $17,996.22 in withholding taxes.
Just why Banks was chosen to complete the South of Main work is still a mystery, as several other contractors, many of them minority-controlled, were hoping to land the job. Muddying the waters is the question of political influence. At the state level, Banks was a major contributor to the Voinovich campaign, always staying within the legal guidelines prohibiting contributions of more than $1,000 by contractors doing business with that state official; but Banks, his wife, brother and two nieces each donated $1,000 to the Voinovich campaign in one day.
Locally, Banks has been an equal opportunity contributor, giving generously to Republican Mayor Greg Lashutka's re-election campaign-over $3,000-and supporting Democratic city council person Les Wright's bid to retain her seat in 1995.
Wright is the chair of the council's housing committee, which oversees funding for the South of Main project.
Banks' ties to the mayor extend beyond campaign support. When a moving company allegedly dropped the Banks piano down the stairs and banged his hot tub in 1995, Banks and his wife hired Lashutka's wife, attorney Catherine Adams, and Keith Shumate of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey to sue the movers. Adams later withdrew the case without prejudice. Also, Ohio Senator Bruce Johnson, then Lashutka's chief of staff, cast a vote for Banks to get a piece of the new COSI construction project.
Banks' generous support of politicians may be surprising considering that the 35-year-old Gahanna resident has come from relative obscurity. Just who is this affable black man that is described by friends and competitors alike as charming? How could his smile and what many have said is a passing knowledge of construction have been parlayed into multi-million-dollar contracts and substantial campaign contributions? How could a 30-year-old relatively lesser light in the Columbus construction business have Police Chief James Jackson, OSU President Gordon Gee, and Mayor Lashutka listed on his 1991 resume as references?
According to the resume on file at the City of Columbus Equal Business Opportunity Commission office, Banks is a graduate of the police academy in Reynoldsburg and the State of Ohio Juvenile College. Banks attended OSU "with a major focus on Business and Criminology." His construction experience was gained while working "as an aide" to William Banks Sr. in a family-owned business, the resume states.
Banks really began to make his mark after 1990, though, when he formed T. G. Banks & Associates, Inc. a Dublin-based corporation that included a wholly owned subsidiary, Pyramid Construction Systems, Inc.; and Target Construction Co. A 1991 resume on file with the city's equal opportunity office also stated that Banks was then president of Banks-Tuller Printing & Design, a company that was dissolved in 1991, according to state records.
Banks also was listed as president of Target in 1991. According to the Secretary of State's office, Target has since been "cancelled" by the state tax department and is now not in good standing with the state.
Banks & Associates was "a quality, minority General Contracting firm holding the State of Ohio MBE [Minority Business Enterprise] Certification. T.G. Banks & Associates has successfully bid and been awarded many minority set-aside projects with The Ohio State University," the resume states. Banks also cites private sector work for Ameriflora 1992 and housing rehabilitation.
"I got the shock of my life. I was working on the grounds crew at Ameriflora and I saw Tommy," commented Banks' brother, Billy Banks. "He told me he built the Fest Haus, the shelter house there. I had no idea he was working in construction. I went to his office to borrow $5 and he had a big picture of himself and George Bush up on the wall. He worked security for him. He knows some powerful Republicans, he was a deputy sheriff," added Billy Banks.
The Franklin County Sheriff's Department confirmed that Banks was a deputy sheriff from February 22, 1987 until September 30, 1987. According to his file at the sheriff's department, Banks was a "parking officer," or meter reader, with the city, then became a deputy sheriff, but was fired in 1987 after a negative job review. Banks filed suit with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission in 1987 claiming that he lost his job because of racial discrimination. In its October 27, 1988 finding the Commission denied the allegations, but settled the suit with an agreement that gave Banks a special commission with the department allowing him to work funeral services only.
Billy Banks said that he was born in Columbus' inner city, "Flytown"; his brother Tommy was born in the north end near Kenny Road. Geographically and politically, the two brothers couldn't be farther apart, according to Billy Banks. "He's [Tommy] there hanging out with all those millionaires, all those big guys with big houses," mused the 17th Street resident.
"He's a pawn for the system," commented a local black entrepreneur who requested not to be identified. "He's just being moved around when people need to get things done."
While not much is known about where Banks acquired the money to begin purchasing Target, Pyramid and the printing company, his star has certainly risen through the three major companies of which he is principal: T.G. Banks & Associates, Banks Carbone Construction, and T.G. Banks Special Projects Division. T. G. Banks & Associates was officially chartered in 1991 with Banks as its sole shareholder, according to the city's Equal Business Opportunity Commission. As of September 1993, the company listed its estimated gross sales annually at $3 to $5 million, up from gross sales in 1992 of $3.5 million. Just what T.G. Banks & Associates reaps now is a mystery, as the EBOC now outsources MBE certification to the Columbus Regional Minority Supplier Development Council. Michael Gordon, executive director of the CRMSDC, told Columbus Alive Tuesday that he could not share the certification files without the prior approval of Gwendolyn Rogers of the city's EBOC.
Among the projects that Banks listed in 1993 as jobs his Banks & Associates had handled were:
· OSU's Postle Hall in 1990, at a cost of $19,500;
· Ameriflora Fest Haus (subcontractor for Ruscilli/Smoot); 1991; $285,000;
· Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority; $10-$11 million;
· State of Ohio; $8 million;
· Martin Luther King Center; $25,000.
Dates were not available for the last three jobs.
Banks reported an annual salary in 1993 of $121,000 as chairman of the company.
In 1992, Banks Carbone Construction Company was incorporated, but within a year the company was under investigation by former Inspector General David Sturtz. Sturtz questioned the division of control by the board of directors-Banks and brothers Ross P. and Vincent P. Carbone, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. To qualify for minority contracts, the company is required to be 51 percent minority controlled, a makeup that Sturtz questioned, the Beacon Journal reported. Banks has since laid the matter to rest, saying that he is majority owner, and that the Carbones are investors, the paper said.
In 1993, Banks, his brother Robert, a maintenance supervisor at OSU, his wife Vanessa and nieces Kelli and Jennifer each contributed $1,000 to a Voinovich fund-raiser. Within the next two years, Banks Carbone won management of six major state projects including the OSU buildings, the $54 million Youngstown prison; and the $101 million Columbus headquarters for transportation and public safety departments, according to the Beacon Journal. Supervision of these and other projects will bring in $3.36 million to the Banks Carbone coffers, the paper reported.
On the smaller, but more significant scale, Banks Carbone was the contractor of record for a 1,200-square-foot addition and 1,450-square-foot garage for Kathy Bartunek of Marysville. At the time of the construction, estimated in building permits to cost a total of $210,000, Bartunek was engaged to Paul Mifsud. Despite the listed estimate, Bartunek and T.G. Banks & Associates agreed to a $35,000 contract for the work in September of 1993. Mifsud's attorney claims that Bartunek ended up paying $108,287 for the work. Why the estimate, the contract price, and the payment are all at variance is still unexplained, as is the question of why the checks were allegedly made out to Banks & Associates when Banks Carbone was listed on the building permits as the contractor.
Even more intriguing to Columbus insiders is why any Banks company would have been handed the South of Main job when Banks & Associates has a trail of debt and litigation. The project is a city-funded effort to create 50 low-income housing units on the near east side of Columbus. The project went into default last spring as the city cited poor quality work and nonpayment of subcontractors. The director of the project, Shawn Thompson, has since resigned and the police are investigating the development corporation's finances. Last month, a court appointed Jon Moorehead, former director of Columbus Neighborhood Housing Services, receiver in charge of the project.
Moorehead is not listed in the phone book and could not be reached for comment on why he chose T.G. Banks Special Projects Division to take over the work. The phone number for South of Main Development Corporation has been temporarily disconnected, according to a recording.
Thompson, who said in an interview Monday that she is reluctant to talk, did say that she will "prevail" in a lawsuit she has filed against the city. "The real story is that we were making history, solving homelessness, leveraging funds for the black community, providing jobs, establishing $10 million in assets, and that was stolen. It was destroyed. I don't really feel comfortable talking right now," Thompson said, adding on a startling note, "My general manager, Neville Hudson, was executed; shot in the head."
But Tom Shelby, construction manager with E. L. Walker, who worked on the project with Thompson, insists that there was nothing about the project that would merit the massive police investigation. He was one of the many contractors who he said continued to work in "good faith" even after the city cut off South of Main's funding.
"It's not like the South of Main got a big lump sum of money as the Dispatch portrays. It was a pay-as-you-go. The city would come in and inspect and they would be invoiced by the South of Main, which would pay the contractors," Shelby explained.
Shelby said that Thompson had forewarned the city and KeyBank, which is financing the new construction portion of South of Main, that there was a particular building company that was a problem.
Asked how Banks took over the project, Shelby replied: "He played his cards right. He took care of the right people. Tommy's not even a construction man; he's a broker that takes a cut and hires other construction people."
Banks is known to be particularly close to Police Chief James Jackson, whose division is now investigating South of Main. Billy Banks calls Jackson "my brother's running buddy," and several people remarked that Banks liked to keep a photo of the chief in his office. Banks allegedly frequents the Cavaliers Club on 17th Street between Long and Broad, where Jackson and other well-connected black men reportedly network.
On a yellow scrap of paper in Banks' personnel file at the sheriff's department were scribbled the words: "Call Tommy Banks friend Jackson." Below it read: "Jackson said he would call the sheriff."
7/17/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
The rich and powerful still have faith in Tommy Banks
Is this a great country or what? From Les Wright, decked out in her Sunday best at Wednesdays press conference supporting Banks on the near east side, to the Dispatch, which dutifully reported that he paid his debt in a headline. The problem of course is that debt is singular, and Tommy owed plural, multiple mega-debts.
At the press conference, Walter Cates of the Main Street Business Association played the race card. He referred to media coverage of Banks financial problems and his ties to the governor's chief of staff's resignation as an onslaught of stupidity and the type of scrutiny that no white contractor would have to face. Walters is just trying to get some low-income houses built before the tax credits expire at the end of the year. So, his comments must be understood against that predicament. Cates acknowledged that Banks was on the premise, but was not available to speak, probably too choked up by Councilperson Wright's show of solidarity and the anticipated Dispatch coverage.
It seems that Wright and Banks have appeared at press conferences before. The Columbus Call and Post, on October 8, 1992, ran a photo of Les Wright presenting an award to Banks for his $1,000 contribution to a Boy Scout program run by the Columbus Public Schools. Wright called Banks a person committed to doing what is right and giving of himself. Maybe that's why he gave the Boy Scouts a $1,000 check when he currently owes the state of Ohio and the IRS over $200,000. Speaking of stupidity, Walter, most of us journalists don't go around writing $300 checks to Les Wright's election campaign in 1995 or over $2,500 to Greg Lashutka in 1992 -a year the mayor didn't run-when we owed the government a bundle.
The Dispatch, in its zeal to protect Banks and downplay the major state scandal he's involved in, touted how the contractor pays overdue city tax. All $12,000! They forgot about the $131,000 his company owes in state Workers Comp premiums-that Dispatch reporter John Futty had mentioned the week before. They forgot the more than $100,000 to the feds and an additional nearly $18,000 to the state in back taxes.
Yes, indeed, Big D, he paid a debt. Someone ought to tell Tommy-preferably Les-that a person committed to doing what's right would start by paying their taxes.
But, Tommy's lucky to have friends like Les Wright and the Columbus Dispatch. He's even more lucky that the Daily Monopoly chose to ignore the forgery of documents central to the Banks/Paul Mifsud scandal.
Again, just the facts. Banks, former meter reader but now the main self-taught construction man to the rich and famous, took out two Union County building permits totaling $210,000: one for $150,000; another for $60,000. Tommy promised to build a plush two-story addition-including a library, office, breakfast nook, two-and-a-half baths, three bedrooms-and a three-bay freestanding 1,450-square-foot garage for boat and car storage for Dr. Kathy Bartunek. Now Kathy was engaged to Pauly, the guv's main guy. So, while Mr. Banks labored away on the lavish addition and gorgeous garage, Mifsud and Bartunek were married and moved into the abode still under renovation.
Now the facts get a little muddy. Mifsud and Bartunek claim that Tommy promised to build all that wonderful construction for just the bargain basement price of $35,000 and Tommy, being an incompetent idiot, they would have us believe, overran the project by almost three times the amount. Bartunek settled up with Banks by paying him $109,000 or so she says-no canceled checks have been produced to verify.
And poor Mr. Banks, after his purported display of ineptitude to perhaps the state's second most powerful man, Mifsud, is rewarded with nine of 16 unbid state minority construction contracts.
Thus, the man who oversaw the rewriting of the rules on minority set-asides and unbid contracts, Mifsud, may be delivering for the man who most greatly benefited from the rule changes, Banks. Even more strangely, someone snuck back to Union County, when Andy Zajac of the Akron Beacon-Journal began to ask around about the Bartunek home improvement project, and attempted to crudely forge a different price on the permit. The $150,000 permit was changed to a $50,000 permit. (See, this brings the total job to $110,000.) Fortuitously, Tommy told the Cleveland Plain Dealer the number that the permits totaled, within $1,000, before anyone knew that they had been illegally altered.
Maybe someone ought to alter his Minority Business Enterprise file too. He claims $10-11 million worth of work for the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority. Their files say it's only $2.7 million. Well, we could ask Melanie Mitchell, Governor George Voinovich's director of Minority Affairs, about Tommy's luck, skill or problems. But, the only minority in the guv's cabinet has her own problems also not highlighted in the Dispatch. A bit odd that a paper that lives for reporting unsubstantiated allegations that perhaps an unnamed Clinton staffer may have done drugs recently, would miss Melanie's dilemma.
On June 5, Mitchell's house was raided by police as part of an ongoing investigation against a man alleged to be a major cocaine dealer on Columbus' east side. James Branch, identified by her lawyer as a dating partner of Melanie Mitchell, was arrested at his Columbus address after a one-kilogram shipment of cocaine from Los Angeles was intercepted by postal inspectors.
The Ohio Observer reports that Branch frequently resided with Mitchell, mail for Branch was received at her residence and according to police they had an ongoing financial relationship. Perhaps Ms. Mitchell's personal problems kept her from properly overseeing the minority set-aside contracts while she worked for the governor. Mitchell's daughter, Charmal, was arrested on two misdemeanor counts of possession of drug paraphernalia. Ms. Mitchell has not been charged.
Still, one has to wonder how Ms. Mitchell rose to such prominence in the Voinovich administration. After all, in 1992, as the Observer reports, Mitchell, then known as Melanie Mitchell Lackland, was suspended for 30 days from her position as deputy director of the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT). The suspension occurred after it was discovered that she had her daughter, Charmal, and her sister Lori McBride, hired for summer jobs at ODOT.
The governor's judgment must be questioned in these matters. His two key appointments-former chief of staff Mifsud and Minority Affairs Director Mitchell-are the ones who are responsible for the Banks scandal.
7/24/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Called at its founding 76 years ago a "Mighty Political Experiment," the League of Women Voters has recently mutated from suffragettes to pro-nuclear shills. Make no mistake, the role of today's League is that of handmaidens and apologists for the male-dominated nuclear waste industry. Grassroots environmental activists have reported being heckled and harassed at environmental meetings by League members.
Last week in Euclid, a resolution against importing nuclear waste into Ohio from five Midwestern states was about to be passed by the Euclid City Council. The resolution was tabled after local League President Dorothy Fike showed up to give her pro-nuclear waste pitch. Painesville Township had previously passed a resolution against the importing of out-of-state nuclear waste. Our governor has volunteered Ohioans to take nuclear waste from Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri in a grossly misnamed "low-level" radioactive waste facility. Ninety percent of the nuclear waste in the proposed Ohio dumpsite will come from out-of-state, creating the possibility of a "mobile Chernobyl." The Midwest Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission became greatly concerned after the dually elected officials in Painesville voted their conscience. What to do? Call in the League! Ain't the Justice League of America we're talking about here. Many environmentalists were shocked last year when Marilyn Shearer, president of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, drove down from "the shores of Lake Erie" to "explain why the League of Women Voters" supported the Nuke Dump Bill. If they follow the money trail from the nuclear industry and the pro-nuclear U.S. Department of Energy, the League's "glowing" endorsement of out-of-state nuclear waste makes more sense.
In September 1987 the League's tax-deductible Education Fund created the so-called "Nuclear Waste Education Project." Two months later, the Energy Department awarded the League a $274,287 grant. Not surprisingly, the nature of the League's supposed "non-partisan and non-sectarian" Education Project became singularly partisan and sectarian in nature. The bucks from the feds were supposedly earmarked for "citizen's education on nuclear waste issues." In reality the League used the money to develop a pro-nuke waste dump curriculum that its members present at two-day workshops geared towards "community leaders." In some locations like Nebraska and Southern California, League branches gave up any pretext of non-partisanship and simply took the cash directly from U.S. Ecology, the notoriously Orwellian nuclear waste "management company." The Nebraska League took a $50,000 grant from U.S. Ecology and then had the nerve to proselytize for a nuclear waste dump in Nebraska under the guise of "Citizen Advisory Committees." The Southern California League also took a $30,000 grant for similar purposes. The noble experiment has spawned an ugly mutant.
Uh-oh, Mary Jo!
Whoa! Mary Jo Kilroy on the warpath-I mean, campaign trail-against "Mean Gene" Watts? Political junkies and media types gotta love it. Sort of like my fascination as a child with Big-time Wrestling on Saturdays.
Kilroy used to co-publish the Free Press with me until her "political career" got in the way, so my analysis here is with a certain bias: I'm still pissed. Anyway, here goes. State Senator Ben Espy recruits Kilroy, realizing that if he can't take Senator Watts out in the wake of the "pancaking" scandal, he could be stuck with the "mean one" for a long, long time. So, they pressure the lackluster Jeff Furr out of the race-Espy was not happy that Furr had tossed his hat in the ring, while running against Watts, for Maury Portman's council seat when Portman retired earlier this year-and proceed to round up money commitments. What they envision here is a repeat of the Amy Salerno upset against Rep. Mike Stinziano two years ago. You know: male politician caught up in a scandal is taken by surprise when the female vote is counted on Election Day. A more likely scenario is Kilroy turns out to be Richard Cordray. Watts rigged himself up a fairly Republican Senate district seat and McGreevy, the Independent Republican who filed against him, isn't going to drain off the needed votes. Why? While both Kilroy and McGreevy will harshly attack Watts as a crook for taking an unreported $500 honorarium that led to a "no contest" misdemeanor conviction, McGreevy has his own problems. You heard it here first. Court records verify that McGreevy was recently up on felony theft charges himself. And while those charges were dismissed, the circumstances show that McGreevy shares Watts' poor judgment. McGreevy claims that a local contractor was paid in advance to do a job at one of his buildings, and when the job wasn't completed McGreevy decided to get his money back by seizing some of the contractor's tools from his parked vehicle at a local eatery.
So much for integrity and wise political judgment. Sure is gonna be hard for McGreevy to run as the Independent of High Integrity against the "convicted" Watts when these facts come out. Plus, Watts is the poster boy for both the rabid right and the rich and famous, so he'll have the cash in his campaign coffers. And if the Dispatch has got Mean Gene's back covered on the scandal-and there's no reason to believe they won't-it should be a great show: Big-time Verbal Wrestling. But the early betting line says Gene keeps his title belt. Stay tuned.
7/31/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Are they or aren't they investigating Governor Voinovich's administration?
It's become a semantics debate. Voinovich campaign contributions, yes; administration, no.
The July issue of the Ohio Observer originally reported that the FBI was investigating charges of contract steering in the Voinovich administration. Then a week ago Sunday, the Cincinnati Enquirer confirmed this and filled in many details surrounding the preliminary investigation. Then the Cleveland Plain Dealer had the feds denying it. But the Enquirer stood by its story. And well they should, since they had, in newspaper biz parlance, "back-up"-usually meaning "we taped it, you idiots." Plus, the Enquirer had confirmation from multiple sources: two in the FBI and one in the Justice Department.
Yes, there's a very thin line, indeed, between an investigation of Voinovich campaign contributions and his administration. One that could easily be crossed this election year. Ohio Rep. John Boehner, who regularly publishes the ongoing Washington Union Boss Watch, recently alleged "close links" between a labor leader and both the Clintons and organized crime. Shocking, eh? The House Republicans are planning to hold hearings.
I have a few tips of what to look into while they're investigating organized labor, politicians and organized crime. Columbus Alive has learned that the original state investigation file contained allegations linking organized crime to our governor's growing scandal, which is the basis of the federal probe.
Maybe they could ask Voinovich, then mayor of Cleveland, about his presence at the funeral of Teamster Vice-President Bill "Plug" Presser on July 21, 1981. "Plug" was a protege of Jimmy Hoffa and a thrice-convicted labor racketeer. Presser also aided the Nixon White House in compiling the infamous Enemies List and before his death managed to pass his vice-presidency on to his son, Jackie.
Or they could ask what George recalls about the funeral at the Berkowitz-Kumin Memorial Chapel on July 12, 1988 when he gave the eulogy for Jackie Presser. Jackie Presser rose to be Teamster president while simultaneously working for the Mafia and the FBI. Presser's rise from "car thief to a White House dinner guest" is well-documented in James Neff's Mobbed Up. "He was a man who loved his fellow man. He made a difference in my life. I will miss him and pray for him," eulogized Voinovich.
Maybe they could look into the guv's attempt to appoint ex-loan shark and Mafia associate Carmen Parise to Ohio's Turnpike Commission. Certain other members of the commission and their activities bear further scrutiny. By the way, it sure is nice that, despite federal advice that it was unnecessary, the state is expanding the turnpike from three to four lanes east and west. Stuff like that in other states is often linked to contract steering and money laundering, but not in Ohio.
House members and federal investigators could look at where small-time player T.G. Banks, holder of the majority of the state's unbid minority construction management contracts, got the money- big money-to buy Target Construction in 1990. The down-on-its-luck company still held $53 million or so in building contracts, according to the Columbus Dispatch, and had been one of the largest home builders in the United States. One reliable highly placed law-enforcement source alleges that organized crime money out of Youngstown may have been involved in the purchase of Target.
House members and feds could also investigate Paul Mifsud, the governor's recently resigned chief of staff. Immediately after Voinovich's inauguration in 1991, Mifsud took control of three key state departments: Commerce, Development, and Transportation. He was involved in refashioning the bidding process for state construction projects. "That's where the money is," the source said. So, that's where the House and the FBI should look.
Investigators should focus on whether or not Mifsud steered state construction contracts to Voinovich political backers and major donors. They could also look into the role Phil Hamilton, the head of Governor Voinovich's administrative transition team-and lobbyist for the Voinovich family construction company-played as a key connection between Mifsud and T.G. Banks. Allegations have been made that Banks was a minority "front" to funnel contracts to the Carbone Construction Company out of Cleveland. The Carbone family are long-time Voinovich backers.
"Phil Hamilton is the glue that holds it all together," says the law-enforcement source. So, more than circumstantial evidence exists to suggest that systematic contract steering has been going on in the Voinovich administration since its inception. And ties to reputed organized crime figures and money sources should be sought out.
While the nature of such an investigation may sound farfetched to readers, this isn't the first time that governors of the state of Ohio or their administrations have been caught up in questionable activities. A re-reading of a Life magazine article of May 2, 1969, "The Governor...and the Mobster," may provide a certain sense of deja vu. The article exposes how Governor Rhodes used his campaign fund for personal gain, "intervened" to secure loans to pay back cronies, and granted a pardon for mob boss Thomas "Yonnie" Licavoli.
8/07/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Governor George Voinovich couldn't "stand the heat," so "he got out of the kitchen." The Guv got out of the VP stakes because of the growing contract-steering scandal with links to organized crime figures in Cleveland. One look at Voinovich's FBI file would've had Bob Dole muttering "Bob Dole's not about these type of people." Voinovich would not have been able to withstand the national press scrutiny. His former chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, could've been mentored by Spiro Agnew-same type of construction kick-back problems. The national press wouldn't have muzzled their bloodhounds like the Dispatch is now doing with Bob Ruth. Remember, the Guv's spokesperson, Mike Dawson, called Mafia associate and loan sharker Carmen Parise a "very, very good friend of the Governor." Parise was an associate of James T. (Jack White) Licavoli, reputed organized crime boss. The Guv nominated Parise to the Ohio Turnpike Commission, but he withdrew after the Akron Beacon Journal profiled his past.
The Guv then chose Umberto Fedeli. Fedeli would have you believe that he's a humble civil servant paid $5,000 a year to serve as commission chair where he works 20-30 hours a week and has to put up with nosy reporters. Like the ones at the Plain Dealer who want to know why people getting the construction contracts from the Turnpike Commission are switching their insurance to the Fedeli Group Insurance Company. Fedeli is the sole owner. S.E. Johnson Companies has received $55.4 million worth of turnpike contracts since January 1995, and has wisely switched their insurance to Fedeli. Can you say quid pro quo? Fedeli is refusing to say who else holds turnpike contracts and buys insurance from him. Just another bad unethical appointment by the governor? No! It's how the brothers Voinovich (Paul and George) routinely do business in Ohio.
And "Landfill" Lashutka has followed the governor's lead. Tens of thousands of dollars of illegal and questionable contributions pour into the campaigns of Lashutka and Cindy Lazarus. Then Columbus Service Director Herb Mack signs an illegal $250,000 contract with Mid-American Waste Removal, the source of the illegal funds. Mack resigns. But in June, Lashutka appoints Mack to the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC). Say you're Les Wexner and want your own New Albany interchange for say, $300 million. Guess which is the first body you'd visit to get them on board? Mack's the mayor's man. He knows how the game is played.
The coverage of Ron Poole's soliciting-a-prostitute incident also speaks volumes about central Ohio politics. It's the mayor's guy-not Judge Deborah O'Neill. Contrast the Poole coverage to the Dispatch's blatant attempt to use hearsay and gossip to run O'Neill out of local politics. Better yet, ask yourself why, when the name of Judge Steve Hayes-Woody's boy-appeared on the client list of an exclusive Columbus call girl ring, and he was caught on video pulling into the bordello, was there no call for a hearing on judicial misconduct. Having been on the campaign trail with O'Neill in 1992, her great sin is obvious. She met with the late J.F. Wolfe, who wanted her to take a dive in the race against former Dispatch reporter Judge David Cain. When she refused to drop out of the race and kicked Cain's candied behind, her troubles began with the Wolfe Family Newsletter. The Wolfes immediately had Cain reappointed to an open seat and he never missed a day on the bench. And he brazenly clung to the perks of seniority-check his parking space-despite technically being the newest judge at the time of his appointment. Cain led the charge against O'Neill when she was recently accused of judicial misconduct. There is no level of cover-up and deception the Big D won't stoop to in protecting their good ol' boys.
Meanwhile, the ever-pious governor continues to push his blatantly unconstitutional school voucher program. The Voino-voucher plan, dearly beloved by the Dispatch, includes religious schools, in violation of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no laws establishing religion...." The ruling by Franklin County Judge Lisa Sadler, a former Voinovich executive assistant, would be laughable if it wasn't so ludicrous and pernicious. Remember, Machiavelli advised the Prince not to take religion seriously, but to be the first one out on high Holy Days to worship.
But hey, the Guv is Carmen Parise's and Umberto Fedeli's "shepherd ... they shall not want." Alas, let me leave you with the words of the governor's "very, very good friend" Parise from a taped threat to Teamster driver Jerry Lee Jones. "The day after this [Teamster] fucking election, you motherfucker, nobody is going to bust your fucking head but me, from here down to your prick.. . . . Every time you turn around, I'll have someone give you a fucking beating. You understand me?" Jones was later assaulted by a co-worker. I understand Parise...and why Voinovich dropped out of the Veep stakes.
8/14/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Channel 4's investigative series "Trouble on 12th Avenue" aired last week. Producer Joel Chow and investigative reporter Rich Skidmore provided viewers with some of the year's most provocative video footage. Despite the standard denials, obfuscations and wild tales told by police officials, their own videotapes tell a different story. Still even more damning is the Internal Affairs paper trail left by the officers accused of "excessive use of force" on May 18.
The series' first segment focused on an incident involving Kevin Lennon. Lieutenant David Wood, who investigated Lennon's complaint against Officer Robert Coffman, wrote in his June 7, 1996 memo to Chief James Jackson that: "When I first viewed the film it appeared that Officer Coffman's strike to the subject's back was improper. After careful review, this investigation [sic] it is obvious that his actions were necessary and proper. I recommend no further action necessary." No surprise.
The police tapes, obtained by Channel 4, clearly show Officer Coffman coming in and punching Lennon as he's being carried away by other cops. You can hear the words "Enough, Bob," from a fellow officer, which brings what appears to be a swipe from Coffman towards the cop advocating professional behavior.
Coffman is not always keen on professionalism. On February 9, 1994, Coffman ran a license tag number for a Sergeant Watkins for "personal use." He was "counseled." Perhaps the police should have spoken with Becky West, who on April 17, 1993, was injured in Coffman's custody. That was ruled an "accidental injury." Or they could have talked with Tony Delpra who filed a complaint for an incident on May 13, 1991 when he was "struck in jaw" by Coffman. This was, of course, "justified." Or they could have talked to three different mothers on two different occasions who charged that Coffman pointed his gun at kids during raids on their homes. And the list goes on.
Officer Michael Stalnaker knees Lennon on the tape. Another of Columbus' finest, he has since 1987 either Maced or had 13 "excessive use of force" complaints. Whether it was an "unfounded" shove against Paul Collier "causing him to hit his head," or the "justified" use of a "flashlight" against Robert Walker, or the "justified" kicking of Tim Hemmert in the stomach, for some reason citizens seem to unfairly single out Stalnaker. With all the "justified" force being used by the officer, it's no wonder it slipped his mind to report he kicked Hemmert. His "written reprimand" was, no doubt, unwarranted. So many unruly citizens, so little time.
The second segment shows that there's always time to take a young lad-in this case, George Sandrock-to "the whipping post." Different officers; same pattern of behavior. Sandrock suffered contusions on his nose and upper left eye and a laceration over his right eye that required stitches. This, for not dispersing quickly enough while on a private porch behind party fencing per police instructions. According to police reports, Sandrock's a real ass-kicker. He stood his ground, cussing out cops, despite "two verbal orders" directed at him by Officer Jimmie Barnes. After Macing Sandrock, in Barnes' version, the youngster attacked his riot shield with his fist and head. Yes, indeed, Sandrock swung his "fist so hard at Officer Barnes that he lost his balance and fell into the riot shield."
Just ask Officer Eric Moore, who attempted "to restrain Mr. Sandrock's arms and legs while he was kicking and swinging his fist at the officers." And Officer Martin Malone also saw Sandrock "resisting." Now, anyone who saw the video saw the officers push Sandrock over the railing, hold him there, and beat the hell out of him. The Allman Brothers classic Whipping Post would have been appropriate background music. But who's going to believe a lying punk like Sandrock when you have three officers like Barnes, Moore and Malone.
Since 1990, six citizens have complained after Barnes Maced them; three persons "accidentally injured" themselves in his custody in the last year and a half.
At least Moore "accidentally shot himself in the leg" and was reprimanded on April 1, 1990. Add to that nine Moore Macings- including Macing a man in Florida while Moore was on vacation. A written reprimand resulted from Moore's Florida adventure. Stir in seven citizen complaints, all very similar, all found to be "unfounded" allegations. These involved "rude and obnoxious behavior," "alleged theft," and forcefully pulling police out of their cars. Toss in seven more force complaints, including pulling Joseph Cook from his car and putting a gun to his head, and three-including Sandrock-"accidentally injured" prisoner complaints in the last three years.
There's still more with Malone: 17 complaints since 1987 for Macing, excessive use of force, and an injured prisoner.
And the third and final segment dealt with Criminal Justice student Shammas Jones who was videotaping the police activity away from the fray and was allegedly attacked by Officer David Dennison. Dennison's attack on Jones was "justified." Just like his 10 Macings since March 1993.
But how do they justify the police officer caught on tape shooting "knee-knockers"-rubber bullets designed to be shot into the ground and bounce up-directly at students and yelling, "There you go, eat that!"
Police investigators admit they came to their conclusions on "justified" Macing and use of force on 12th Avenue by only using the least damaging tape. This is unjustifiable.
Last week Bob Bites Back mistakenly stated that Judge Deborah O'Neill had met with "the late J.F. Wolfe." The column should have read "the late J.W. Wolfe."
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8/21/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Uh oh, Umberto. This is getting all too predictable. Sunday's Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that everybody's favorite suspected minority front company, Banks Carbone Construction, is purchasing liability insurance through the Fedeli Group.
Umberto Fedeli, chair of the Ohio Turnpike Commission, is the sole owner of the Fedeli Group Insurance Company. Now, just 'cause the selling of over-priced insurance as a condition of getting contracts and business is a standard organized crime scheme, we shouldn't jump to conclusions here. You see, that would be "anti-Italian." Just ask Governor George Voinovich, who appointed Fedeli to the Turnpike Commission in 1991.
Recall again that the Guv's original choice, Carmen Parise-a known Mafia associate and loan shark-withdrew from consideration after his shady past was made public. Up stepped Umberto. A former organized crime contract launderer and confidential source previously told Columbus Alive about Fedeli's alleged ties to Youngstown and Cleveland Mafia families in an attempt to dissuade the paper from further reporting on Fedeli. A sporting sort, the source said, "Let me know if you're going to keep reporting on this so I can make book on how long you live."
Anyway, since becoming Turnpike chair in 1992, Fedeli has steadfastly refused to disclose his insurance agency clients who do business with the turnpike, nor will he say how much cash he's raking in from these accounts. Fedeli failed to reveal on his required 1995 financial disclosure statement that both Banks Carbone and Ralph C. Tyler PEPS Inc., an engineering firm, began purchasing his liability insurance just before they got a piece of the turnpike $650 million project to add a lane each way between Youngstown and Toledo.
As previously reported in this column, another turnpike contractor, S.E. Johnson Companies, received a $32 million turnpike construction contract earlier this year. You can guess who they switched their insurance to in July. You're in good hands with Umberto!
Poor Mr. McGreevy. He just wants to run as Mr. Clean Government-type against dirty ol' "Mean Gene" Watts and Mary Jo Kilroy. But questions keep popping up about theft charges that Assistant County Prosecutor Dianne Kurilchick dismissed.
Franklin County Court of Common Pleas documents indicate that instead of representing the "people's interest," Kurilchick seemed to act more like McGreevy's personal defense counsel. McGreevy, perhaps believing his own political propaganda, wanted to act as his own counsel. Instead of going in for the easy kill, Kurilchick repeatedly had the trial delayed and then sought "diversion" for McGreevy. The diversion plan is open to first-time felony offenders usually requiring restitution and community service for later expunging of the record.
According to a Common Pleas judge, McGreevy was found "unfit" for the diversion program because of his "attitude." The fearless county prosecutor's office dismissed the felony theft indictment against McGreevy on June 18,1996 so that he can conveniently run his ever-so ethical and clean campaign for state senate.
In dismissing the case, Mike Miller's office cited the following reason: "state believes this is an unauthorized use of property, not theft." McGreevy was miffed that a subcontractor hadn't performed the work he was allegedly paid for, thus Mr. Clean lifted the man's tools from his vehicle at a local eatery. Maybe if McGreevy wins his campaign as an Independent for state senate he can vote to send a public contract to Banks Carbone and they can finish the construction project for him.
The list of local municipalities passing resolutions in opposition to a multi-state nuclear waste dump in Ohio keeps growing. It's damn near a full-blown movement. So far resolutions have been passed by Cleveland, Cincinnati, Bedford Heights, Brook Park, Woodmere, Brooklyn, Strongsville, Oakwood, and Painesville Township.
Let's see. Cleveland. . . Cincinnati. . . what big city starting with a "C" is missing? Maybe the roll-over-and-play-dead lapdogs on the Columbus City Council are waiting for cues from Mr. "All Environmental Laws Are Unfunded Mandates" Mayor. Yep, maybe "Landfill" Lashutka has a cozy little site in mind in Franklin County for the radioactive waste dump. After all, he's opposed to recycling because there's LOTS of room left in those landfills. And there's all those friendly waste haulers who make illegal donations to Ohio politicians who need work! And maybe Banks Carbone could build the nuke dump, too! And Umberto Fedeli could sell the insurance! That's the ticket.
Oh, I forgot. Nuclear accidents are uninsurable. Sorry, Umberto.
8/27/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
The train keeps a'rolling . . . the Clinton choo-choo . . . all aboard and park your principles in the excess baggage car. "You see, you got to vote for Clinton, 'cause of Newt Gingrich. If ya don't, the Republicans will hurt workin' people and people on welfare," or so they explain on the train to Centristville.
Clinton's visit to Columbus is like an episode of Twilight Zone. He's created a bizarro world of gutless, soulless, and repentant baby boomers. The most vacuous and unprincipled Democratic president elected this century. President NAFTA, President GATT, destroyer of the New Deal.
Now, let me get this right. In 1992 I reluctantly supported Clinton, because if I didn't, terrible things would happen. The Republicans would pass a free-trade agreement sending hundreds and thousands of U.S. jobs to sweatshops in the Third World and polluting the global environment. I voted for the Democrat so the Republicans wouldn't create a police state with 100,000 police added to the streets causing the subsequent erosion of civil liberties based on hypocritical crime hysteria and stereotyping of the poor and minorities. I was supposed to vote for Clinton so the Republicans wouldn't pass a vicious, mean-spirited Welfare Reform Act. So there would be universal health care, less poverty, etc.
Wait a minute. I voted for Clinton and I got Reagan and Bush's GATT and NAFTA policies. I got Richard Nixon's law-and-order agenda. I got Gingrich's welfare reform act. I got 42 million Americans without health care in 1996 instead of 37 million in 1992. I got 15.1% of Americans living in poverty today instead of 14.2% four years ago. With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?
Fear of Newt has neutered the Democratic Party. Today's so-called Clintonesque "New Democrats" are still to the left of Mussolini, but are definitely to the right of the Eisenhower Republicans and, dare I say, Richard Nixon. The Democratic Party has turned itself into the pre-Ronald Reagan Republican Party and it now celebrates its hollow victory in Chicago.
"Oh my party's bound and gagged and they've tied it to a chair. Won't you please come to Chicago..."
Can Umberto Fedeli pick 'em, or what? Seems S.E. Johnson Company's having a problem with its paving of Cleveland's inner belt. According to Saturday's Plain Dealer, Johnson's resurfacing of part of Interstate 480 began "to crumble several months after completion." Hope they've got insurance!
As previously noted, S.E. Johnson won $32 million in third-lane construction contracts from the Ohio Turnpike Commission earlier this year. In July, the company switched its liability insurance to the less-than-renowned Fedeli Group. The Fedeli Group is sort of like the Gang of Four, or the Mob of Three, or Horde of Two. The Group's sole owner is Turnpike Commission Chair Umberto Fedeli.
Hopefully, everyone's favorite minority front, Banks Carbone, didn't use S.E. Johnson for the foundation work at the residence of Paul Mifsud, the governor's former chief of staff. You can count on the fact that Banks didn't actually do the work. He's essentially subcontracts. Maybe T.G. can find an actual minority architect or builder to check the pavement and concrete work at Paul's place.
Something's rotten in Y-town.
The Youngstown City Health Department received an Ohio Infant Mortality Reduction Initiative Grant from the Ohio Health Department. So far, so good, no smell.
But, the mayor of Y-town can't document or provide proof of service contracts for $40,395 in grant funds. The money was spent and apparently no one was contracted to provide the required Save-the-Babies services. Starting to have a bit of an odd odor.
The Most Honorable Patrick J. Ungaro, mayor of Youngstown, was looking for a little favor from Georgie-boy-perhaps Y-town's all-time favorite guv. Ungaro wanted the governor to look the other way over Youngstown's inability to "provide executed personal service contracts for grant personnel," as referenced in an August 9, 1996 letter to Ungaro from Ohio Department of Health Director Peter Somani. This is the grant equivalent of "no show" or "ghost" employees. Definitely a strong stench, particularly as, in a letter dated June 4, 1996, the guv had agreed that he would "would explore the state's ability to waive recoupment of $40,395" of the missing funds. One wonders why our pro-life governor wouldn't be more vigilant over such funds. But hey, Paul Mifsud-since resigned under a suspicious cloud-was running the show in the governor's office then and I understand he's got more than a few friends in Y-town.
Due to heightened scrutiny in the wake of Mifsud's most untimely departure, the feds are looking very closely at the activities of the Voinovich administration. One federal source suggests that evidence points to the pockets of local Y-town politicals as the best possible recoupment site.
Now sources say a deal has been cut where Mayor Ungaro will look contrite and return the mysteriously missing money.
As the saying goes, "Y-town is mob...I mean, my town."
9/04/1996
FEATURED STORY
by Bob Fitrakis
All evidence suggests that since the onset of the George Voinovich administration in January 1991, the governor's recently resigned chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, systematically engineered the steering of contracts and public funds to political backers and Voinovich family members.
The firing of Joseph Gilyard on July 22, 1991 by the Voinovich administration was a clear harbinger of the governor's current problems. Gilyard, who had been director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services and a long-time loyal supporter of the state's Republican machine, was canned shortly after he alleged that he was under political pressure to give the governor's brother's company valuable state prison construction contracts.
The firing paved the way for Mifsud, formerly vice president of the Voinovich Cos., to operate with virtually no restraints within the governor's administration. As chief of staff, Mifsud was put in charge of the Ohio Department of Transportation, the Commerce Department and the Development Department, and used that position of power to serve the interests of political backers and personal favorites.
Recent allegations that contracts were steered towards the Banks-Carbone Construction Company may be just the tip of the iceberg. It's an open secret in the local construction and architecture industry that over the last five years most major design and construction management contracts have been awarded in a blatantly partisan manner. Many contractors believe that the state's Department of Administrative Services has repeatedly gone through a charade of soliciting proposals and later interviewing qualified architectural construction management companies for state projects prior to steering the contracts to what appeared to be predetermined winners. According to construction industry insiders, projects that seem to fit this pattern include:
· Five prison contracts totaling $150 million awarded to Knowlton Construction Company to build or renovate five state prisons, despite the company having little or no previous experience as a prison construction manager.
· The $80 million Max Fisher Business School, the $85 million Schottenstein Arena at Ohio State, and the $110 million Hilltop Office Complex to the Gilbane Building Company. In all three cases, the Banks-Carbone Construction Company was selected as the minority partner.
· The $65 million new COSI building to the Ruscilli Construction Company.
· The $20 million reconstruction of the riot-damaged Lucasville prison to the Sherman R. Smoot Company.
· Various contracts to the Voinovich Cos. and Voinovich-Sgro to build and renovate jails, including the Franklin County jail.
Following George Voinovich's electoral victory in November 1990, Lieutenant Governor Michael DeWine appointed Gilyard director of the Governor's Office of Criminal Justice Services in January 1991. Gilyard's previous experience included being executive assistant to George Forbes, Cleveland City Council president; chief of staff for Cuyahoga County Commissioner Virgil Brown; court administrator for Chief Justice Thomas Moyer; and director of the Ohio Court of Claims. As director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services, Gilyard's tasks were to coordinate planning and funding for all of Ohio's criminal justice agencies and dispense state funds for area jail construction projects. Over the eight-year period from 1983 to 1991, the Office of Criminal Justice Services awarded some $200 million in jail construction monies.
Within six months of his hiring, Gilyard was disgraced and hounded by several charges-theft in office, lying to the Voinovich administration about his past, and allegations of sexual harassment-that were later all summarily dismissed. Gilyard's termination and public humiliation served as a head on a spike to all who dared cross Mifsud.
Gilyard's tenure turned tenuous immediately after an early "get acquainted" meeting with lobbyist Phil Hamilton, head of the Voinovich transition team and former executive vice president of Voinovich Cos.; and Bennett J. Cooper, Gilyard's predecessor in the administration of Governor James A. Rhodes.
"[Hamilton] had been bugging me and bugging me to come over," Gilyard said in an interview with Columbus Alive. When he walked up to the office at 8 E. Long Street, Gilyard said he noticed a plaque over the door. "In gold leaf it says 'Hamilton and Associates, The Voinovich Cos.' I about passed out."
In fact, Candace Peters, a criminal justice administrator, had warned Hamilton during the 1990 campaign that the Voinovich Cos. was facing a potential conflict-of-interest situation over the building of local jails in Ohio.
Despite the warning, the pressure from Hamilton and his associates was "never-ending," Gilyard insists. For example, he says, at "a reception for all the Voinovich criminal justice people, Hamilton is bothering me again. Cooper's coming over [to his office] every other two, three days. He's calling me. He's going on trips with me," Gilyard recalls.
Both Cooper and Hamilton are on record denying having pressured Gilyard to receive jail construction grants and contracts.
In a memo to DeWine dated February 1, 1991, Gilyard outlined his problems with the initial meeting with Cooper, Hamilton, and his wife, Patricia Hamilton. According to Gilyard, the talk immediately turned to jail construction contracts and Gilyard said he felt he had to excuse himself. Gilyard said he believed the meeting "raised a significant question as to its propriety" since there was a 1987 Attorney General's opinion that jail construction grants were state contracts and candidate George Voinovich had pledged that his brother Paul's company would receive no state contracts.
Patricia Hamilton was soon thereafter appointed the chairperson of State Board of Personnel Review, the board that would later approve Gilyard's ouster as director.
While others mulled the memo, Gilyard's attention was drawn to Sheriff Earl Smith. In late March, early April, Gilyard began investigating allegations of impropriety surrounding Sheriff Smith's Franklin County Drug Enforcement Network (DEN). Gilyard's now-famous April 12, 1991 memo to DeWine basically summarized various allegations of illegal activity by DEN agents. DeWine froze the funding for the program and, Gilyard later claimed, ordered him to "destroy the memo." The DEN missive-together with the February 1 memo-unwittingly set the stage for Gilyard's later dismissal.
At about this time, Sharon Downs, an assistant deputy director of Administrative Services-and wife of John Downs, then-personnel director for Earl Smith and a protege of Voinovich transition director Hamilton-accessed a computer file on Gilyard's personnel history. Prior to accepting his position, Gilyard had interviewed with Secretary of State Bob Taft's office where he talked openly about a 1975 incident at Indian River School, a juvenile detention facility where he was fired from the staff and convicted for hitting a youth. The misdemeanor conviction was later overturned. Despite the fact that Gilyard made no secret of the incident, DeWine claimed that Gilyard had failed to disclose the incident during his background check and subsequently he fired Gilyard in July of 1991, even though he later conceded that he was aware of the 1975 incident when Gilyard was hired.
As Gilyard recalls, he was originally offered the job to protect DeWine because, like Mifsud, he was raised in the hardball political scene in Cleveland. Gilyard said he was told: "You were in Cleveland politics, and Mike's afraid that those guys are going to eat him alive." Gilyard claims that early on, Mifsud surrounded himself with ambitious "young Republicans....We used to call them 'brown shirts' like in Germany." Politically, you couldn't make any mistakes in dealing with Mifsud, according to Gilyard: "Mifsud would cut your throat off."
In June, Smith, angered at Gilyard for freezing his drug task force funds, met with Mifsud about instituting a thaw. Smith gave Mifsud an investigation file on Gilyard. In a two-pronged strategy, Hamilton-who was on Smith's payroll as a $1,000 a month management contractor-met with DeWine and offered to mediate the dispute between Smith and DeWine over task force funding.
In the meantime, pressure from Hamilton and Cooper mounted, Gilyard claims, adding that he felt compelled to approach Mifsud about the Voinovich Cos.' apparent conflict of interest. He said he went early to a Cabinet meeting. "I said 'Paul, you have to do something about this jail stuff....I'm telling him this story and literally...he put his hands over his ears like a little kid. 'I don't want to know, get away from me, stay away from me,' and he ran around the Cabinet table to the other side and turned his back on me."
Around the first of July, Paul Voinovich sent his brother 14 pages of material-including copies of Gilyard's personnel history-with handwritten comments to the effect that there were problems with Gilyard. It was virtually the same package Smith had given Mifsud in June.
Gilyard had confronted Sheriff Smith about the allegations against the DEN agents. While Smith denied them and insisted that he get his funding back, both he and Gilyard have confirmed that, during the conversation, Smith made Gilyard aware of illegal campaign contributions that the trash haulers had made to the 1990 Voinovich campaign.
Gilyard claims Smith "sent a direct threat to the governor" to back off his drug task force, and immediately Smith began to crack down on overloaded garbage trucks in Franklin County. "Now, what actually happened was, when Earl had told me about the illegal campaign contributions, he actually was making trash trucks dump their trash in the city streets of Columbus. There's pictures in the Dispatch. Nobody could understand why. I, of course, knew why, and I'm telling the governor and I'm telling these people why and Mifsud's pooh-poohing me, although he knew better," Gilyard explained.
In what even he describes as an end run to get to the governor the information about the activities of his brother Paul, Hamilton and Mifsud, Gilyard said he arranged a meeting with David B. Bailey, a Cleveland Republican Ward Committeeman and Voinovich confidante for over 30 years; and former Cuyahoga County Republican Party Chair, Robert Hughes.
Hughes, one of the state's most powerful Republicans, had recently formed his own political consulting company. "We met with Hughes in Hughes' basement. It was Hughes, Hughes' wife, Bailey, my wife and myself. Bob took prodigious notes. Five pages of notes on a yellow pad. He agreed to see the governor, and I believe he made a phone call to Columbus that night," recalled Gilyard.
Whether or not the governor got the information is unknown. Hughes died in November of 1991 under mysterious circumstances, the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning.
On July 15, 1991, Gilyard sent another troubling memo to DeWine questioning the propriety of the Voinovich Cos.' lobbying efforts. Within a week, he was suspended and then fired by DeWine, who accused him of withholding information about the 1975 Indian River incident. DeWine also claimed that he hadn't received any memo from Gilyard regarding the Voinovich Cos.' intense lobbying efforts. Earl Smith had in the meantime filed theft-in-office charges against Gilyard.
On August 7, Curt Steiner, chief spokesman for Voinovich, stated that DeWine was aware of the 1975 Indian River incident when he first interviewed Gilyard in December. Late in August, a nearly 1,000-page Ohio Highway Patrol report substantially supported Gilyard's claim that he had sought to repeatedly warn Mifsud of ethical problems.
A little more than a week after Gilyard's departure, the Columbus Dispatch reported that, "Two well-connected Statehouse lobbyists- one with ties with Governor George V. Voinovich's brother and another appointed by Voinovich to a state commission-helped clients land unbid contracts as part of a $350 million state bond issue." Hamilton was the lobbyist for Goldman, Sachs & Co., which, along with Lehman Brothers, received the unbid contracts to handle about $175 million in bond issues on behalf of the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.
On October 3, Franklin County Judge Richard Ferrell dismissed Smith's charges against Gilyard, citing "no probably cause." On October 18, after months denying its existence, DeWine turned over a copy of Gilyard's July 15 memo, claiming that he had recently discovered it in a desk at his second home. DeWine dismissed Gilyard's thoughtful memo as "a goofy, long narrative." The memo remains a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the current contract-steering allegations against Mifsud.
After Hughes' death in November 1991, the Ohio Ethics Commission-with new Voinovich appointees-ruled that it wasn't a conflict of interest for the governor's brother to take state jail construction funds.
One monument to the political machine that steamrolled over Gilyard stands in Franklin County: the renovated Franklin County jail, built in 1970 by Pringle and Pratt. According to former Sheriff Smith, now running again for his old job, the Voinovich Cos. originally did the architectural assessment for the renovation at the Franklin County jail. They were paid $75,000, and received another $18,000 for their estimate that the jail could be renovated for $2 million. The $2 million renovation has turned into an $11 million-plus project.
Smith said that the Voinovich Cos. recently renovated a kitchen at the jail that had already been renovated "down to leveling the floors" in 1990.
"There was no bid from the Voinovich Cos. They said that since the Voinovich Cos. had done the original architectural assessment, that constituted a bid," Smith said.
9/04/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
More Bizarro Planet News. Headlines: "Clinton signs Newt's welfare bill"; "Kilroy attacks Watts from the Right." No doubt progressive activists and Kilroy coddlers will ignore Mary Jo's severe swerve to the Right, just as they explain away her vote for the Republican Reverend Leon Troy to join the school board. "Politics is the art of compromise," they're fond of quoting. Indeed, what do principles and integrity got to do with it?
Last Thursday, Kilroy attacked her campaign rival, incumbent state Senator Eugene Watts for voting for the so-called "Robin Hood" plan that takes from the wealthy school districts and gives to the poor. Here's the problem. The vote was without a doubt the best one in Watts' career. And Kilroy has publicly argued that the plan wasn't socialistic enough; that it takes more money to educate the less fortunate and poor children. She was right. But that was the old Mary Jo.
The new one shows up with someone dressed as Robin Hood at Barrington Elementary in Upper Arlington and assails Watts. Columbus school board member Kilroy would gradually shift money into the education budget and take from the state's rainy day fund and, without a tax hike, save the ravaged youth of suburbia from the yoke of Watts' egalitarianism. Sounds like "voodoo edunomics," from the Gipper's playbook. I guess that's why they call it politics. Maybe she can explain to her colleagues on the Columbus school board that, hey, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
Speaking of winners, that President Clinton, what a great guy. Loves trains. Sorta like that Tom Cruise character in Risky Business, I suppose. Real mass transit-type guy, you know. After all, his administration supports mass transit the least of all 22 industrial democracies. Clinton loves trains so much he wants Amtrak to be totally self-sufficient by the year 2002. That half-a-cent tax on gas is such a burden. Scott Leonard of the National Association of Railroad Passengers argues that Clinton's policies will destroy Amtrak-already the worst rail system in the western world-within the next five years. Yeah, loves trains, and loves even more, Republican mass transit policy.
His whistle-stop train tour as symbolism was probably suggested by his top adviser, Dick Morris. Morris engineered the transformation of the once-progressive Democratic Party into a Republican-lite beer commercial. Morris resigned recently after his predilection for sucking hooker's toes was revealed first in the Star and then in the New York Times. Morris, a sensitive fellow, reportedly cried in the arms of Sherry Rowlands because he wasn't sure he was giving President Clinton "the right answers to important questions." It's hard to speak and think clearly when you're suffering from Hooker's Foot in Mouth Disease. As for Bill, reportedly, he didn't want to cut Medicaid because he worried "... [he'd] wake up and see a bunch of cripples in wheelchairs chained to my front gate."
Another winner: Worthington-Kilborne High School was rated "#1" in September's Columbus Monthly. While I'm actually a fan and participant in the school's American Radical Politics series, I'm a little worried about the thinking process employed by their highly touted principal, Dr. Diana Lindsay. Last spring, she had a paddy wagon sent to the school to remove a student. Lindsay believes the student, Max Seeman, had the right to stand or not to stand at a school assembly. But, "the genesis" of Max being removed "was the fact that he did not stand initially." When Max refused to be punished for exercising his right not to stand, Lindsay "didn't know what he might do."
"I personally was not in fear, but I did not know what-what he might do," Lindsay explained. After all, there he was, sitting in a lawful manner. So Lindsay had him frisked, arrested, and removed in a paddy wagon. It's that type of thinking that no doubt impressed the staff at Columbus Monthly, at the "best" high school in central Ohio.
The Columbus Dispatch did the community a great service by reprinting Gary Webb's San Jose Mercury News article on the link between the CIA, contras, cocaine and L.A. gangs. If you care at all about American democracy, you'll read the article in Sunday's Insight section and you'll get outraged and active. Now, if the Dispatch has enough faith in Webb's well-researched article that links the U.S. government to the crack cocaine trade in America's urban ghettos- including Cincinnati and Dayton-why are they pushing for a second "former" CIA proprietary airline, Evergreen, to set up at Rickenbacker? We already have admitted former CIA proprietary Southern Air Transport headquartered at Rickenbacker. Why another?
9/16/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
We all know that the Wolfe Family Newsletter, aka The Columbus Dispatch, has other relatives in the industry. There's the staid uncle who secretly reads Hustler, who publishes The Ohio Magazine, the bastard stepchildren who put out This Week, and the flashy niece who flaunts herself over at Today's Columbus Woman.
So, when you see Farah Majidzadeh's splashy cover photo on July's Today's Columbus Woman, you can bet that she's a Wolfe Family fave and politically connected. Her air-brushed, spin-doctored puff piece sent more than one investigative reporter running to their "deep throat" sources and their "top-secret" data banks. The Wolfe spin portrays Ms. Majidzadeh as one of Columbus' leading female entrepreneurs, the head of Resource International, Inc., a Columbus-based engineering and construction-testing firm. Lest we suspect that Farah could be a female Tommy Banks-you know, one of those ersatz affirmative action front owners-Today's Columbus Woman points out that Farah owns 67 percent of the business, while her husband Kamran owns the remaining 33 percent.
What the article doesn't mention is that Resource International is a leading pay-to-play firm in Ohio politics. Between 1990 and 1994, the Majidzadeh family and in-laws gave at least $8,250 to Governor George V. Voinovich's campaign coffers. Like Banks, the Majidzadeh bunch have gotten more than their share of state contracts, and not just in the construction field.
Recall that the Dispatch's best investigative reporter, Bob Ruth, was hot on the trail of Farah's daughter, Marcia, two years ago, when the Big D powers that be muzzled him. Marcia Majidzadeh and her husband owned Nationwide Equipment Enterprises. Ring a bell? The company that allegedly bilked a program to aid the blind out of some $253,900. In March 1993, Nationwide Equipment received a six-month contract from the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission to operate vending machines at rest stops. Thirty-seven-and-a-half percent of the gross receipts were to go to the state of Ohio to be used to help blind people establish their own food and beverage businesses at state rest stops. Ruth broke the story on July 24, 1994 that state records showed that Nationwide Equipment owed $120,395 in underreported receipts, had bounced $104,588 worth of checks, and had failed to pay the state $28,917 for cleaning bills at the 13 rest stops. On July 30, Ruth reported that the company had failed to "post a performance bond" even though their state contract called for it. And at the same time the state canceled her contract, in her zeal to serve the disabled, Marcia changed the name of her company to Consult-Systems, Inc. and signed a false name on another state Rehabilitation Services Commission contract bid application. Now she was the more waspy-sounding "Marsha May."
But, Marcia had a pretty good explanation. You see, "people often had trouble pronouncing and spelling her real name," particularly when they've been reading it in the paper in relationship to someone allegedly stealing from the blind. Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! Things got so bad that the Department of Aging canceled a contract that she and her husband were scheduled to sign to cater meals to senior citizens at the Ohio State Fair. Let's see, the blind...the elderly...no doubt handicapped children breathed a sigh of relief after that.
Here's the story of a lovely lady, who was building up a business of her own. And then one day when that lady met the governor, she knew that it was much more than a hunch. That if she gave him a lot of money, he could probably help her business out a bunch. Damage control time. Farah and Kamran pulled a George Voinovich and wept openly about their bum son-in-law, Ali Sharifrazi (aka Ali S. Razi), who deceived their daughter and allegedly forged her name. Actual quote: "Majidzadeh's parents fought back tears as they described their surprise..." They were "shocked," shocked, I say! The distraught parents failed to explain how their poor, duped, 30-year-old daughter who had nothing to do with any wrongdoing, not only submitted a bid in the name of Marsha May, but showed up for a "coin-toss ceremony" at the Ohio Division of Purchasing. The coin toss broke a tie between "Marsha May" and another bidder over the state contract.
Poor Marcia; she emerged a double loser. Not only did she lose the toss, but state officials realized that Marsha May was a fraud. Now, we know who Marsha May really is and we know her game. The question remains, who is Farah Majidzadeh and what is her financial relationship, if any, with the disgraced former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud? Let's toss a coin: heads-it's contract steering, tails-it's just another one of those funny Voinovich coincidences.
9/18/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
What the hell is Cynthia Ruccia thinking? Ruccia, running for Congress in the 12th district against John Kasich, held a press conference last week questioning the Congressman's living arrangement with a male aide in Washington. The Dispatch justly portrayed her desperate attempt to "out" Kasich as a descent into the "gutter." What the Dispatch failed to note is that they pioneered such "gutter" politics against Kasich a few years back when they essentially used the same tactics.
If you remember, Johnny-boy was meeting with Hillary Clinton over the health-care issue in the pre-Newtonian days. The Dispatch ran a front page story describing the townhouse that John and his aide lived in and the lovely grilled fish prepared for the First Lady. Hugh DeMoss and I shared a laugh at the time over the Dispatch's all-too-obvious displeasure with Congressman Kasich.
Although I disagree with Congressman Kasich on virtually every public policy issue, I believe his personal relationship with his aide or any other consenting adult is none of our business. Unsubstantiated gossip has nothing to do with political issues. And even if there was an ounce of evidence, what's her point? One would expect more from Ruccia, a Democrat who decries the same tactics and moralizing from the far right.
Last time I wrote about Ruccia in a feature story suggesting the obvious-that the presence of longtime Democrat and former school board member Bill Moss was hurting her campaign-her attorney contacted Columbus Alive.
Her contempt for the First Amendment and her unprincipled attacks on Congressman Kasich should be rejected by the voters. Someone should have steered her away from the Mike Stinziano School of Campaigning.
Dog ate my homework, computer crashed, copy 1machine broke down. Just when you thought you'd heard all the lame excuses, Ohio's Attorney General Betty Montgomery manages to take incompetence to the highest level. The Plain Dealer reported that Ms. Montgomery missed her deadline in a key court case because her copier broke. The good news is that the case involved Betty and the Guv's attempt to foil Ohio's Open Records Law by having state bureaucrats claim attorney-client privilege. Basically, they were creating a way to keep important or embarrassing information from the public. The Open Records Law is the state equivalent of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). These post-Watergate, so-called "Sunshine Laws" are indispensable checks on government corruption. We use the FOIA and the Open Records Law a lot at Columbus Alive.
The bad news is that she's our state's attorney. " ...and the line was too long at Kinko's, honest!"
It's getting really weird in Worthington. The case of Worthington-Kilbourne student Max Seeman, who was hauled off in a police paddy wagon at the request of Principal Dianna Lindsay, continues to cause consternation. Much to its credit, This Week in Worthington reprinted the transcript of Seeman's disciplinary hearing. The transcript clearly shows that Max was removed for not standing-even though he wasn't required to stand-during a mini-version of a Nuremburg-style senior pride rally.
Well, seems at least one Worthington School Board member understands the difference between a police state and an educational environment. School board member Jim Timko called for an investigation of the incident in a letter to This Week. His authoritarian-worshipping colleagues on the school board immediately passed a resolution of censure and disapproval. They demanded that he not release confidential information, that he not speak on behalf of the board, and that he abide by the first two points or resign.
"They wanted to intimidate me and create the impression that I did something wrong," Timko said. He said that his colleagues get elected and do "whatever the administrators want." Their attitude is "we don't make mistakes in Worthington," he continued.
They accused him of violating confidentiality by responding publicly about the incident. Supposedly, his utterances as an elected official about a hearing purposely opened to the public by the parents of Max Seeman, with Channel 4 in attendance, somehow violated confidentiality.
Key point, Timko did not violate the confidence of the board by responding to a newspaper story. No one told the other educational jackboots on the Worthington board that something has to be a secret first to be considered confidential. Perhaps it was a breach of idiocy. He wasn't dense enough to be on the Worthington school board.
On the plus side, students in Worthington Kilbourne's American Radicalism class requested a discussion on the issue between Dr. Lindsay and Joan Seeman, Max's mother. They must be reading too much Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Abe Lincoln.
9/25/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Another politically bleak week: trade gap widens by 43 percent; credit card delinquencies hit a record high; but violent crime goes down 9 percent. Yet Bill Clinton and Bob Dole continue to run for district attorney instead of president. It's just the real national problems like trade policy and stagnant household income that they're clueless about.
Ask them about drugs and crime, boy, do they have answers. Desperate for political hot-button issues, they bellow: "lock 'em up, beat 'em up, kill 'em quicker, more cops, fewer civil liberties...."
Dole wants to double prison spending-must have been talking to the Brothers Voinovich. I wonder if Paul Mifsud is still working for his campaign? Dole also called for more "drug news." Here's some: 85 percent of drug addiction is legally prescribed. Ask Chief Justice Rehnquist, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Kitty Dukakis, Elvis, etc. In the early '80s, high school kids used to work themselves into such a frenzy at the "Just Say No" clubs that they had to go chug a beer just to cool down afterwards. Clinton wants to spend $700 million for "the largest anti-drug effort in history, "but he won't give the Congressional Black Caucus an answer on whether he backs an investigation into the CIA's (aka Cocaine Importing Agency) involvement with crack trafficking in the inner-cities of the U.S.
Speaking of crime, the Pentagon finally released documents showing that U.S. Army training manuals used at the notorious School of the Americas advocated executions, torture, coercion, blackmail, and other God-fearing American tactics against Third World insurgents. Yes, indeed, our U.S. tax dollars at work abroad. We, as a people, are responsible for our drug-running, murdering, and torturing government. Sorry, that's the way democracy works. We are paid to train and "educate" most of the Western Hemisphere's most heinous butchers. Like "Blow Torch" Bob D'Aubuisson who was the leader of El Salvador's right-wing death squads, the Salvadoran soldiers who assassinated six Jesuit priests in 1989, and "our man in Panama" General Manuel Noriega.
Recently, the largest-ever protest occurred at Fort Benning, Georgia, home of the School of the Americas. Four hundred and fifty people-including 300 Catholic nuns-converged on the main gate and called for its closing. Believing "The Truth Cannot Be Silenced," 13 U.S. citizens remain in prison for willfully and openly trespassing at the School in the finest tradition of civil disobedience.
As for President Clinton, the White House recently called the School "a force for good and not evil." Hey, did I tell ya how they pioneered that really thin highly conductive wire that could be inserted in the penile shaft like a catheter and hooked to any portable military field telephone? Just a few cranks of the field telephone and your average Third World non-white Native American-type starts telling you everything you want to know. You usually don't even have to torture him all that long to get information. Must be what the President means by a "force" for good.
Enough bleakness, there's still some heroic Americans fighting the good fight. Cliff Arnebeck, probably the most decent and thoughtful candidate in central Ohio this year, is once again calling for real Congressional campaign finance reform. Arnebeck is Deborah Pryce's Democratic opponent in the 15th district.
Arnebeck, Tom Erney and I are all part of a lawsuit against the state of Ohio with our lead plaintiff, former Republican Congressman Clarence Miller. Our suit argues that it's unfair for the Democratic and Republican parties to draw up the Congressional districts to favor their party's incumbent Congressperson. Take for example, Franklin County: the state legislature created two relatively safe Republican districts by dividing the Columbus voters into two separate districts and attaching overwhelmingly Republican rural counties like Delaware, Licking and Union. If the city of Columbus had been left intact as a Congressional district, we'd actually have a competitive Congressional race this year. In Cleveland, they created a black minority district that votes 84 percent Democratic. And they call it "democracy." We're arguing that a non-partisan body should draw up Congressional districts in a fair and impartial manner. Whoa, is that radical or what?
Worthington School Board member Jim Timko continues his fight against the lock-step majority on the board. Timko refused to bow to community pressure and instead acted on his own conscience. He believes that former Worthington Kilbourne student Max Seeman "didn't do anything wrong" in sitting during a senior pride rally. At least nothing so evil as to require a police paddy wagon to remove Max from the school and his suspension.
"The message it sends is we're going to do everything we can to control your behavior," Timko stated. "You don't understand the Worthington mentality. 'We don't make mistakes.' That's what the school board is saying, and that's wrong."
Timko is consulting with one of the state's leading civil rights attorneys to discuss his options following his September 9th censure by his fellow board members. He admits to being "flabbergasted" after the "junta" voted four to one for censure. And well he should. The Worthington school board is going to have a hell of a time explaining to a judge how they offered a completed resolution of censure and disapproval, and issued a prepared statement on the resolution behind Timko's back. Can you say violation of open meetings law? Can you say violation of Sunshine Laws? Obviously, the paddy wagon came for the wrong people. The board is acting criminally, not Max Seeman.
10/01/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
There's a peculiar lawsuit pending in Franklin County: Fox Investigation, Inc. vs. Linda Leisure.
Linda Leisure first met death row inmates during her volunteer work as a prison minister in Ohio. Inspired by President Bush's call for "volunteerism" she worked up the nerve to visit men she feared, yet wanted to help. Not unlike the Susan Sarandon character in Dead Man Walking, she listened to their stories and ministered to their needs.
One of those man's needs, it turned out, involved helping the wife of death-row inmate John Spirko prove that her husband was not guilty. The Spirko case peaked Leisure's interest in investigating murder cases. She felt her talents might be better used in ensuring that justice was being done in individual cases rather than preaching to the condemned. Leisure took a job with Fox Investigation, Inc., a private investigating firm headed by Richard H. Smith, an ex-Columbus police officer and an ex-investigator at the Ohio Public Defender's Office (OPDO). Fox Investigation often did contract work for the OPDO investigating the cases of death row inmates.
Little did Leisure know the reasons why Smith was no longer a cop or state investigator. But she quickly found out why. Soon after going to work at Fox, Leisure claims that Smith "wanted me to falsify time records and interviews on these murder cases." Appalled, she left Fox Investigation, convinced that certain death row inmates were being denied basic "due process" guaranteed them under the Constitution. And even more frightening, that as a result, some innocent American citizen might be executed. This spurred her into action.
On October 25, 1994 Leisure sent a letter to Common Pleas Judge James O'Grady outlining the above allegations against Smith. On November 14, Leisure voluntarily took and passed a polygraph exam substantiating her charges. But it was politics as usual in the Franklin County Courts and nobody took her accusations seriously, as Smith continued to do business.
Fortuitously, Leisure shared the same attorney as Chester "Briss" Craig, former deputy investigator at the OPDO. Craig informed her that he had been Smith's boss at the OPDO and had complained to the Ohio Inspector General with similar concerns. In January 1992, Craig charged "...that some of the investigators were turning in false reports and were not providing the support services to the attorneys as required." Leisure tracked down the state investigative report that essentially verified Craig's allegations.
The report was none too kind to her old boss, Mr. Smith. During his tenure from April 1983 to November 1988 at the OPDO, Smith was fond of referring to black defendants as "niggers" and white ones as "scumbags." These "niggers" and "scumbags" were the very clients Smith was hired to work for and investigate their claims of innocence.
Smith told several of his fellow investigators that he didn't like "working for a nigger," referring to Craig. Smith admitted in the report that he had arranged for police friends to arrest Deputy Director Craig on a drunk driving charge. "I don't consider it a conspiracy at all. I was just going to let the man expose himself," Smith said of Craig.
Speaking of exposing oneself, it turns out that Smith had been forced off the Columbus Police force for doing just that with his most private parts to seven different women, including five minors on October 9, 1981. He had previously been reprimanded many times for various acts of misconduct, including engaging in sex while on duty, and showing up drunk and threatening his ex-wife at her house.
Who was exposing who?
Leisure tried desperately to take the story to the press, with no luck. Depressed and nearly defeated, she picked up a copy of the now-defunct Columbus Free Press, which I edited at the time. She claims God spoke to her and told her that I would publish the story. Who was I to argue with God, particularly when he sends me such a hot story?
Anyway, Leisure's story appeared on the cover of the January 1995 Free Press. Happy ending? Alas, hardly.
Leisure began to receive harassing and threatening phone calls; someone mailed drugs to her house; and Fox Investigation and Richard Smith sued Linda Leisure for $150,000 in damages due to his loss of reputation. Leisure's been unable to hold a steady job and had to re-mortgage her home in order to pay an attorney.
After perusing Mr. Smith's Columbus police files, Leisure's attorney recently wrote to Smith's attorney: "Quite frankly, after review of such file, I believe Mr. Smith would have great difficulty proving to a jury that any action by Miss Leisure caused damage to his reputation." Standard legal principle: one must first have a reputation before it can be damaged.
Leisure was moved by the spirit, driven by her fund.
10/09/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
They're here. Yes, indeed. New evidence published in this week's issue of The Nation directly links Columbus's own Southern Air Transport to the Contra cocaine network reputedly protected by the Central Intelligence Agency.
In December 1985, Robert Perry, now the director of The Nation Institute's Investigative Unit, co-wrote the first news story about Contra drug trafficking for the Associated Press. After the October 5, 1986 crash in Nicaragua of a Southern Air Transport aircraft that was carrying arms to the U.S.-backed Contras, Perry flew to Nicaragua and copied down the entries in the crashed plane's flight logs. The entries made by co-pilot Wallace "Buzz" Sawyer, who, along with two others, died in the crash, indicated that Sawyer flew a Southern Air L-382 from Miami to Barranquilla, Colombia on October 2, 4, and 6, 1985.
In 1986, Wanda Palacio broke with Colombia's Medellin Cartel and became an FBI informant. According to The Nation, Palacio also informed Massachusetts Senator John Kerry that she had witnessed cocaine being loaded onto Southern Air Transport (SAT) planes, an admitted CIA-owned airline from 1960-'73, then under contract to the Pentagon. On September 26, 1986, Senator Kerry hand-delivered an 11-page statement from Palacio to William Weld, then an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department. Palacio asserts that she was with cocaine kingpin Jorge Ochoa at the airport in Barranquilla in '83 as a cocaine shipment was loaded onto a SAT plane, according to The Nation. She claims that Ochoa told her it was "a CIA plane and that he was exchanging guns for drugs."
Palacio claims in early October 1985 she again witnessed Ochoa's aides loading an SAT plane with cocaine. She also confirmed to Kerry staffers that Sawyer was one of the SAT pilots she saw loading cocaine in Barranquilla in early October. SAT officials admitted that Sawyer flew their planes, but steadfastly deny involvement in cocaine smuggling. Not that we would expect them to admit it. On August 7, 1987 in a Senate deposition, Palacio stated that "the FBI stopped working with me all of the sudden because of this Southern Air Transport deal...Justice doesn't want to hear me."
With the CIA-Contra drug connection now national news after the publication of Gary Webb's series in the San Jose Mercury News, and recently reprinted in the Dispatch, questions need to be asked about the use of taxpayer's money to bring the infamous Southern Air Transport to Rickenbacker Air Base. Webb documents how the Contra cocaine network spread crack into the inner cities of Cincinnati and Dayton. Evidence suggests that there was clearly a Colombian cocaine connection in Columbus in the late '80s and early '90s. In 1990, the Franklin County Sheriff's Department under Earl Smith made the single largest drug bust in its history when they confiscated 48 pounds of cocaine from Fernando Solar.
Solar, according to Smith, led the Sheriff's Department to New York and an apartment building where vehicles were being compartmentalized for drug trafficking. They issued a warrant for one Carlos Wagner. Wagner was later detained by U.S. Customs Agents who confiscated half a million dollars from him and allowed him to return to Colombia. He was later arrested in Houston when he re-entered the U.S. Wagner turned out to be a "mule," Smith says, for Colombian drug dealer Rudolphio Trahiellio in San Francisco.
In 1992, the Franklin County Sheriff's Department played a vital role in Trahiello's arrest in cracking one of the largest drug rings in the U.S. Solar, Wagner and Trahiello are reportedly in prison, but Southern Air Transport remains at Rickenbacker Air Base, courtesy of Ohio taxpayer's dollars. Why?
Buck up In the September 4 Columbus Alive, I wrote a news article entitled "The High Price of Bucking the System" about the firing of Voinovich administration official Joe Gilyard. Gilyard, former director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services, repeatedly claimed that Voinovich Company lobbyist Phil Hamilton continually pressured him to illegally release money for Voinovich Company projects. When I asked him why there was so much pressure, Gilyard claimed that "Pauly Voinovich and [the governor's former chief of staff and former Voinovich Companies vice president] Paul Mifsud were in a hurry to repay money to a savings and loan they had busted out."
Gilyard offered no substantiation. But, a Cleveland Plain Dealer article dated September 8, 1994 provides additional insight. Seems Pauly defaulted on a $6.8 million construction loan for a housing project in 1990, just before Gilyard was appointed. The lender was Columbus-based Mid-America Federal Savings & Loan, which later failed and was taken over by the Resolution Trust Company. Dale Bissonette, a former chief financial officer of the Voinovich Company, pleaded guilty to bank fraud in connection with the case. Good thing we got Pauly V building the Franklin County jail for $2 million-oops! forgot the overruns-$9 million. Gilyard was fired; Voinovich is at large in Franklin County. Stop him before he builds again.
10/16/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
As former Sheriff Earl Smith sees it, "That guy in the other paper missed the whole point....I wasn't obsessed with pornography, we had a health problem, an AIDS epidemic. And when we tried to close the bookstores we ran right into organized crime."
Referring to a recent front-page article in a local weekly, Smith-who is once again facing off against Karnes for the sheriff's post-says he doesn't much care whether people watch triple X videos or read dirty magazines, but he hates the illegal "drugs and prostitution" and money laundering that seem to accompany the porn industry. Of course, the money laundering he loathes isn't by organized crime, but by the campaign manager for now-Sheriff Jim Karnes' 1992 campaign.
Greg Kostelac, a local attorney and then a member of the Ohio Elections Commission, claims for the record that he did nothing illegal. But the courts may decide that question. Kostelac apparently took porn money that can be tied directly to organized crime in Cleveland and gave it to the Franklin County Democratic Party. Here's the rest of the story.
In 1990, then-Sheriff Smith busted an adult bookstore in New Rome. According to Smith, documents seized in the arrest linked local porn czar Mark Wolfe to Ruben Sternum, the mob's guy in Cleveland: Wolfe had sent a $100,000 check to help post bond for Sternum.
Now comes the 1992 elections. Payback time for the big bad Wolfe. In the waning days of the hotly contested Smith-Karnes race, Wolfe, with the aid of his brother Tom and employee Mark Long, reportedly gave money to six trusted acquaintances: Daryl Castle, Herbert Rogers, Cynthia DeSantis, Joanna Demas, Walt Erwin, and William Joyner. On October 26, Long, Castle, and Demas wrote $2,000 checks to the Franklin County Democratic Party; one day later Erwin, Joyner, Rogers and DeSantis also each wrote $2,000 checks to the Party. Clean, freshly scrubbed porn money.
The last-minute influx of the $14,000 into Dem coffers set off a heated battle over the money. Current Democratic Party Chair Denny White was running for county recorder that year and his campaign staffers wanted some of the money; Tom Erney and Rob Lidle lobbied hard for a cut for Denny. But to no avail. The Dems, under the leadership of Fran Ryan, "loaned" the Karnes campaign $8,000 on October 30. Ryan supposedly put the remaining $6,000 into the coordinated campaign effort for all candidates. Kostelac says that $2,200 went into an ad buy at This Week newspapers. The ad was a letter from the Fraternal Order of Police attacking Smith and promoting Karnes.
Kostelac has admitted that the $8,000 loan was used to mass-reproduce copies of Marty Yant's Columbus Alive! article "Tin Star Tyrants." At the time, Kostelac was serving as Yant's attorney in a federal bankruptcy case. On November 23, 1992, after Karnes' narrow victory, the Franklin County Democratic Party paid him $6,000 for "expenses" reportedly for working on the campaigns of White, Linda Evans, Patrick O'Reilly and other Democrats.
The problem is, Kostelac may not have worked on these campaigns. When Linda Evans was asked what Kostelac did for her Clerk of Courts campaign in 1992, she replied, "Nothing." White has also stated that Kostelac did not work for his campaign, but says that Kostelac may have had some "arrangement" with Ryan, who paid him. "I just don't know. It was before my tenure as chair," White said.
However, it's an open secret that White staffers exploded when they found out about Kostelac's expense check. This, in part, may have led to Ryan's hasty resignation as party chair and White's ascension. White says no; other party members say yes.
Smith claims that he asked White about the money laundering and White confirmed it, yet refuses to provide the documents "without a subpoena." White says that Smith called him "over a year-and-a-half ago" and "while I've pledged to cooperate with any government agency investigating the party's activities, I wasn't going to let Earl Smith go fishing in the Democratic Party files."
Wise decision. Seems Smith is out to catch the "big one." And he's got some questions he'd like answered. "Where did the $6,000 go? Was it income for Greg Kostelac? Was it reported to the IRS? Was it given to Marty Yant for writing the story?" Kostelac says no money went to Yant and everything else was perfectly legal.
Well not quite everything. Cindy DeSantis admits to "doing a favor" for her friend Mark Long, who provided $2,000 in "cash" to be laundered to the Democratic Party. Long, now deceased, had worked for Mark Wolfe. Dr. Joanna Demas admits that Mark Wolfe's brother "Tom gave me the majority of the money...maybe I was naive."
And perhaps so was Kostelac, who made the mistake of telling his new running buddy, Terry Casey of Republican Party fame, the naked truth about the porn cash.
10/23/1996
Deja V
by Bob Fitrakis
Who says crime doesn't pay? Not the V Group, the Voinovich group of companies that specializes in building jails. You see, the Guv's younger brother Pauly is at it again. His Cleveland-based architectural construction company may be connected to a man under indictment and investigation for alleged "influence peddling." Seems Vincent Zumpano was indicted on October 3 in Steubenville for allegedly trying to bribe a county commissioner in order to secure a jail construction contract for Pauly's firm. Pauly's company, officially, is "mystified." And those 473 long distance calls from Vincent's place of employment to the Voinovich firm between December 1992 and December 1995, as reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer and Cleveland Plain Dealer don't prove nuthin'. And that's why the Dispatch has the good sense not to write about it, but chose instead to put on Saturday's front page aWashington Post wire story about bad sportsmanship among band leaders in Virginia!
More calls went to former employee and lobbyist for the Voinovich firm and the Governor's original "transition director," Phil Hamilton. Sound familiar? Remember Joe Gilyard and an Alive cover story six weeks ago about the Gilyard-Hamilton relationship? It's the same old story, same old song and dance, my friends. Here's a quick take from Joe, fired by the Guv after he suggested that little brother Pauly may not be on the up-and-up. "This is exactly the type of thing Phil Hamilton wanted me involved in. They used to phone me, fax me, send messages constantly. He wanted me to let the counties know that the V Company had 'the inside track' on jail contracts."
With Governor George's much-coveted senatorial campaign now only two years away, isn't it time to pull a Clinton? You know what I mean. Like when Wild Bill let the state police nab his out-of-control cokehead brother Roger. Think about it, Guv. Time's runnin' out.
Meanwhile, Pauly continues to "hook us up good" here in Franklin County. You see the architectural firm of Voinovich-Sgro went-without any political influence whatsoever-and got themselves an unbid contract of nearly $1 million to design and manage a $2 million, I mean, $8 million-wait, now $11 million-Franklin County jail renovation.
Our illustrious county commissioners-all Republicans, same party as the Guv, wink, wink, nod, nod-approved the unbid contract last May. Good thing that Voinovich-Sgro is only the architect 'cause if it was the construction manager a 1988 state law would have required competitive bidding, which would have saved millions.
So the cost overruns are really the fault of those really bad construction managers, not Voinovich-Sgro. So much wasted taxpayer money, those bastards. Maybe Voinovich-Sgro could begin to phone and fax those evil construction managers, the Voinovich Companies, every day. I suspect they know the number.
Maybe they could build some special luxury condo cells, you know, like those corporations build at sports stadiums. Then, if Voinovich-Sgro turns in The Voinovich Companies for ripping us off, the construction manager company officials would have a place to stay in the style to which they have become accustomed. Is free enterprise great, or what?
Sybil Hall?
Another one of my favorite county officials is Treasurer Bobbie Hall, universally hailed as a financial whiz. That's why I take her so seriously when she touts Bob Dole's tax cut and attacks Bill Clinton as a "big spending liberal." Reminds me of the movie Sybil with Sally Fields. You remember: Sally did that multiple personality schtick. Hall's doing the same thing when she suggests that county property owners don't need a 1 to 2.5 percent discount on our property taxes by pre-paying the bill monthly instead of paying in a lump sum.
Hall recently informed the Dispatch that she looked into the tax-saving program, "but has not seen a need or a benefit to the county's finances." Sybil, Sybil? Let me talk to Bobbie Dole, the tax-cutting gal!
Look for Anthony Celebrezze III to justly blast Franklin County Recorder Richard Metcalf later this week in a commercial on "double-dipping." Campaign insiders say the initial script is something like-use your best deep political voice-"He's been on the public payroll for 45 years. He's making $110,000 a year."
Yes indeed. Seems a loophole in the law allows the former retired judge and public servant to collect some $60,000 to $65,000 a year in from the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) while bringing in $50,000 or so as our county recorder.
Look for Metcalf to counter with the usual "He's got a well-known name and he's been in office a really, really long time . . ."
Ain't democracy grand?
10/23/1996
FEATURED ARTICLE
Radical rebirth
by Bob Fitrakis
Every 30 years or so, the American Left recreates itself: the Communists and Socialists of the 1930s' "Red Decade" later became the decentralized, radical Students for a Democratic Society and New Left of the 1960s. And it looks like it's the multiculturalism and direct action of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) for the '90s.
The program for the ARA's Third Annual Conference, held last weekend, screamed: "Do Something!" It had a photo of an activist taking a swing at a bloated, pot-bellied, berobed, coneheaded Klansman. Entering the old North High School, where the ARA conference was held, I got the sense that something was indeed happening here. Grizzled veterans of '60s and '70s anti-war and anti-imperialist movements mingled freely with the next New Left. Before the weekend was over, I had attended workshops on racism and fascism, marched and been Maced at-and been cited as the leader of-a demonstration against police brutality. Welcome to activism '90s style.
At the opening of the conference Friday night, the mostly "straight-edge" Generation X participants-wearing "Fuck Racism" T-shirts, the "Mean People Suck" slogan taken to its logical extreme-exuded an aura that made the Weathermen look like the Brady Brunch. But, how much was posing and posturing? This new generation of anti-racist militants has grown up knowing no movement victories. The Civil Rights movement-which brought the end of legalized apartheid in America in 1965-is ancient history. The anti-war struggle is like those war stories that the World War II GIs used to tell their kids and grandkids in the '50s.
This new breed of activists has done battle in the cities, suburbs and small towns of North America against the rising tide of neo-fascists and neo-Nazis ushered in by the rhetoric of the Reagan and Bush eras and the infamous political "wedge issues" of immigrant and welfare-mother bashing, a tide not quelled by the hollow promises of President Clinton's law-and-order-centrist policies.
And this is true not only for the Americans present, but for the large Canadian contingent as well. The dozens of ARA members from Toronto are hardened by their ongoing battle with white supremacists in the Great White North. Toronto is the home of Ernest Zundel, a key player in the international Nazi movement. From his fortress at 206 Carlton, Zundel runs Samisdat Publishing, one of the largest Nazi propaganda operations on the planet. His chief goal is to deny the Holocaust, producing such publications as: "Did Six Million Really Die?" and "The Hitler We Loved And Why."
Canadian courts have dismissed Holocaust denial charges against Zundel, instead characterizing his work as concerning "ethnic conflict between Germans and Jews." Yeah, and those death camp ovens were used for making bagels. Zundel's racist skinhead ("bonehead") followers revere him as a hero and chant, "Six million more!"
But like the conference cover photo depicts, when government action fails in Canada, this new breed of anti-fascist activist is willing to use other means: Zundel's property was recently torched. Shedding light on the rise of the American Religious Right on the conference's opening night was an old friend of mine from Detroit, Russ Bellant. His new book, The Religious Right in Michigan Politics, is the first to investigate and document the origins and objectives of the popular group the Promise Keepers (PK). Many are familiar with former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney's original 1990 vision: to fill a stadium with Christian men willing to "reclaim" authority from their wives, capitalizing on the male backlash against the women's movement and the gender-bashing so prominent now on talk radio.
As Bellant explained, the vast majority of men of various denominations that attend these PK rallies come with good and sincere intentions. I know, my older brother Nick and my younger brother Dave, both plagued by marital problems, now call themselves Promise Keepers. Bellant pointed out how McCartney, while serving as assistant football coach at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, "encountered and was deeply influenced by the Word of God (WOG) Community." WOG, according to Bellant, practices a "shepherding/discipleship" form of worship that requires total submission to a person called "the head." He calls Promise Keepers' views fundamentally "anti-democratic" and potentially "totalitarian" in nature.
"The use of sophisticated lighting and sound in a stadium setting, psychologically playing on people's emotions, breaking down the denominational differences, and merging nationalism and religion really echoes the Nazi rallies of the Third Reich," Bellant argued. Bellant demonstrated how virtually all top Christian Right leaders-Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition, D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministry, and Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ-have signed on to the Promise Keepers. The "family values" rhetoric and homophobia are part of a larger "cultural revolution" the PKs hope to bring about. Robertson, Kennedy and Bright, along with James Dodson-the author of Promise Keepers Manifesto, Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper-are all members of the super-secretive radical right Council for National Policy (CNP), according to Bellant.
"The Council for National Policy is not an organization most of you have heard of. Unlike the Christian Coalition, the Council wants to keep itself secret. The Council was created by business and political leaders who were also leaders in the John Birch Society. Its membership includes former Indiana Ku Klux Klan leader Richard Shoff, Jerry Falwell, TV censor Don Wildman, anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly, a handful of pro-apartheid activists and registered agents for the old South African regime, and leaders of the Unification (Moonies) Church," detailed Bellant.
The CNP members represent the political elite of the radical right and essentially they plan and fund the major projects of the American Right, in Bellant's analysis. The big bucks come from Jeff Coors and family members of Coors Brewing Company, Linda Bean of L.L. Bean, and Richard DeVos Jr. of Amway and Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt.
"While they appeal to black members, their real agenda is to destroy affirmative action, and they have links to white supremacist ideology," Bellant concluded.
Activists attended Saturday sessions such as "Leonard Peltier/Political Prisoners"; "Black-Jewish Relations"; "Lesbian and Gay Oppression"; and the essential "Surviving Radical Demos" to name a few. Having attended, participated, organized and covered literally hundreds of protests and demonstrations in my life, I thought I knew how to survive a radical demo in the mid-'90s. To err is human...
I was asked to bring my portable PA system to the conference at 6 p.m. Saturday for the "Copwatch Rally & March." No big deal, just another case of journalistic participant-observer in the alternative press. Soon I was wondering who was organizing the event. When I arrived at the kickoff point at Arcadia and High, security guru Chris "The Anarchist" handed me a mike and asked me to speak. "About what?" I queried. "You know, about why we're marching." Luckily I was saved by a Columbus Copwatch member who politely asked the gathering horde of Klan and Nazi fighters "to remember that your actions will have repercussions on us in this community." Virtually all got the message: Give peace a chance tonight.
I briefly addressed the assembled. Having a Ph.D in political science, I knew to announce the intent of the march to the estimated 10 percent that were no doubt undercover cops: "We intend this march to be a lawful demonstration, to protest police brutality and walk the streets of America without fear of the police..." I said more about the Antioch students being beaten at the Federal Building, and the TV4 footage showing the brutalization of students on 12th Avenue, but my main mission had been accomplished: protecting myself from "inciting a riot" charges. Wise move.
A small contingent of anarchists from the "Love and Rage" group unfurled a red-and-black flag. Banners were held with slogans reading "No Police Brutality" and "No Nazis, No Killer Cops, No Fascist USA, Anti-Racist Action." Appropriate slogans for the 20-something generation whose educational benefits have been cut while government prison spending has been quadrupled.
Other marchers lit torches-lawful, but virtually unheard of in Columbus-creating an eerie and disturbing mood. These weren't drunken freshmen frat boys reveling in a football victory frenzy. We crossed High Street and more than a hundred people began marching south.
Police squad cars with lights flashing immediately began to "escort" the marchers. They persisted, despite our insistence that we knew our way to 12th Avenue. And as a police helicopter began to hover overhead, I heard an unfamiliar chant: "Aim high, pigs in the sky!"
Just before Blake, in front of the Radio Shack and 24-hour video store, shit happened. Stuck hauling the PA system, I heard a scuffle and turned to see a weird scene. My mind at first rejected it: there was a female police officer without riot gear, attempting to arrest a male marcher. He had his hands raised out to his sides and she was screaming and pulling on his arm. Someone was pulling on his other arm, a literal tug-of-war. Someone in the crowd was yelling "Fuck the pigs!" Seems one Jason Robert Maffettone, 27, of Hoboken, New Jersey had stepped off the curb in Columbus, "jaywalkers gulch." Omigod.
Officer Julie Appenzeller, sworn to serve and protect the people of Columbus from all jaywalkers, foreign and domestic, was just doing her job. Startled and disbelieving male officers stood by their gal as the crowd and I shouted "No police brutality! Let him go!" The infamous "Have Mace-will spray you" Columbus cops drew their black cans. When you're chanting into a mike, you can't always pay attention when someone's aiming at your big round head. Just my luck. I met up with Officer Generic Cop, 6'1" with black hair and a mustache, who of course finished first at the police academy in Mace target shooting. I didn't actually see the Mace; I felt it when it drenched my eyes. For 10 to 15 seconds I was really mad. This asshole clearly hadn't read the U.S. Constitution, nor Columbus police procedure on Macing. He'd flunk my American Guv class. Moot point as my eyes began to burn, lungs sear, and nose clog up. Still, chanting into a mike on a sidewalk does not constitute menacing a police officer.
Let's see, five minutes into an anti-police brutality march and I've been Maced. Go figure. I pride myself on never getting Maced. I hadn't been Maced since the day after the Klan killed civil rights marchers in Greensboro, North Carolina. My mind raced. When was that? 1979? '80? Anyway, it was probably tear gas. Or was it pepper gas at Kent State in '78?
Deja vu all over again. I was on my knees choking and crawling, my Columbus tax dollars at work again. Being the brave journalist that I am, I thought I'd best crawl into the video store to wash out my eyes. Luckily my alternative press fame had preceded me. The clerk greeted me with a cheery: "Hi Bob!" The Earl Smith-Jim Karnes debate over porno shops aside, it seems the only restroom was in the Triple X adult section of the store. Half-blinded but still able to make out the images of assorted sex toys, I made my way to the counter. "Bathroom," I pleaded. The clerk had seen it all before. "Honest, I've got Mace in my eyes. It's not a Pee Wee Herman thing." He advised, "Just ride it out. The water will only make it worse." A voice of authority.
Outside, things had calmed down and I found myself at the end of the march. Fortunately, one young ARA activist was carrying a squirt tube of Bausch and Lomb sensitive eye contact lens cleaner. "It'll work, dude. Like, I sprayed myself with some Mace and tested it." It was like a miracle. No Columbus activist should leave home without it.
Freed of the speaker system, now safely stashed at an ARA safe house on High Street thanks to Chris "The Anarchist," I moved to the front of the march. There I met 30 or so police in riot gear, and reporters from the Columbus Dispatch, TV4 and 10.
I had a new goal. Keep from getting Maced again. Tensions mounted as the marchers, now swelled to nearly 300, found themselves pinned against a construction fence in the middle of the campus. Would the police attack? Undoubtedly, they were wondering the same about us. Instead of confronting the police, we found an opening at the Wexner Center and snaked through the campus. Thank God for secular humanist bastions of liberalism. One lone campus police car escorted us several blocks back to High Street. We figured the campus cops were unlikely to Mace us, but they might order us to do a big group hug.
The moment of truth. Should we walk down 12th Avenue? What the hell, it's still America, why not? The march ended almost without incident as we re-emerged at 15th and High and gathered in the open space in front of the Wexner Center.
Just before the end of the march, a lone police commander joined the marchers. The word went out that he was looking for Fitrakis. No doubt, I thought, to congratulate me for my fine work in averting a riot. Wrong again. The first tip off was when he wouldn't shake my hand. And then his first words stung like the Mace: "I'm Commander Marcum. Why are you writing those lies about me?"
How the hell was I to know he'd been reassigned from supervisor of Police Intelligence to riot patrol at OSU? And anyway, those tips about his family's links to gambling in last week's Alive were from my most reliable law enforcement sources. I asked him what the real story was, but he wouldn't tell me. "Your paper's printing lies." Later that night the police reported that no Mace was used on the demonstrators.
The next day's Dispatch reported that I "led" the rally. I didn't mean to, but as my old marching buddy Mark Stansbery explained it, "There really was no leadership. And after Bob got Maced, he was really pissed."
The ARA doesn't really have leaders. It's a new movement of leaderless resistance to police brutality and the prison industrial complex.
The Dispatch also reported the post-Macing chant as: "Police brutality, we're sick and...tired of it." Insert "fuckin'" where the ellipse is. That's the mood of these young ARA activists. America is incubating a whole new generation of hard-core fascist-fighters that are sick and tired. "And tired of being sick and tired." They're not the Promise Keepers, but they are the product of America's broken promises and dreams.
10/30/1996
The odor of Oddi
by Bob Fitrakis
What do Gary Hart, Bob Packwood, Thomas Ferguson and Franklin County Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi have in common? Shouldn't be too hard to figure out.
Next Tuesday, without giving it much thought, Franklin County voters are likely to go to the polls and "Retain Jesse Oddi" for Franklin County Clerk of Courts. Maybe the cry should be to restrain Oddi.
I recently talked with employees from the Clerk of Court's office, who all march in parades for Jesse, raise money for his campaign, and have Oddi bumper stickers on their autos. The public image these employees present is that of adoring their boss; in reality, they say they're terrified of losing their jobs if they don't.
Oddi is portrayed as one of the most despicable public servants imaginable-but not by the competition, by his own employees who say he's a shakedown artist. Employees claim that their supervisors routinely record how many spaghetti fund-raiser dinner tickets they sell for Oddi or whether the Oddi bumper stickers are on their cars. One employee claims that a supervisor "kept asking me for donations. She said 'What about your job? You ought to worry about your job.'"
Donna Born, a former supervisor now on medical leave from the Clerk's office, admits that she "forced them to buy these tickets."
"Yes, my division had 12 people," she explains. "We would sell 150-200 tickets at $25 apiece. The employees knew that they had to buy or sell a set amount of tickets. I also forced them to march in parades. We would pass around sign-up sheets on county time and they had to give me a reason if they couldn't march."
It is illegal for public employees to engage in partisan political activities while on the government payroll. But according to Oddi's employees, that may be the least of his sins. Born and others claim they routinely cover for Oddi as he engages in repeated liaisons with female staff members, who are reportedly rewarded with job advancement in exchange for granting sexual favors.
"I covered for him," Born said. "I'd have to tell his wife Elaine that it was me calling his house [instead of another woman] to report that the alarms went off downtown; it wasn't true," she said. Oddi-who displays a fondness for open-collared shirts, gold chains and who supposedly had a plaque in his office that read "Italian Stallion"-has cultivated a close personal relationship with one particular supervisor, according to Born and several other employees. Born claims that some employees who have been there "about six years" are making far more money than long-term employees who aren't as friendly with Oddi.
As Born explains, "Jesse is a real touchy-feely-type guy. He likes to pat your butt and kiss you, to massage your shoulders and rub your body." One female employee stated that Oddi would "come and massage my shoulders and run his fingers through my hair." Another female employee was more blunt: "I knew if I went over and gave Jesse a [sexual favor] he'd give me a raise."
All employees told tales of catching Oddi with his hands either "up her skirt" or "down her blouse." When pressed for details, employees point to Oddi's suite at the Great Southern Hotel as a key place for female employees to negotiate a raise after a dinner at Chutney's.
Jacqueline Bracken, Oddi's election opponent, has tried desperately to expose Oddi's sleaziness and corruption. Oddi's employees tell a similar tale. Employees report that eight Clerk of Courts employees went to the Dispatch almost four years ago, right before Oddi's appointment, with similar allegations and documentation. The Big D did nothing, they said. Not surprising; while seemingly obsessed with Judge Deborah O'Neill's alleged sexual escapades, the big boys at the Daily Monopoly ignore Oddi's odor as they search for the holy grail of journalism, the truth about O'Neill's "panties."
Indeed, on Saturday, in another apparent attempt to run Judge O'Neill out of office, the Dispatch put her photo on page one with a story claiming she'd done something wrong by allowing blacks into a jury pool. The Dispatch's O'Neill fetish kicked the possible Jerry Hessler "mistrial" story to page two, sans photo.
The accounts of Oddi's misdeeds don't stop here. One long-time law-enforcement source calls Oddi the "county's premier fixer." All employees questioned by Alive report that documents are routinely "backdated" in Oddi's office, and that Oddi can make legal files "completely disappear." Think about it: Jesse Oddi, Clerk of Courts, is the man in charge of all the court documents in Franklin County. Bracken says it's not easy to run against somebody who has the open reputation for being able to make a drunk-driving charge, for instance, disappear. Two employees claim that the system is designed not only to destroy the physical file but the corresponding microfilm as well.
If Jesse Oddi is elected Clerk of Courts in Franklin County, citizens here owe Palmer McNeal an apology. McNeal, a former county auditor run out of office by the Wolfe Family Newsletter for a minor misuse of his county credit card, is a mere peon compared to the "Italian Stallion." Ferguson and Packwood-pikers. Gary Hart-bush-league lecher.
All hail Jesse Oddi. The little stud that could.
10/23/1996
Campaign questions
by Bob Fitrakis
What really happened in the 1992 sheriff's election in Franklin County? This question is currently being probed by the Ohio Elections Commission. On Monday, the Commission found insufficient evidence to investigate money-laundering allegations against Sheriff Jim Karnes, former Franklin County Democratic Party Chair Fran Ryan, and the Franklin County Democratic Party. The commission will investigate allegations against Karnes' 1992 campaign manager and former Elections Commission member, Greg Kostelac, and has suspended him as an investigator for the commission.
New information obtained by Columbus Alive sheds more light on the Kostelac investigation. Kostelac admits that he personally delivered $14,000 in checks made out to the Franklin County Democratic Party to Ryan on October 26 and 27, 1992. He acknowledges that Mark Wolfe, Franklin County kingpin in the adult entertainment industry, arranged for seven contributors to give $2,000 apiece.
An audiotape of a conversation between former Franklin County Republican Party Executive Director Terry Casey-now a private political consultant and associate of Kostelac-and a member of the Smith campaign crew reveals that there was a falling-out between Karnes and Kostelac immediately following the election. "Greg's no fan of Karnes," Casey informed the Smith campaign earlier this year, and there was "...no deal with Karnes" and Mark Wolfe. The campaign donations solicited from Wolfe by Kostelac were "motivated by wanting to screw Earl.... Karnes [was] kind of oblivious" to Greg's deal, according to Casey.
Casey lobbied hard to keep Kostelac from being investigated: "...he's not a dumb guy, [it's] very, very important to keep Greg out of it." In Casey's analysis, then-Party Chair Ryan "didn't have a clue" on how the 1992 Franklin County campaigns were going. "[She]...didn't think Karnes had a chance. [She thought] Farlow could beat Miller," Casey said. The latter is reference to the race for county prosecutor between Bev Farlow and successful incumbent Michael Miller.
Casey implies that Kostelac was forced in desperation to go to the pornography industry because of poor political decisions on the part of Ryan.
In her defense, Ryan says: "Everyone knows how hard I worked to get out the sample ballot and the election tabloid. And if I did something wrong, why would I list every donation from Greg right down to the dollar; and why would I have left that file in the Democratic Party headquarters if I had something to hide?"
Ryan insists "that Greg approached me. It was my understanding that he wanted to work for the party. After all, he wanted my job." After Ryan's resignation, Kostelac applied to chair the Franklin County Democrats and was not selected. Later, he applied to be chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, also unsuccessfully.
Casey also said that Kostelac went so far as to "whet Wolfe's appetite" with a nasty, negative "TV script" about Smith to entice the donations. Casey refers to "Karnes' stupidity," as Kostelac circumvented his candidate's wishes and cut a deal directly with Ryan.
Ryan is on record stating that Kostelac asked her for a loan and she told him: "...if he raised money for the party, then I would give him a loan." The problem is that Ryan's statement just doesn't add up unless Kostelac was trying to launder money. Kostelac raised $14,000; he gives it to Ryan; she loans him $8,000, which the Karnes campaign pays back. That equals $22,000 for Fran and $0 for the Karnes campaign. The question remains, why didn't Kostelac simply put the $14,000 into the Karnes campaign?
Alive has learned that other factors played into Kostelac's decision as well. Kostelac was having financial problems at the time he took the money from the porn industry. An invoice dated November 18, 1992 from Kostelac to Ryan refers to an "oral agreement" between the two that would result in Kostelac being paid $6,000 if three conditions were met. First, Kostelac must raise the money to pay himself; second, Karnes must win the election; and third, the Karnes campaign had to pay back the $8,000 loan to the Franklin County Democratic Party.
According to Sheriff Karnes, his campaign paid Kostelac nothing. "I kept asking him 'What do I owe you?' and he kept saying 'You don't,'" Karnes recalls. Party insiders and Karnes campaign workers report that at the post-election victory party at La Scala Restaurant, Kostelac took possession of the Karnes campaign cash box instead of turning it over to the treasurer, reportedly to "settle up with Fran." Sources report that this was the beginning of a falling-out between Karnes and Kostelac. Highly placed Karnes campaign sources and Franklin County staffers all report that the final break between Karnes and Kostelac came after Kostelac asked the Karnes campaign committee for a personal loan.
Sources in the Karnes campaign report around "five hundred dollars in bounced checks" from Kostelac. Alive has also learned that Kostelac bounced checks to various political campaigns and organizations. Check #1412 for $100 from Greg Kostelac and Associates dated October 25, 1993 to the Franklin County Democratic Party was returned for "insufficient funds."
Tapes released by the Smith campaign indicate that at least two of the contributors lined up by Mark Wolfe may have gotten some or all of their campaign money from other individuals, possibly in violation of campaign law. One of the individual contributors who was given part of the $14,000 from Wolfe, Dr. Joanna Demas, states that "...It's possible that he [Tom Wolfe, Mark Wolfe's brother] gave me a majority of the money. But I made that donation because I believed in what I was doing. Now, maybe I was naive in not asking why is this made out to the Democratic Party and not to Jim Karnes."
Cynthia DeSantis, a local hairdresser, was tapped while staying at Tom Wolfe's house in Los Angeles. DeSantis, who also was one of the $2,000 contributors, states that she was "doing a favor for my best friend." That friend was identified as Mark Long, an employee of Mark Wolfe. DeSantis says that, "I believe it was cash."
11/06/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
How many hours are in a month? Don't ask the police chief's son, Officer Jason Jackson. Law-enforcement sources say that Jason's figures just don't add up for the "special duty" police security he coordinated for the South of Main project. You remember the South of Main project? Chief Jackson's good buddy Tommy Banks "rescued" the project from the evil clutches of the non-profit South of Main Development Corporation headed by the dreaded Shawn Thompson. Or so the spin goes.
The real battle was over who would control the housing assets in the future: a non-profit or a for-profit entity. Say $10 million is put into "low-income" housing stock, primarily public funds. How long does it have to serve "low-income" residents? What happens after 10 years when the property is worth some $30 million? Who owns it then?
The non-profit South of Main was taken out of the picture when it was squeezed by certain bankers and city officials. Thompson was inflexible when it came to understanding the needs of very powerful people. She insisted that the low-income housing assets belonged to the community through a non-profit organization. The Columbus Police Intelligence Unit entered the fray, apparently siding with mysterious "for-profit" persons-whoever they may be. A raid by the Columbus Police effectively killed the South of Main Development Corporation. So far, no criminal charges have ever been brought against the South of Main, although it was widely alleged that they were mismanaging their finances.
Anyway, hear the one about Tommy and the Chief wanting to go into business together? Something to do with housing. Since Banks took over the South of Main project, sources say it looks as though over $100,000 in security has been provided by Special Duty Columbus Police. And Officer Jason Jackson has worked hard coordinating those assignments. In one month, police worked so diligently that they billed for 200 hours more than exist in an actual month.
Oops! Inquiring minds want to know whether he was a victim of the late, great "new math" movement, or protecting his dad's future housing assets. Who's mismanaging finances now?
Speaking of mismanagement, former Police Intelligence Supervisor-now reassigned-Commander Curtis Marcum handled the South of Main raid for the Chief. Maybe he should've raided his brother-in-law Tony Lombardi's place. Who knows what he would've turned up. Perhaps Lombardi's reported card-playing buddy Franklin County Prosecutor Michael Miller. According to a police intelligence report, Miller allegedly likes an occasional high-stakes game of cards upstairs at The Refectory. You know, the same type of game that got retired Police Sergeant Mt. Vernon Johnson killed. And who better to spin stories with over a friendly game of poker than Lombardi? Lord knows Lombardi's reportedly got some tales to tell.
Like the little matter of being a suspect in two murders, according to police intelligence files. James D. Colliver, Lombardi's partner in the car dealership Contemporary Cars, met an untimely demise. Redrum! 187! So did Frank Yassanoff soon after he filed charges in 1970 against Lombardi for allegedly falsifying auto titles. Hopefully, Lombardi has better luck at picking cards than business partners. Just like Bojangles' dog, they got a tendency to "up and die" on him.
On the topic of luck, Lombardi's had pretty good luck in the Franklin County Courts. A grand theft charge was dismissed in June 1975 and a charge of passing bad checks was dismissed in November of the same year, according to a police intelligence report. Sure, there was the little run of bad luck in May 1983 when Lombardi pled guilty to two charges of passing bad checks, but what the hell. It could've been worse. After all, the prosecutor dismissed 10 other counts pending against Tony.
More bad news in March 1984 when he was convicted of gambling, yet "luck was a lady" that year and he got a one-year suspended sentence. There's probably a really good reason why the prosecutor's office dropped a unauthorized use of dealer's plates charge against Lombardi in 1984. And the little matter of the allegations concerning kickbacks to a Bureau of Motor Vehicles employee during that period were never substantiated.
So, this Chief Jackson thing is really just a witch-hunt and Commander Marcum is being a scapegoat just because he has a lucky dog of a brother-in-law. And anyone who says otherwise, or anything about any of Marcum's family members being in Mt. Vernon Johnson's bookie book, is just an unlucky liar.
Did you hear the rumor about a really lucky police commander formerly in Internal Affairs-recently reassigned-who just happens to be holding a very valuable electronic Rolodex? Now suppose the names of some very powerful people-law enforcement leaders, politicians, judges-who frequented high-priced prostitutes were in that Rolodex? No, it's not the Heidi Fleiss scandal, it's a Cowtown Caper. One Anthony D. Mennucci ran a high-priced call girl ring in Columbus and his Rolodex, once securely in police custody, has disappeared.
The key question in the Chief Jackson investigation remains: "Why did the chief go so easy on former Internal Affairs Commander Burns?" This investigation ain't about "racism," it's about who runs the prostitution and gambling rackets in Columbus. Bet on it.
11/13/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
First, the good news. Both Dennis Kucinich and Ted Strickland won their Congressional races. Make no mistake about it, these are victories by progressive Democrats against reactionary Newtonian Republicans.
Kucinich and Strickland were vilified by their right-wing opponents as "liberals," "Communist-sympathizers," or "godless." In Northeast Ohio's 10th Congressional district, Governor George Voinovich stopped in personally to denounce "the 1930s-style populism" of Kucinich. His opponent, Republican Representative Martin Hoke, portrayed Kucinich's concern for working people and support for unionism as coming out of the "Communist Manifesto."
Also, Hoke repeatedly red-baited Kucinich by alluding to some mysterious plot and unpaid "consulting" by Communist Party official Rick Nagin. Hoke's retro-'50s hokeyness and McCarthyist smear tactics didn't work. Kucinich proudly boasted of his "100 percent labor voting record" as an Ohio state senator, and reiterated his commitment to the environment and keeping a multi-state radioactive waste dump out of Ohio.
Strickland, an ordained Methodist minister, was attacked by his opponent as a godless secular humanist liberal. Among Strickland's alleged un-Christian activity is his admitted "first priority" to provide health care insurance for 10 million U.S. children who now lack coverage. Strickland also rightly pointed out that his opponent, Republican Frank Cremeans, voted both to raise taxes on the working poor by eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit and favored allowing millionaires to move offshore to avoid taxes.
The Strickland and Cremeans races were perhaps the two most vicious Congressional races in the U.S. The choice was clear-cut: Gingrich or progressivism. The progressives won both, despite being outspent by at least 3-1.
Now the bad news. In three other key races, all involving freshman Republican representatives, the Democrats lost. In two of the races-Representative Steve Chabot of Cincinnati vs. Mark Longabaugh and Representative Steve LaTourette of Madison vs. Thomas Coyne, Jr.-much more moderate Democratic challengers were relatively easily dispatched. Both Longabaugh and Coyne refused to engage in the knockdown, drag-out reactionary-versus-progressive campaigning that brought victory to Kucinich and Strickland.
Styling themselves more as Clintonesque "New Democrats," the candidates were soundly rejected by the voters, thus proving the old axiom: given a choice between a real Republican and near-Republican they'll choose the real thing every time.
In the third race, State Senator Robert Burch narrowly lost to Representative Bob Ney. Burch declined to cloak himself as a New Democrat and made direct overtures to the Perot supporters. If Burch had been given money from the Democratic Party Congressional Campaign Committee or the AFL-CIO he would have won. Burch's district was initially rated one of the 10 most winnable by a Democrat in the nation.
Instead, a couple hundred thousand dollars was wasted on Cynthia Ruccia's pathetic and futile New Democrat, gone-a-gay-baitin' campaign against Representative John Kasich. Her bizarre Congresswoman wannabe slamming-the-prison-cell door commercial was not only truly twisted beyond belief, but played to Kasich's strength.
Anyway, perhaps the even more pathetic Franklin County Democratic Party can get off their "Republican-lite" binge and field some progressive candidates for a change.
Of course, there's always the problem a la Mary Jo Kilroy that the party might field a progressive who then feels immediately obligated to run as a centrist.
Speaking of red-baiting, I had the pleasure of spending election night on WCBE doing political commentary with Ms. Republican Right-to-Life Janet Folger. Janet, with her lightning-quick mind, honed through countless hours of Rush Limbaugh agi-prop told the listeners that I was a "communist" because I believed in the "redistribution of wealth." There's nothing worse than a self-righteous Right-to-Life Christian who's not familiar with the Good Book. Having spent my youth as a fire-breathing, proselytizing evangelical Christian, let me simply refer Ms. Folger to Acts, 2:45:
"Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to everyone as he had need." And to the Sermon on the Mount, Christ's comments to Nicodemus, virtually every prophet in the Old Testament, etc., etc.
Speaking of religious matters, the Franklin County Democrats need to convene a political inquisition. Franklin County Chairperson Denny White and his top advisers should be figuratively put on the rack and grilled on the following races: Why was Republican Probate Judge Lawrence Belskis allowed-with that ethnic name-to run unopposed? Why did you put up your best political name, Tony Celebrezze III, against Richard Metcalf, who has been elected to public office in Franklin County since the Eisenhower administration? Why didn't Celebrezze run against the eminently odorous and highly beatable Jesse Oddi, who had never won election in Franklin County? Why didn't Beverly Farlow get more funds? And, are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party?
11/20/1996
With friends like these...
by Bob Fitrakis
Vincent Carbone, or was it Vito, called Tommy Banks an "exquisite gentleman" when asked about Tommy's controversial building project with the Governor's former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud. This is understandable since the Carbone family and Banks are in the construction business together.
What is equally clear is that Mayor Greg Lashutka's investigation of Police Chief James Jackson will involve his self-proclaimed "cousin" Tommy, and here's why. In the spring of 1995 or thereabouts, Tommy allegedly was facing possible rape charges involving an incident at his newly built home in Gahanna. Law-enforcement sources say that Banks invited a teenager working at his property into his big new house for a tour, and it turned ugly. Allegedly, Tommy sexually assaulted the teenager, at least that's what she told her employers and others. Sources report that Tommy "stuck real close" to Chief Jackson during this period. Reportedly, pressure was put on the victim, as well as insinuation that nothing would come of her complaint. Maybe that's why the alleged victim never filed a formal charge.
Hard to believe? Not hardly, if you know Tommy's track record. For example, while Columbus Alive was investigating the above incident, another report turned up on Banks. The Gahanna Police Department filed an Ohio Uniform Incident Report on April 29, 1996. The report, #96-00916, contains allegations from a Gahanna resident who claimed that Tommy Banks stalked her for over two months from February 15 to April 28, 1996. The victim, according to the report, stated that Banks "continually harassed and threatened" her. Allegedly, the married Banks repeatedly asked her out and harassed her by phone. He appeared at her place of employment and "damaged her vehicle when she tried to leave," according to the report. Banks, the file notes, "threatened to harm her or her family."
And then it gets even more interesting. The victim stated "that Mr. Banks had told her he has connections with the Mafia and is extremely wealthy and powerful; and that if she refuses him he'll have her killed." The complainant told police that she simply wanted to document the threats in case Banks took the action, the report states.
This is typical Banks, according to those who have worked with him. Upper Arlington architect Dennis Green, currently involved in a civil suit with Banks, has stated under oath that Banks threatened him as well. "Tommy Banks was flashing around a Teamster ring, it looked like a Masonic ring, saying he didn't think I'd show for the meeting and he might have to have some of the boys from Cleveland 'pick me up,'" Green said.
A former Banks employee who worked with Tommy at his Huntington office, which features double-paned glass and where visitors have to be buzzed in, told Alive that Tommy's office manager and close personal friend Nancy Rogers, who keeps many of Tommy's business secrets, "...could never leave here because they'd find her at the bottom of the river."
"He [Banks] always carries a gun," the employee stated, "As a joke he likes to take it halfway out of the holster and threaten to shoot you."
Some sense of humor; no wonder the Chief likes to run with him. Banks, a former employee of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department, was fired by Sheriff Earl Smith. As part of a legal settlement, Banks is still allowed to play cop on "special duty" directing funeral traffic. Smith recalls that the settlement limits Banks to carrying his gun while on-duty only. The Gahanna Police report lists Banks as a "Franklin County Sheriff's Officer-Reserve." It also lists Banks' pager number. When I paged Banks for comment, he left a brief message on my answering machine. A call from his lawyer, Ritchey Hollenbaugh, soon followed. Banks' paid counsel demanded to know how I got Tommy's pager number. When I told him about Tommy's "menacing by stalking" file, Hollenbaugh pleaded ignorance. But still, he wanted to know "Why are you hounding my client?"
Seems Hollenbaugh regards my columns and the news stories in the Columbus Alive as inappropriate, particularly a recent one that dared point out that Banks's construction application to The Ohio State University for the $75 million Schottenstein arena management job contained two obvious factual errors. One, Tommy had neither the bachelor's degree he claimed to have been awarded-by OSU-in business administration; and two, he doesn't really have the OSU master's degree in engineering he listed. But Ritchey was able to clarify that for me. "It's not a misrepresentation, it's a mistake. Misrepresentation would be a falsification. A mistake is inadvertent, like a typo," he explained.
Now I understand. I have Tommy all wrong. He's made a few mistakes. And so has the Chief for allegedly protecting him. Inadvertently. I should have known, with my double Ph.D's in Astrophysics and Brain Surgery. Oops! Typo. And I really appreciate Ritchey's parting counsel, or was it a threat? "Be careful out there," he said.
Fitrakis has a Ph.D. in Political Science. Honest.
11/27/1996
FEATURED ARTICLE
12th Avenue freezeout
by Bob Fitrakis
An age-old question on government abuse asks: "Who watches the watchers?" In Columbus, the answer is easy, it's Copwatch.
Active and visible in the OSU campus area since the May 17, 1996 confrontation between Columbus police officers and 12th Avenue partiers, their slogan is "Refuse to be Abused"; their logo depicts an eyeball for the "O" in the word Cop. A pamphlet they've handed out every weekend this fall states: "We have cameras. We have lawyers. We have people who can be seen, and people who can't. We are watching cops right now in the OSU area."
And all of it's true.
Like many seemingly subversive and radical ideas and innovations, the Copwatch concept originated in Berkeley. It is a direct linear descendant of perhaps America's most well-known militant Copwatchers-the Oakland-based Black Panther Party and the Berkeley-based student liberation movement that brought us the student Free Speech Movement and clashed with the police over Peoples Park in the '60s.
Like its Bay-Area predecessors, Copwatch was first organized in February 1990 on the south side of Berkeley in response to "police brutality," according to Berkeley's Copwatch handbook. The ongoing struggle between the University of California at Berkeley administration and campus-area residents over the removal of the Peoples Cafe from Peoples Park once again brought "people together out of a mutual understanding that this violence, which is targeted at the poor, street people, people of color, activists and hippies is a direct result of pressure from the university, many Telegraph Avenue merchants and landlords to gentrify the area," the handbook explains.
In its initial manifesto proclaiming "Who is Copwatch?" the organization asserted: "We have come to feel that the very people who are supposed to safeguard our persons and property have actually come to represent a major threat to us." They weren't alone and their idea began to spread across the country.
In 1994, the Minneapolis Anti-Racist Action chapter, an organization whose national headquarters is in Columbus's north campus area, started its own version of Copwatch. One of the Minneapolis founders, Justine-Copwatchers are generally reluctant to use their full name for fear of police harassment-conceded that "Our philosophy is a little different than Berkeley's.
"We have more of a critique of the state, and what the police work to do, to uphold racist laws and a class-based society and suppress the poor," she explained. Unlike Berkeley, the Minneapolis Copwatch focuses mainly on the downtown areas where they claim that African-American youth are routinely harassed on Friday and Saturday nights. Justine said that, "Curfews are strictly enforced on black youth and we didn't see that being done in other areas, so it provided us with a way to have a greater public presence" by monitoring the police.
The instructions in the Minneapolis Copwatch handbook call for much more aggressive action than Berkeley's. Their teams of four "intervenors" are told that, "It's your job to find out what's going on, be a witness, and prevent false arrest and harassment." The more Gandi-ist Berkeley chapter says, "Treat everyone you come in contact with in a friendly and polite manner"; the Minnesota chapter advises, "Don't get into philosophical debates with pigs, it's pointless." The Minneapolis Copwatch literature proclaims: "We don't talk to cops!" They instruct their members: "They are our oppressors and you are committed to fighting oppression." They define one of the notetaker's tasks in the handbook as recording "Stupid or fucked-up quotes from the cops."
Despite their more militant tactics and rhetoric, Justine said that only four Copwatch members have been arrested in its two years of existence, all misdemeanors involving interference with official police business.
On the other hand, the fledgling and much less confrontational Columbus Copwatch had four of its members arrested in a two-week period between October 13 and 27, and are adding a different element, the lawsuit. Attorney Jim McNamara said he plans to file suit on Wednesday, November 27 in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court against the city of Columbus and Columbus Police Officer David J. Dennison and, as yet, unnamed John and Jane Doe officers. The suit, filed on behalf of plaintiffs Shammas Jones, Chris Wisniewski, and Walter Leake alleges "assault and battery," "false arrest," and "malicious prosecution" against the officers and the city.
The lawsuit stems from the Columbus Police Department's actions in the south campus area on the evening of May 17, 1996. It also led to the founding of Copwatch in Columbus. Jones, then a third-year Criminology student, stood behind the police and videotaped them as they charged down 12th Avenue firing tear gas and wooden bullets and making random arrests.
The reason for the confrontation between a couple hundred police and throng of 12th Avenue party-goers remains a mystery. The lawsuit states: "This large police presence was not in response to any emergency situation or civil disobedience. Rather, it was a pre-planned action." McNamara claims that testimony in the Shammas Jones criminal trial-where a jury unanimously acquitted of all criminal charges-demonstrated that the police planned the confrontation with the partiers "up to 10 days earlier."
McNamara contends that Jones merely "observed, videotaped, and then turned to walk away" when "he was attacked from behind by the police, Maced in the face, knocked to the ground, pushed and struck violently and repeatedly." The suit alleges that the police attacked Jones "because he had videotaped improper police actions." Jones asserts that the portion of his tape that showed the police misconduct was erased while in police custody.
"I don't have any knowledge of that," said Commander Steven Gammil, the CPD officer in charge of the situation on the OSU campus the night Jones, Wisniewski and Leake was arrested.
So outraged was Jones by the police action he refused an offer by the city of Columbus to dismiss all criminal charges against him, including disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, if he signed an agreement promising not to sue the city and the officers.
Co-plaintiff Chris Wisniewski, a member of Anti-Racist Action (ARA), was shocked by the police assault on Jones, an African-American, and "paused and made a critical comment on the police action," according to McNamara. Wisniewski, the suit claims, was also "attacked from behind" and arrested.
Co-plaintiff Leake was Maced "in a police show of force to clear the area quickly," says the suit. Neither Wisniewski nor Leake were charged with criminal conduct. "Look, there's three steps here. First, the police hurt you physically if you attempt to witness their actions. Then they arrest you, and finally, they charge you if you happen to catch them on videotape," McNamara asserts.
Within a week, ARA activists aware of the Copwatch in Minneapolis, took to the streets. On May 31, a dozen Copwatchers demonstrated on the corner of 12th and High with a banner asking a simple question: "Is South Campus a Student Neighborhood or a Penal Colony!?" Diverting from the Minneapolis model, Columbus Copwatchers emphasize not only non-confrontational observing of south campus police activity, but educating area residents of their Constitutional rights. Every weekend night on campus they hand out literature containing "Practical tips in dealing with the police." One tip advises, "Do not 'bad mouth' the police or run away, even if you believe what is happening is unreasonable."
The summer months weren't much of a test as to the police's receptiveness to the Copwatch tactics. News coverage on NBC4 showing police brutality, with video depicting an officer repeatedly punching an arrested student, helped create a friendly environment for Copwatch activity.
Autumn quarter at OSU became the real challenge. It started well enough with Shammas Jones being acquitted on September 23. But then things got ugly. After OSU's victory over Notre Dame, police provided little or no law enforcement as a small but determined group of celebrators vandalized and overturned cars on 12th Avenue. Public sympathy for south campus residents quickly vanished. With great fanfare, OSU President Gordon Gee disposed of due process and suspended several students suspected of taking part in the vandalism, which occurred off-campus and not under the university's jurisdiction.
Copwatch members claimed that the Columbus Police Department let the vandalism get out of control to punish 12th Avenue residents critical of their May 17 actions and to manipulate public opinion. It worked. With elected officials and the public at large decrying student vandalism, the police were virtually given carte blanche to control the south campus area.
Liquor control agents posing as store clerks and pizza delivery men invaded the south campus area to crack down on underage drinking. They routinely enter area residences that host weekend parties, checking I.D.'s, making arrests and confiscating kegs. And the mainstream media began to report routinely the number of campus arrests each weekend along with the Buckeye football score. OSU student Anthony Tarantino commented that the police "are taking away all our freedoms. They're watching us all the time. It's like we live in a police state." Another student, Donald Cox, said "The cops are screwing everything up. We need gas masks to party. It sucks."
The emboldened police immediately cracked down on Copwatchers. On October 13, a Copwatch member was arrested for videotaping police arrests. The tape he shot clearly shows that he was complying with police orders. Columbus Alive viewed a video provided by McNamara that shows the police ordering the Copwatch videographer to the sidewalk, a safe distance away from the arrest. The police later push the videographer into a crowd of students and arrest him after he asks them if they want to "get macho for the camera."
"What Copwatch was doing is perfectly legal," argues McNamara.
On October 19, Copwatch organized a rally, in conjunction with ARA's national convention, of some 300 people to march against police brutality in the south campus area. Police squad cars followed the peaceful demonstration and waded into the crowd at Blake Avenue and High Street to arrest a marcher for walking in the street. In making the arrest, they Maced several demonstrators, including this Columbus Alive reporter. Police later denied using Mace to the media.
Copwatch members and police clashed again on October 27. Both Josh Klein and Ann Pussel were arrested while peacefully videotaping an arrest near 12th and High. And fellow watcher Patricia Sikora was ticketed when she followed the police cruiser to the Franklin County jail to bail them out. Columbus Alive obtained a tape of the incident that is strikingly at odds with the police arrest report submitted by Lieutenant Rich Mann. In Mann's report, "Mr. Klein then walked right up to the officer's face, pushing his camcorder into their faces. He was again ordered to leave the area. Mr. Klein then walked to the sidewalk taunting and crying at officers."
The tape tells a different tale. Officers indeed ordered Klein a safe distance away to the sidewalk. At that point, a male companion of the man being arrested says to the Copwatchers, "That's fucked up. It takes a whole precinct to arrest him." Police officers, clearly not in any danger with their man arrested and in the cruiser, take offense to the companion's remark and walk up to the camera. When they put their hands on Klein, he says "Don't touch me. Don't touch me." In Mann's version-not substantiated by the tape-Klein says "I don't have to leave. Don't you fucking touch me." Upon arrest, fearing that his tape would meet the same fate as that of Shammas Jones, Klein passed his camera off to Ann Pussel, who was immediately arrested for interfering with police business.
McNamara vows to produce, in addition to the tape, at least three eyewitnesses who support Copwatch's version. On October 31, the U.S. Justice Department announced an investigation of evidence of patterned discrimination by Columbus Police officers giving Copwatch members some hope that their arrests have not been in vain.
Doug Browell, chief labor attorney for the city of Columbus, commented Tuesday, "We don't try our cases in the press. So I really have no comment on [the investigation.] What I can say is that the city is cooperating with the investigation as much as possible."
Ron Zeller, owner of the south campus restaurant Street Scene and self-professed "Copwatch Watcher," has strong opinions on Copwatch tactics. "Copwatch serves some good purposes, but they've overstepped their bounds a little bit." While he supports the police and criticizes the Copwatchers for interfering, he concedes that the crux of the problem is the government's policy that tries "to legislate moral and social problems." He said that out of the 29 altercations he's had at Street Scene, 27 involved non-college students. "Just today I had a 28-year-old who wanted to throw a beer bottle at the TV set because the Buckeyes lost to Michigan. He's not a student. There's too much Section 8 housing in the area. Too much density in the 12th Avenue area and that's the landlord's fault, not the students." He frankly admits that he believes there's "discriminatory enforcement of the liquor laws in the campus area."
In anticipation of an OSU victory over Michigan, 400 riot police moved into the south campus area last weekend. No major confrontations or arrests of Copwatch members were reported.
Now comes the winter of Copwatch's discontent and litigation. It's not quite as exciting as Huey Newton brandishing a gun and a copy of the Constitution and facing down the Oakland Police in the 1960s, but it may be as equally important in our current climate of rough-'em-up police tactics and prison-building that the police know that they're accountable to the communities they're sworn to protect and serve.
11/27/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
While most people in Ohio were suffering from scarlet and gray fever last Saturday, 1,000 mourners from all over the state marched in Cincinnati to honor the memory of homeless activist Buddy Gray.
Buddy was the co-founder of the Drop-In Center homeless shelter in Cincinnati. But he was more than that. Buddy was no mere advocate, who sold his people out for 30 pieces of silver from the town's elite.
Back in 1991, when Governor George "I am your shepherd" Voinovich got a politically motivated inspiration to abolish General Assistance (G.A.) and wage war on the poor in the name of Christian virtue, Buddy brought a dozen people from the Drop-In Center to a Statehouse protest. Buddy and his mostly homeless co-conspirators posted an eviction notice at the governor's office, moved his furniture into the hall, and sat down.
The state police were not amused. They took the brunt of their frustration out on Buddy, I suspect because he looked like an aging hippie. They stuck fingers up his nose, they choked him, they beat him, kicked him and twisted his neck by pulling on his ponytail.
When I photographed the assault on Buddy and told the police to quit brutalizing him, they obliged by choking me. In the last speech I heard Buddy give, he predicted that the governor's vicious cuts and documented lies that "able-bodied men" were the ones being cut off of G.A. would come back to haunt our society. Buddy foresaw that it wasn't simply the money, but the medical benefits that went to the homeless-many of them under visible stress and some de-institutionalized mental patients-that would lead to social disruption.
On November 15, 1996, Buddy was shot to death in his office at the Drop-In Center by a homeless man with a history of behavioral problems. Just the sort that was kicked to the curb by our pious governor.
Buddy looked and acted like an Old Testament prophet. He knew that you could not serve two masters: either you stood with the poor and oppressed, or you bowed to the wishes of the rich and powerful. Buddy died unbowed, unbent, and an unrepentant advocate for "the least of his brethren."
Well, well. The Sunday Dispatch almost broke a story on the mayoral investigation of the Columbus Police Department. Their coverage had been so careful it bordered on conspiracy. There's plenty more for the Daily Monopoly to dig up if they suddenly decide to give a damn. The Big D seems to have figured out the Chief Jackson/Commander Burns prostitution connection, now let's try once again to teach the old dog a new trick.
Sit. Roll over. Speak. Say the name "Commander Curtis Marcum." Good dog! More than a few officers have seen the thousand-or-so-page report on the murder of retired police Sergeant Mt. Vernon Johnson. James Moss, also a retired police sergeant and the director of Police Officers for Equal Rights, commented on my radio show Sunday that he has been to Washington D.C. three times in the last year to inform the Justice Department of patterns of discrimination in Columbus and the peculiar circumstances surrounding Johnson's death. Moss, who claims to have read the investigative report, says former Supervisor in the Police Intelligence Bureau Commander Marcum and several members of his family were involved in the sordid tragedy of Mt. Vernon's murder.
A law-enforcement source confirms Moss's allegation. Reportedly, the story goes like this: Commander Marcum's mother kept the kitchen at Mt. Vernon's high-stakes west side gambling house. She also was in Mt. Vernon's gambling book well over 200 times in less than two years. Curt's sister gambled there as well.
But, still more curious, are questions surrounding Curt's younger brother, a regular player and loser in Mt. Vernon's game that should have made him a prime suspect, yet he was never questioned. Law-enforcement sources allege that he was a cocaine user and small-time drug dealer who used to sell drugs from a house in the 2400 block of Indianola. The investigation team knows that there's no way in hell that Curt was unaware of Mt. Vernon's gambling operation and suspect that Commander Marcum was using his position in the Police Intelligence Bureau to protect his family.
12/03/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Attorney General Betty Montgomery vows to close the "loophole" that allows doctors to prescribe marijuana in Ohio; the governor's spokesperson claims "it was snuck into the bill" unbeknownst to the Guv; and Franklin County Judge Dale Crawford asks, "How did it get there?" It's called democracy and the legislative process.
O.K., so Voinovich, Montgomery and Crawford are all incompetent public officials incapable of either following publicly debated legislation or reading a newspaper.
That's the only logical conclusion one can draw after reading last Wednesday's Dispatch article, "State smokin' over pot loophole," and last Thursday's "Lawmakers hid rule in plain sight."
"Hid?" Hogwash. Poppycock. Twenty-mule-team dung droppings. Dispatch writer Catherine Candisky's lead in Wednesday's article is curious. "Ohio lawmakers quietly legalized the medical use of marijuana last summer . . . ," scribed she. Evidently, she doesn't read her own paper. On March 25, 1996, the Big D's Dennis Fiely penned an excellent and informative piece, "Forbidden Medicine." The balanced and non-hysterical article is well worth rereading. Or, in Voinovich's, Montgomery's and Crawford's cases, a first reading. Had that clueless collage read the story in the first place, they might have seen the following:
"Senate Bill 2, one of Ohio's crime bills, recognizes the medical use of marijuana as an 'affirmative defense' when an offender has a prior written recommendation from a doctor." Or that, "The law, which will go into effect July 1, seems to lend 'some credence to the idea that a doctor is on safe ground to make the recommendation'..."
Either our outraged trio was too busy thinking up new ways to throw AIDS and cancer patients into prison for using marijuana to relieve their suffering; or perhaps the three simply smoked something that impaired their memory.
The Dispatch articles are reminiscent of the heyday of the Hearst papers' "yellow journalism." William Randolph Hearst-"Citizen Hearst"-pioneered mass-hysteria reporting at the turn of the century. Hearst papers demanded prohibitions against alcohol, cigarettes, public dancing and popular music. The anti-Hispanic bigot had both a financial and ideological stake in his campaign against hemp and "marijuana," both legal products in the U.S. before Hearst's crusade. The hemp plant, the world's premier renewable source of high-quality paper products, was in direct competition with poor-quality, highly acidic wood pulp paper that Hearst had a huge financial interest in promoting. He owned timberland, paper mills, and produced wood pulp paper products with DuPont.
Although you couldn't get high off the low THC content in industrial hemp, this didn't deter Hearst papers from first linking hemp to "marijuana" and next to "dope" associated with narcotics. Ignoring the Spanish word for hemp, can~amo, Hearst equated hemp with "marijuana" or "Mary Jane," a slang word for pot.
Inflamed by the Mexican revolution, Hearst's papers' anti-Hispanic rhetoric led to the fist local ordinance against marijuana in 1914 in El Paso, Texas. There, a City Council composed of primarily drunken cowboys outlawed marijuana because of fear of violent Mexicans.
His reporters popularized the term "marijuana" especially after the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa seized 800,000 acres of prime timberland that Hearst owned in Mexico in 1916 and gave it to the Mexican peasants. The Mexican peasants and most of the rest of the world preferred hemp products for paper, clothing, rope and fuel.
Thus Hearst, through his newspapers, systematically demonized the use of both hemp products and the medical use of marijuana for his personal gain. Hearst's Herald-Tribune enthusiastically promoted Mussolini's crusade against pot in the 1920s with such headlines as "Mussolini leads way in crushing dope."
By 1937, industrial hemp, a product grown and advocated by both Washington and Jefferson, was now illegal and the dreaded marijuana was a Schedule One narcotic-with "no therapeutic" use- alongside heroin. By contrast, both cocaine and morphine, an opium-derivative, are Schedule Two narcotics and can be prescribed by doctors.
Kenny Schweickart, spokesperson for the Ohio Industrial Hemp and Medical Use Coalition, said, "The only reason why the Dispatch recently wrote that marijuana has no recognized therapeutic benefits is because it is currently listed as a Schedule One narcotic, not because it's actually true. Read Dennis Fiely's earlier coverage."
In 1988, Drug Enforcement Agency Law Judge Francis Young, after an extensive hearing, ruled that marijuana was one of the safest and most therapeutic substances known to humankind. His ruling rescheduled marijuana as a Schedule Two narcotic, but was overruled.
Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine, a Yale University Press book, lists marijuana as medicine for not only AIDS and cancer patients but for those with chronic pain, epilepsy, glaucoma, insomnia, labor pains, menstrual cramps, migraine headaches, mood disorders, multiple sclerosis, nausea, paraplegia and quadriplegia.
Ohio's "affirmative defense," despite the Dispatch's claim, does not "legalize" marijuana. It does, however, make it virtually impossible to prosecute any pot-smoker with a written prescription from a recognized physician.
Now, if the Dispatch would just quit doing its Hearst imitation and George, Betty and Dale would quit watching that Reefer Madness video, then we could alleviate some real human suffering.
12/11/1996
Guilt by location
by Bob Fitrakis
Prior to the Chief James Jackson controversy, I can count on my middle finger the number of times I’ve supported Mayor Greg Lashutka in a political battle. The only other time concerned the building of Tuttle Mall in Columbus. Since I detest malls and that whole culture, I half-heartedly sided with the mayor’s position that a mall and its tax revenue would benefit the city more than the suburbs. Yet, on the Chief Jackson issue, I enthusiastically endorse the mayor’s inquiry. Hell, I believe the Big Guy’s showing some guts and character for the first time in his political career.
Now that an obscene gesture has been turned into a peace or victory sign, let me say that I think the mayor is ill-advised in his vilification of Gwendolyn Rogers, the head of Columbus’s Equal Business Opportunity Office. Lashutka’s voice has been joined by city council member Jennette Bradley, a fellow Republican who must live in a glass house. Bradley, who was quoted in Tuesday’s Columbus Dispatch as calling for a thorough investigation of Rogers’ office, must be forgetting the cloud of disgrace under which she left the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority. The Dispatch extensively reported mismangement and waste at CMHA while she was executive director of the agency.
As strongly as I believe the Jackson investigation is not racially motivated, I believe just as strongly that the media campaign against Rogers—led by the Dispatch—is racist. The Columbus Dispatch, I contend, is punishing Rogers because she refused to play the role of Good House Negress. During the last three weeks, Professor Vincene Verdun, an African-American law professor at OSU, has been questioning the legality of Mayor Lashutka "waiving" the Title 39 statute that set goals for the city purchasing goods and services from minority- and female-owned businesses.
Rogers has been doing her job in questioning how the mayor received sole power to waive a statute, particularly since she drafted the original statute that had the term "joint" power in the ordinance language. Simply put, the City Council and the mayor may be acting illegally.
Not surprisingly, no front-page stories appeared in the Dispatch on this dispute, unlike Rogers’ trip to Hawaii. The Dispatch’s coverage of Rogers’ trip amounts to guilt by location. The trip was to Hawaii, it must be illegal!
Make no mistake, Rogers is being McNeal-ed. This is a time-honored Dispatch technique, perfected first in the Soviet Union by another daily monopoly, Pravda. Associated in central Ohio with the Dispatch’s campaign against Palmer McNeal, being McNeal-ed means you’re tried and condemned by the multi-millionaire Wolfe family, their editorial lapdogs and their executioners masquerading as "objective journalists."
Let’s analyze the initial hatchet job that appeared as the lead story in the Metro section last Wednesday, December 4. Reporter Barbara Carmen’s third paragraph reads, "‘Aloha,’ Rogers said when the phone rang." The Dispatch editorialists make this seem equivalent to Rogers saying, "I kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby."
The article tells us that the 10th anniversary Conference on Counseling and Treating People of Color, "according to the registration brochure...is for administrators, social workers, physicians, nurses, dentists, health and mental health workers, and other professionals." This insinuates, of course, that Rogers had no business being there. Let’s see. Rogers easily falls into the categories of "administrators" and "other professionals."
To really appreciate Carmen’s character assassination of Rogers, you’ve got to go to the seventh paragraph. Here, the article says: "Rogers’ office is responsible for developing programs that help small companies sell goods such as backhoes, computer software, construction contracts and cleaning services to the City." The last, obviously, isn’t a "good," it’s a "service," a term that Carmen must avoid at all cost.
Now, to understand what the Disgrace is doing, let me rewrite the paragraph for you as if it concerned a lackey politician that the Dispatch wished to protect: "Rogers’ office is responsible for developing programs that help small companies sell goods and services such as medical supplies, computer software for health care providers, mental health service contracts, and diversity training programs to the City." Ever heard of the city Health Department? Rogers is responsible for making sure that diversified small businesses have an opportunity to sell goods and services to that department, a fact intentionally ignored by the Dispatch in its quest to publicly spank Rogers. "Backhoes," indeed.
By Friday, the Rogers story had jumped to the front page—signaling that the Dispatch was organizing a public print media lynching. Council President John P. Kennedy in the second paragraph blusters, "This is not good stewardship of taxpayer dollars." Oh? Kennedy’s never had to account in the Dispatch pages for what he might know about legislation that benefited those close to him. What about T & R Properties, John? (see Columbus Alive November 13, page four) Was that good stewardship?
Mayor Lashutka should know better than to open a two-front war in the black community. Particularly against an administrator whose main offense seems to be being "too uppity."
12/25/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
Looks like Assistant City Attorney Glenn Redick-the man charged with the task of taking on Police Chief James Jackson and ferreting out police corruption-took a dive in the mayor's prosecution. Either the fix was in, or Redick was sleepwalking during the hearings. As one veteran reporter covering the hearings commented, "The rug is getting thicker and thicker as they sweep the dirt under it."
A scenario floating from various sources goes like this: about two weeks ago, attitudes began to change in the Jackson probe. As a precursor to this, Columbus City Council members John Kennedy, Les Wright and Michael Coleman had pressured the mayor's investigation team to wrap up quickly. Rumors abounded that a deal was being struck between the mayor and Council members. The Chief and his backers were battling back with embarrassing information they had in their possession. Did they really want the Chief under oath testifying about everything he knew concerning escort services? The public exposure of the Arthur Shapiro murder file finally cemented the deal. The Chief, who, after all, was protecting some of the most important political and business movers and shakers in Columbus, was to get a slap on the wrist. And it will be business as usual in systematically and institutionally corrupt Cowtown.
This takes us to Arthur Shapiro. Let's rehash that story. Local attorney and everyone's favorite creative accountant, Shapiro, was gunned down in what was considered a mob hit the day before he was to testify to federal authorities concerning problems he was having with the IRS in 1985. A partner at Schwartz, Shapiro, Kelm & Warren, Shapiro's clients included The Limited, and he was at the time being investigated for his dealings with Berry L. Kessler, an accountant later convicted of helping Shapiro avoid paying income tax. Kessler is serving time in Florida for hiring a hitman to kill a business partner. He also was suspected of having a hand in the Shapiro slaying.
Because Shapiro worked for The Limited, Elizabeth Laupp of the Organized Crime Bureau did linkage analysis that pointed out in a June 6, 1991 memo the obvious connections between The Limited's Les Wexner, former City Council President Jerry Hammond and current City Councilwoman Les Wright. Wexner helped fund Hammond's now-defunct Major Chord nightclub in the Short North, and Wright served as vice president of the company that owned it. Shapiro reportedly worked on a land deal that paved the way for Wexner's vast New Albany Company development, and Hammond's and later Wright's votes on Council helped facilitate that development.
Attorney James Balthaser took over some of Shapiro's most interesting work at Schwartz, Kelm, Warren & Rubenstein. Balthaser is now at Thompson, Hine and Flory, where he is a law partner with the Chief's lawyer, Bill Wilkinson. Wilkinson and Balthaser both happen to work for the firm that's the primary legal counsel for the mighty Banks Carbone Construction Company, recently listed in Business First as Greater Columbus's leading minority-owned firm with sales nearly equal to the second- and third-ranked firms combined. A miraculous success story for high school graduate T.G. Banks, the Chief's close buddy. They share a lot of things, like an interest in the steel industry. The Chief, we recall, is a steel magnate; he runs Interstate Steel from his home on Bryden Road. We know from the Ohio Department of Taxation that he's the president, secretary and treasurer of Interstate. But less well known is that Banks was listed as the owner of the company when it was incorporated in 1992. In most cities, a police chief operating a steel business with no steelyard in a residential neighborhood might raise eyebrows. Not here.
Anyway, Wilkinson looked like a heavyweight champ against the lackluster punching-bag Redick. And the Chief can soon go back to protecting and serving. After all, he's done such a fine job. It was the Chief who insisted that Ted Oshodi be our Civilian Crime Prevention Coordinator although he was rated last among half a dozen candidates and was investigated last year for allegedly repeatedly raping his daughter from 1986-'88. While the charges weren't brought to a grand jury for criminal prosecution since the daughter reported them years later and only had a polygraph to back her up, they still were open for a police Internal Affairs investigation that doesn't have to meet "a beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. When Oshodi was ordered to take a polygraph on these charges, an August 11, 1995 memo from Officer Cathy Collins of the polygraph unit complained about an order she received "per chain of command ... not to ask any questions of Ted Oshodi ... prior to his hire date" of December 6, 1994. Interestingly, the alleged rapes took place prior to his hire date. And, the order reportedly came directly from the top. Eventually, Collins won out and she concluded the following: "that Mr. Oshodi was NOT TRUTHFUL when answering" four questions about sexually abusing his daughter. She also determined that the daughter was "truthful" on all four questions.
Redick forgot to ask the Chief about the bizarre restrictions he supposedly placed on Oshodi's polygraph test. Also, Redick did not call Sharlynn English, the Chief's very close friend and admitted former employee of "Dulcet" Escort Services; nor English's good friend, next-door neighbor and close companion to Commander Walter Burns, Carol Huffman; nor Gail Richey, who observed the Chief's relationship with English in the late '80s. English's sworn deposition reveals that the Chief visited her regularly two to three times a week for six to nine months at 5318 Karl Road for nooners. Right next door, at 5328, Richey was receiving then-Lieutenant Walter Burns, whose alleged involvement with the prostitution ring spurred the Jackson investigation.
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01/08/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
Equally as important as the evidence entered in the recently concluded investigation of Columbus Police Chief James G. Jackson may be the evidence not submitted to the Civil Service Commission and public scrutiny. A Sunday Columbus Dispatch headline on the front page of the Metro section has already informed central Ohio that the: "'Girlfriend angle' in Jackson case failed to hold up." The story quotes Jackson's attorney, William C. Wilkinson, at some length: "They've inquired, pried into every aspect of his professional, personal and financial affairs for more than three decades. In the oil business, they'd call it a dry hole."
But information recently obtained by Columbus Alive and a careful reading of the official proceedings suggest the hole may not be as dry as Wilkinson or the Dispatch would have the public believe. While the Dispatch claims in editorials that mayoral investigators appeared to be bogged down in minutiae, one could conclude that the investigators found that the chief seemed to be involved in an ever-expanding web of possible corruption and questionable relationships. For example, the under-oath deposition of Jackson's alleged girlfriend and self-confessed escort, Charlynn Marie English, offers some provocative insights into Jackson. According to English's sworn statement, she met Jackson as soon as she moved to Columbus in 1979. "I met him through a person by the name of Patty Walker. I met him at a party at the Wyandotte North Apartments." English said she used to party regularly with police officers Ellis Jennings, Robert Locke, Tony Mason, Jeffrey Blackwell and others, especially between 1980-86.
The fifth and final charge against Jackson contained two allegations that Jackson failed to remove Officers Mason and Blackwell from the investigatory Internal Affairs Bureau despite their questionable records within the Columbus Police Division. Both were reassigned during the Jackson probe.
English admitted to having a "intimate relationship" with Chief Jackson, a deputy chief who was married at the time, while living in a duplex at 5318 Karl Road. Her pet name for Jackson was "Chiefy." She estimates that the relationship lasted "approximately six to nine months" and that she saw Jackson "probably two ... three times a week." She claims that he visited her "at times in uniform and at times in plain clothes," and that Jackson drove a "city car."
Assistant Safety Director David Sturtz, in a sworn deposition, stated that Chief Jackson's version was at odds with English's: "His sworn testimony was that he had seen this lady on two occasions. One on a week night and one on a Saturday sometime during 1988."
When asked who knew of her relationship with Jackson, English listed Officers Locke, Jennings, Donald Cady, and Kris Wehe as well as Gail Ritchie, her next-door neighbor and friend, among others. In a sworn interview, Ritchie also listed the same officers as having knowledge of Jackson's intimate relationship with English. English told Ritchie that the officers "would tease her" about her relationship with Jackson and drive by and try to "catch" Deputy Chief Jackson at her house. English told investigators that she had told Officer Wehe about her relationship with Jackson and that Wehe had seen Jackson "come in and out of my house."
In a sworn interview, retired SWAT Officer Kris Wehe confirmed English's deposition. Wehe went on to say that he was a close friend of Charlynn English and had discussed her sexual relationship with Jackson. "She's made comments about the size of his equipment, comments like that-I guess she wouldn't really know if she wasn't having sex with him," Wehe confided.
Gail Ritchie's sworn testimony was not admitted as evidence in Jackson's hearing before the Civil Service Commission, but clearly corroborates English's deposition.
Ritchie's relationship with English goes back nearly 30 years to the eighth grade: "Actually, we both went to Rosemont School for Girls for one year and that's how I met her. She continued on and I stayed there for one year." In 1982, the former schoolmates met again when the then-Charlynn Eveland was going through a divorce and needed a place to stay. Ritchie arranged for her to stay in the other half of the duplex. Ritchie categorized herself as a close friend and witnessed the comings and goings of then-Deputy Chief Jackson.
English testified under oath that a few years later she worked for the Dulcet Escort Services. Ritchie said that "I knew when she was my neighbor at that time she had friends that worked for an escort service." English insists that Jackson never paid for sex with her, but did once give her $100 as a friend.
"Well, Charlynn always denied it to me and I just thought it was strange that she had all these escort friends but she wouldn't be a part of it. Charlynn and I are very different so she would hide some of her ways from me," Ritchie said. At the same time English was seeing Jackson, Carol Huffman, living in another duplex next to English's abode, was then seeing a Lieutenant Walter Burns, according to sworn testimony. Burns, like Jackson, would visit his female friend in a police car during the day. At night, Burns would use his personal car, according to English and Ritchie. Ritchie estimated that Burns parked his police cruiser in the driveway "three days a week ... over that two-year span," in 1982-'83. She said that in the "summer or spring" of 1982 that English had a relationship with Jackson: "He would come over to the house and hide the car in the garage. They would have sex, then he would leave."
Sturtz admitted that the investigation team began to speculate about the possibility that Walter Burns knew that Deputy Chief Jackson was visiting Carol Huffman's neighbor, Charlynn. A decade later, during the Menucci prostitution ring investigation, three of the seven prostitutes initially identified now-Commander Burns as a client. In later re-interviews, the prostitutes recanted and changed their stories.
The now-famous "dry hole" centers around the fact that no one can prove that Jackson-who by all accounts parked his unmarked police car in English's garage-ever noticed Burns' police cruiser in the driveway next door during his lunchtime rendezvous. Sturtz, in his deposition, drew other conclusions: "Same location. You could jump from me to you to be from this driveway to the other driveway. It is not like they are separated. It is right there."
English also admitted that she had contacted then-Deputy Chief Jackson for protection in June of 1988 after receiving threatening phone calls regarding her role as a material witness in the murder of a reputed Mansfield prostitute, Marjorie Coffey. English recalled a Deputy John Sears was assigned to help protect her, as were other officers.
Jackson, while on duty, drove English to Mansfield in June of 1988, according to testimony. Additionally, English claimed to have visited Jackson at his current Bryden Road residence twice, the last time being in the summer of 1995.
Sturtz stated under oath that he became suspicious of the English-Jackson relationship when, "Charlynn, in April of 1995, came to the Chief's residence and was asking or wanting him maybe to do something about a police officer [who was giving her husband, bail bondsman Michael English, a hard time]. At the same time, she was on Crimestoppers, Channel 6, as a person who was a suspect in the stealing of a $25,000 check."
English admitted to having socialized with Police Sergeant Jeff Blackwell-who was reassigned during the Jackson investigation. English claims she talked to Blackwell in October after a clandestine meeting with Assistant Safety Director Sturtz and Commander James Dean, both members of the mayoral investigation team, on Tuesday, September 10 at Applebee's on Brice Road. A former law enforcement official informed Columbus Alive of the "secret" meeting right after it occurred. English told the two investigators that the Chief was worried back in 1988 about how his relationship with English might affect his "career."
On Friday, October 11, testimony reveals that English called Commander Dean and told him that he and Sturtz were being followed. English identified Blackwell as the individual who told her that Sturtz and Dean were being spied on.
Also not entered as evidence were the sworn statements of Chief Jackson's ex-wife Sandra Butler. Butler was married to Jackson from March 1978 to April 1987. Butler began dating Jackson in May of 1975 and was witness on at least one occasion to an intense argument that Jackson was having with a former wife. She said her relationship with Jackson turned violent a year or so later, when they broke up prior to their marriage.
Jackson became "angry because that person [an ex-boyfriend] had been there and he swung at me and just grazed my face a little and hit the wall," she stated. Additionally, she claimed that the Chief was violent with her "only three" times later when she moved to his Bryden Road residence. Once when she came home late from shopping she described the following scene: "I got home and he was in the mud room and the light was off and when I came in the back door, he grabbed me and was choking me asking me where I had been.... I lost my breath and I guess I went out a little bit because he was tapping me on the face trying to revive me."
Butler said she "ran away" from Jackson three times "because he hit me." "[If] I said the wrong thing I got popped," she said. She confessed that she attempted suicide by mixing a combination of "#10 Valiums and ... a big glass of bourbon." When Butler and Jackson separated in 1987, she moved to Franklin Avenue.
In his sworn interview, Wehe recalled being dispatched to Butler's residence in 1988. "I went up there and she answered the door and she was crying. She'd been smacked around, she said that the Chief did it and she was afraid of him.... I called my supervisor and that's the last I heard of it."
Butler's statements touch on the relationship between controversial minority contractor T.G. Banks and Jackson. Banks is the focus of several separate investigations into whether or not he benefited from possible contract steering by the governor's former chief of staff, Paul Mifsud. Banks apparently performed extraordinarily inexpensive renovations for Mifsud's then-fiancee and subsequently was awarded several million dollars in state construction management contracts.
Butler commented in her deposition "...it just amazed me when I found out Jim was socializing with him [Banks] all of the time."
One of the things that the investigation focused on was showing favoritism to friends like Columbus Division of Police Civilian Crime Coordinator Ted Oshodi. Rumors were rife that the Chief did favors for his close buddies, like the time Banks was worried about a possible sexual assault allegation being filed against him. The Jackson investigation team was looking into allegations that the Chief exerted influence to protect Banks when the mayor's investigation was cut short at the insistence of City Council members. Columbus Alive has learned that, prompted by the mayor's investigation into Jackson, a 22-year-old female filed a sexual assault charge against Banks on November 29, 1996. She alleges that Banks assaulted her in 1991 at Banks' former residence on Sugar Maple Court. The matter remains under investigation as Jackson returns to head the division of police.
Moreover, Assistant City Attorney Glen Redick did not see fit to bring documents into evidence showing possible favoritism by Jackson to his friend Oshodi. Rated last of six candidates for the Crime Coordinator position, Oshodi's hiring was personally secured by Jackson, even though Oshodi's daughter emerged with claims that he had repeatedly raped her in the late 1980s. County prosecutors refused to seek indictment of Oshodi on criminal charges because events were so far in the past that no physical evidence remained and prosecutors cannot use a polygraph in a criminal case. But this legal stipulation for criminal prosecution is not applicable in the police division's standards of conduct.
In an October 10,1995 memo, Lieutenant Joseph Pettis reported to Chief Jackson that Oshodi's polygraph test had read "not truthful" to four questions regarding oral and vaginal sex with his daughter, and that her test had read "truthful" to the same four questions. Pettis recommended to Jackson that "Ted Oshodi be charged with violation of 'Rule of Conduct #1.l5 A-5,"-that "Division Personnel are to be truthful at all times."
A handwritten note on a copy of Oshodi's personnel information card from Commander Gerald Perrigo to Deputy Chief Kern noted: "Discussed with Chief Jackson on 10-12-95. He says if info when Oshodi was employed here was presented to Grand Jury and they refused to indict, we cannot charge him. Left for you to decide. My opinion is not sustained-no further action."
01/15/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
Since this issue comes out on the actual birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.-perhaps America's greatest citizen-let us reflect on his legacy, and how it plays out today in Columbus politics.
When I was eight and nine years old, I recall watching TV with my family and being sickened at the sight of King and his followers being beaten and hosed and bitten by police dogs in the deep South. But I also understood that that same racism existed in my working class neighborhood in Detroit. In the mid-'60s in Detroit, there was the notorious "Big Four"-four large, white officers to a cruiser keeping blacks, through beating and intimidation, out of my neighborhood and locked up in the Smith Projects a mile or so away. It was no secret; people including my parents knew about it yet said nothing.
Then it all changed. The Detroit riot of '67, prior to L.A. in '92, the granddaddy of all the modern urban riots. Forty-two people died. King had warned us about this and counseled peace. He told us that, "A riot is the voice of the unheard." As always, he was right. The year of my 12th birthday, I witnessed that riot firsthand. After dropping my brother off at camp in Port Huron, our family van exited I-94 and swung on to East Davidson in Detroit the Sunday morning the riots erupted. At first I thought church must have just let out because of the large black crowds on the street corner. To this day, I still vividly recall two men throwing a shopping cart through a plate-glass window of an inner-city grocery store. My father yelled for us to get down, that it was a riot-he had lived through the Detroit riot of '43-but I had to watch the rage unfolding.
A white racist shot Martin Luther King Jr. to death the next spring. They called school off at Harding Junior High in Detroit. We white students walked home, and the blacks headed for the project. With King dead, it felt as if we had lost our last, and only, hope for interracial peace. We white kids mourned the loss of King because we knew the injustices so long inflicted by the police on the black community could only lead to more violence.
His loss also meant that I would be soon leaving Detroit-to this day "my city"-as my parents fled to Redford Township and blue-collar suburbia. My dad was soon let go at O. Keller Tool & Die and became a "garbage man." Even now I remind myself that the day Martin Luther King Jr. died he was not fighting racial injustice solely, but economic injustice as well. He was in Memphis supporting sanitation workers; people like my father. King opposed all forms of oppression-social, economic and racist as well. That's why he worked with democratic socialists like the late Michael Harrington, my mentor, and Norman Thomas.
With King's death, some of us turned to more radical and revolutionary solutions. In the mid-'70s, I supported the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and one of its co-founders, Kenny Cockrell. Cockrell and the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE) were the lone activist electoral organization fighting the ravages of Reaganomics in the early '80s.
Cockrell was usually the lone voice and vote on the Detroit Common Council against the tax abatement rage sweeping the country. I still remember our "Tax Max and his Pal Al" campaign. How could I not? The Max in question is Max Fisher. Yes, Ohio State named its business school after him. And Al is Albert Taubman, who built the City Center Mall. Referred to as the "Max Fisher Law," they got a state law passed so that they only had to pay 50 percent of their property taxes over 24 years.
I think about it often since I now see the same policies that helped ravage and destroy Detroit eagerly embraced by the Columbus political leadership. The same political leadership you'll never see marching against police brutality, the Klan, Ameriflora or protesting tax abatements. But, they'll all be out marching from City Hall to Vets Memorial this Monday, King's official holiday.
So, one day a year, the black and white power brokers move to the front of the line to walk the walk and talk the talk of King. Then, the other 364 days of the year they dismantle the city's program to aid minority and female businesses; spend their time thinking of new and creative ways to make Les Wexner richer; let the Chamber of Commerce control the Columbus school board; and look the other way when the police brutalize citizens.
I think I'll honor King this year by sending a check to the Police Officers for Equal Rights, a black police officers' association that has emerged as the "conscience of the criminal justice system," and protesting at Lazarus against its policy of buying garments from sweatshops.
Martin will understand why I'm skipping the march.
01/22/1997
Bob Fitrakis
Does OLCA stand for the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association or the Obsequious Lapdogs Covering their Asses?
Alternative press reporter Irv Oslin believes it's the latter. Oslin charged that the OLCA "conspired to eliminate a category of membership that happened to include me." The five-member OLCA executive board-that includes four members from major daily newspapers-recently voted to eliminate the associate membership category in its constitution. In a letter dated January 13, the OLCA rejected Oslin's 1997-98 application, citing a "unanimous" vote of the board. The OLCA also turned down the application of former Guardian investigative reporter Michael Weber, Dan Crawford of Business First and a reporter for the Small Business News.
Oslin explained that these exclusions "would have a chilling effect on small, independent newspapers," and "would create a caste system in which alternative journalists might be considered untouchables." Membership in the OLCA has its perks, including a mailbox in the Statehouse press room, services of two government-subsidized press room clerks, and permanent House and Senate floor privileges.
"After reviewing the OLCA Constitution and by-laws as well as Senate and House rules, we are of the firm opinion that OLCA was created and continues to exist as an Association of individuals based in Columbus representing daily newspapers, radio, television, news and information services who regularly cover the General Assembly/or state government," OCLA's letter stated.
The OLCA's president, Alan Johnson, writes for the Columbus Dispatch-the only daily newspaper in the capital city. The Dispatch, with eight members in the OLCA, is the largest single newspaper contingent. Oslin wrote primarily for the Columbus Guardian which folded last month, but his weekly Statehouse column still runs regularly in five other Ohio weekly and monthly news publications. Oslin's column "Statehouse Follies" frequently poked fun at Governor Voinovich and various state legislators. Oslin's often insightful and usually irreverent reporting in the tradition of award-winning syndicated columnist Molly Ivins used legislator's foibles as journalistic fodder.
It probably didn't help Oslin's chances for renewal that he wrote a scathing column on a Johnson puff piece promoting a Bob Dole/George Voinovich presidential ticket. Oslin called Johnson's supposed news piece, "one of the most disgusting displays of blatant toadying I've ever witnessed." He added, "If I were Dole, I'd check my butt for warts." Oslin believes that the elimination of the associate membership and his ouster is, in part, payback from Johnson for the column.
The OLCA executive board disagrees, insisting that the elimination of associate memberships is merely a routine constitutional and bylaw cleanup measure and not politically motivated.
"It had nothing to do with columns, it had nothing to do with personalities," Johnson said. He added that associate members still have access and rights.
In a response to the board's decision, Oslin wrote a letter to his former fellow OLCA members that stated: "Executive Board members claim that I would still have access regardless of my membership status. This is true. But I would not have equal access. In reality, I would have to jump through hoops to enjoy the same privileges you do. And I would be delegated to second-class citizenship in the eyes of the people I cover."
Bill McMeekin, editor of Business First, said, "We are appealing the OLCA decision and are taking appropriate steps.... We've been a member since our inception in 1984 and we meet the Ohio Revised Code definition of a general circulation newspaper."
When asked whether membership in the OLCA was important to a reporter, McMeekin replied: "It's important to Dan [Crawford]. He believes he needs the benefits of OLCA, he needs that type of access to do his best job, and I intend to support him."
Ironically, the preamble to the OLCA Constitution proclaims that the association exists, "...in order to secure for its members their full rights as representatives of a free press in a free society...." And, Article one, Section two concerning "active" membership does not have a single reference to "daily" newspapers. However, frequent references to "a daily newspaper" and "a Columbus daily newspaper" appear in the bylaws of the OLCA. A fundamental principle of parliamentary procedure in constitutional law holds that constitutions are supreme over bylaws, Oslin pointed out. Oslin offered that there may be another reason why the Statehouse journalists are going after one of their own. "It may be that the access and amenities provided to them are at the whim of the legislators they cover," he said. "An independent reporter, particularly one prone to saying 'mush' when he has a mouthful, might jeopardize such a cozy arrangement," Oslin opined.
Attorney Keith Yeazel is representing Oslin in his battle with the OLCA. Yeazel said "throwing Mr. Oslin out is censorship in another form." He pointed out that the OLCA is supported by more than $15,000 in public taxpayer money annually, yet operates like a private club. "They're funded by state money. They can't simply decide who's in and who's out." Yeazel also questioned why a half-dozen or so OLCA members do not write for or belong to daily news organizations. In a forthcoming column in Columbus's Hoot -a humor newspaper founded by Oslin-Oslin writes about his plight and ends: "Outraged? If so, call OLCA President Alan Johnson at (614) 461-5232 and give him hell."
with additional reporting by Cary Jordan
The case involving the governor's brother and the Jefferson County jail project just got a little stranger last week-but you won't find any mention of it in Columbus' daily paper. The Akron Beacon Journal reported in a story last Friday that Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen Stern last week released a phone bill allegedly showing that Vincent Zumpano, a Steubenville-area man indicted for attempting to bribe a county commissioner into awarding a construction management contract to Paul Voinovich's firm, called Voinovich in 1994 from a phone at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.
Zumpano allegedly attempted to bribe a Jefferson County commissioner to award the construction management contract for the county jail to Voinovich's firm. Paul Voinovich is the brother of Governor George V. Voinovich. Stern already has filed records showing hundreds of calls between offices where Zumpano worked and Voinovich's company and unlisted home phone.
"Stern said he didn't know whether the Las Vegas phone call means anything special, but that he found it interesting," the Beacon Journal reported. Also to be filed under the What-Does-it-All-Mean category: "The record also shows that Zumpano tended to tip badly in the hotel restaurants, and extremely well in the hotel bar."
Air guitars at 20 paces, deploy your synthesizers along the high ground and scramble your drums. It's an air raid!
The rock wars are on in Columbus radio and central Ohio listeners are caught in the cross-fire because-far from being non-combatants-they are the prize, at least those listeners who are men. And boys. Between the ages of 12 and 45.
Since Christmas, the airwaves around central Ohio have crackled with change as broadcasting giant Jacor makes its move to squash its competition in rock radio. Having acquired veteran album-rocker WLVQ-FM (Q-FM 96), the media giant opened the New Year with aggressive moves on every front, with the intention of burying WBZX-FM (The Blitz) and WWCD-FM (CD 101).
In 1996, there were three commercial FM rock station in Columbus: Q-FM 96, The Blitz and CD 101. In 1997 there are five, three of whom are avoiding competition with one another in order to achieve rock supremacy for Jacor, the company which owns them. Jacor purchased the Arrow stations (WAHC-FM and WAKS-FM) late in the year and immediately junked their classic-rock formats in favor of country, which some observers saw as a move to simply drive old listeners away. Within a month, WAHC (107.1) had become The Big Wazoo (WAZU) and was broadcasting hard rock for teenage boys. Almost simultaneously, Jacor-owned WLLD-FM (98.9) dropped its country format and its call letters in favor of alternative rock as Channel Z (WZAZ-FM). The battle was on, as Q-FM 96 continued to program mainstream rock for men in the 18-34-year-old age group, The Big Wazoo siphoned off listeners from the 12-24 year-old segment-where The Blitz had been giving WLVQ a lot of trouble-and Channel Z went after the 25-34 year olds, traditionally CD 101 listeners. Theoretically, anyone who wanted to listen to-or buy advertising on-a rock station in Columbus was going to have to deal with someone from Jacor.
Radio's hardest-fought battlefield is usually the morning-drive hours of 6:00 to 10:00, where Q-FM's "Wags & Elliot" have held sway among rock listeners for some time, competing for top honors among all Columbus morning shows with WNCI's The Morning Zoo, WTVN's Bob Conners and WSNY's "Sunny in the Morning with Dino and Stacy." A sure sign that the rock war would be bitterly fought was the acquisition of Howard Stern's syndicated morning show by The Blitz in December. Clearly, the management at WBZX knew a preemptive strategic strike was the best way for a small competitor to hold its own against the coming Jacor juggernaut. The Dennis Rodman-like ubiquity of Stern in the media will help The Blitz compete, not only with Wags & Elliot, but also with The Zoo. It was a radio version of Pearl Harbor.
Does any of this bode well for rock listeners? The theory is that competition is good for the customer because it makes the competitors more aggressive, but the electronic media do not always use innovation as a competitive tool. With a five-way race underway, there is almost no room for error, so programmers may rely on safe, tried-and-true musical selections to maintain their audiences. They may play not to lose, rather than to win-and that could mean more repetition than competition.
01/29/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
You'd think if a story was page one, top of the Dispatch Metro section like last Thursday's "Agency to study dioxin levels in blood," that it would contain breaking news.
Not so, say environmental activists Theresa Mills and John Thomas with Neighbors Protecting Our Environment. Mills called it "deja vu." Thomas charges that the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) hadn't changed its position, despite citizens' complaints, since its original written proposal in January 1995. Both suspect that the Dispatch article is signaling that the ATSDR has stopped listening to concerned citizens. And this could be dangerous for every central Ohio resident. Here's why-Die-oxin!
Listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the deadliest manmade substance, bar none, Dioxin 2,3,7,8, was an active ingredient in Agent Orange. When Columbus built its now infamous and defunct trash-burning power plant, it inadvertently created perhaps the world's foremost dioxin generator. Here's how. Ohio's own Babcock & Wilcox Engineering firm-also renowned for its work on the Three Mile Island nuclear plant-originally designed the plant to burn coal. Coal-burning, unlike gas, proved virtually impossible to regulate with any consistency. The plant did not allow for the separation of trash. Toxic dioxin resulted from the incomplete burning of materials containing chlorine as plastics and other unseparated trash clogged the plant's burners. A 1992 test recorded dioxin emission levels at a staggering 17,892 nanograms-nearly 600 times the U.S. EPA maximum standard.
People in Columbus learned of these potentially lethal dioxin doses only after U.S. EPA Policy Analyst William Sanjour leaked the test results. But neighbors of the trash plant had long suspected that they were being harmed by the foul-smelling emissions. Anecdotal evidence suggested a cancer cluster surrounding the plant. Mills, Thomas and the Park Ridge Area Residents Take Action (PARTA) were instrumental in the grassroots movement to shut the plant down. Yet, they knew that when the plant closed in 1994, only half the battle was won.
Responding to a request by area residents, the ATSDR proposed a study in January 1995 that would be limited to checking the blood levels of 75 people; Mills found this unacceptable. At a June 8, 1995 meeting with ATSDR and Ohio EPA officials, she suggested a larger study involving "trash plant workers, state prison guards, county prison guards," and others who worked literally at ground zero of the dioxin fallout zone. The ATSDR appeared at that meeting to be under the sway of the Ohio EPA, known among activists as "Every Polluters Advocate." After listening to Dr. Paul Connett, one of the country's foremost experts on dioxin, who strongly suggested that more dioxin had dropped on Columbus than was found in the dioxin-plagued and evacuated Times Beach, Missouri, Mills offered the ATSDR the following provocative list of statistics taken from the book The Truth About Where You Live:
Out of 3,073 counties in the U.S., Franklin County ranks: eighth in workplace toxins: illegal occupational exposure; 15th in annual excess deaths from lung cancers; 20th in water quality: sewage outflow; 31st in air quality: urban-suspected carcinogen emissions; 32nd in hazardous wastes: treatment, storage, and disposal facilities; 32nd in annual excess deaths from heart disease; 33rd in air quality: urban hazardous chemical emissions; 44th in annual female excess deaths from breast cancer.
Mills made the point in a July 4, 1995 letter that city, county and state officials had consistently advocated policies that made central Ohio a toxic cesspool, and denied the dangers of dioxin. During the early stages of the dioxin debate, the Big D went so far as to report Mayor Lashutka's and Assistant Health Director Mike Pompelli's spin that dioxin was "an alleged toxin." Pompelli also suggested that time and money spent addressing the dioxin and trash-burner problem were taking away from real health concerns such as "dog bites."
Why then, was a two-year-old study proposal front-page news? Thomas says that the story is a clear signal from the feds that "they've stopped listening to citizens" and have sided with central Ohio's notorious anti-green politicians. Mills suspects that the old study is being hyped as a result of the pending class-action lawsuit by trash plant-area residents against the city who believe that their illnesses are caused or exacerbated by trash plant emissions. So far, the city has claimed "sovereign immunity"-that means they were just doing their job when they were burning unseparated trash at erratic temperatures without any stack scrubbers, and poisoning us. Under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, the city, unlike a private business, can't be sued without its permission. Currently, plaintiffs are suing in federal court under "property damages," but Mills says the case may be kicked back to a state court.
While dioxin has proven to be one of the most potent carcinogenics studied, U.S. EPA assessments suggest that a whole range of health problems are triggered at a significantly lower dose. Immune deficiencies, reproductive problems, endometriosis, respiratory illnesses can be a result of minute exposure to dioxin. By siding with city and state officials, the ATSDR is simply repeating the same old story-Columbus' dioxin cover-up will continue.
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02/05/1997
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MISSING FEBRUARY 12 ARTICLES
02/19/1997
Three reichs and you're out
Bob Fitrakis
Whether it's in January around Martin Luther King Jr. Day or February during Black History Month, Columbus' yearly visit from hate-mongering white supremacists was once again counter-protested by the weather. From subzero wind chills to Alberta Clippers the last few years, it's almost enough to make one believe in divine intervention.
Harold "Ray" Redfearin, leader of Ohio's wing of the white terrorist Aryan Nations organization, is busy trying to unite all of the state's white supremacist groups under the umbrella of the misnamed Christian Identity theology. Redfearin's using the so-called Church of the Good Shepherd in New Vienna, Ohio to spew his theology of hate. Christian Identity code phrases include the old canard that "the Jews are the spawn of Satan" and that blacks are "pre-Adamic," as in Adam and Eve, "mudpeople"-thus, not human.
About 40 white supremacists, including Redfearin and Troy Murphy, an imperial wizard of an Indiana Klan group, rallied at the Statehouse last Sunday. As usual, state, county and local police provided tough and overzealous security for the white supremacists. At 12:30 p.m., counter-demonstrators began gathering at the corner of Broad and High. Hundreds of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) activists, primarily from the midwest and east coast, swelled the ranks of the anti-Nazi protesters. The campus-area Food Not Bombs organization offered up vegetarian chili to the gathering throng. Barry Edney of the Ordinary People's Movement, who had organized the most noticeable African-American contingent, was whipping up the crowd until he strayed into some Nation of Islam rhetoric.
Police officers appear to have perfected their infamous counter-demonstrator harassment techniques. Crowd them together, make them pass through an X-ray gate, run metal detectors over them, search and frisk them before they can exercise their First Amendment right to heckle the Klan. Make no mistake about it, law enforcement officials have created a deliberate policy, under the guise of security, where only two metal-detecting gates are used to impede the rights of counter-demonstrators.
The police obsession with Nazi and Klan First Amendment rights is reaching new levels of absurdity as is their disciplined practices of harassing counter-demonstrators. After waiting some 40 minutes just to get into the area, this writer was immediately thrown out by the Columbus S.W.A.T. team, reportedly under the supervision of Commander Curtis Marcum. My alleged offense was crossing over an imaginary line by a sign that said "EXIT." Despite repeatedly identifying myself as a journalist for Columbus Alive the entire S.W.A.T. unit guarding the exit seemed to take pleasure in ejecting me. Perhaps it was the articles I've written exposing the gambling practices of the Marcum family at the gambling house run by the murdered ex-police officer Mt. Vernon Johnson that made me such a dangerous suspect. Having taken an imaginary step across the arbitrary invisible line, known only unto God and the S.W.A.T. team, I was immediately grabbed in a pressure hold on my wrist and told "You must exit." No, they weren't arresting me, they were evicting me. This must be the S.W.A.T. team's new training to "protect and serve." Just before the exit, two apparent undercover officers, one male and one female in a fur coat-as always, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb-were checking in with a Franklin County Sheriff's officer. The woman turned to chime in: "Get him out of here! He's always causing trouble!" The Sheriff's deputy joined in: "Him again! Get him out of here!" So much for my First Amendment rights.
I re-entered after more police hassles and a less-than-friendly extra testicle squeeze during my re-frisking, just in time to see a burly biker being confronted by ARA activists. "That's an SS insignia on your jacket, you Nazi scum!" At first the biker tried to deny it, but fled quickly after someone kicked him in the butt. He was allowed to go out the entrance. Where was the S.W.A.T. team when you needed them?
As I approached the fence to take my first photo of the racist clan, I realized they were leaving. Less than an hour into their rally their vituperative diatribe was over. Perhaps they had counted too much on the spirits of Mussolini and Hitler rising from the pit of hell to inspire them. Or maybe they were scared off by a frightful vision of themselves strung up on a meathook in a public square or blowing their brains out in a godawful bunker. The eternal post-WW II debate continued. What do you do with a nascent Nazi movement? "We tried ignoring them in Germany in the '20s and '30s," argued Jim McNamara, local ARA spokesperson. "This gives our organization an opportunity to educate people. We had a lot of energy out there. I was proud of the spirit of our activists. We stopped the Nazis from recruiting and we got to recruit, communicate with our fellow citizens and leaflet a lot of neighborhoods in the name of interracial unity. I'd call that a success," McNamara concluded.
02/26/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
How would you expect your U.S. Representative to honor International Human Rights Day? If you're Deborah Pryce, you head to Burma and suck up to perhaps the most reprehensible and repressive military dictatorship on earth.
Dispatch darling Debbie, Republican representative from our own 15th district in central Ohio, joined Tom Delay (R-TX), Bill Paxton (R-NY), and Dennis Hastert (R-IL) on a "private" trip to Burma between December 8 and 12 of last year. At the invitation of the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) Vice-Chairman and Deputy Chief of Defense Services General Maung Aye, Pryce visited with SLORC leaders as their tanks and armed personnel carriers filled the streets of Rangoon and Burmese cities to crush pro-democracy demonstrations.
Pryce reportedly dined at the well-known butcher Maung Aye's home and toured the country via SLORC aircraft. Just the previous month, the U.S. State Department issued a statement that it was "outraged" by attacks on Nobel Peace laureate and head of the pro-democracy movement, Aung San Suu Kyi by "thugs wielding chains and knives and equipped with walkie-talkies." The U.S. State Department's 1996 Annual Report on Human Rights equates Burma and Iraq for both practicing "...repression and systematic violation of human rights," and says SLORC "terrorizes and silences" those who speak against it. SLORC has been condemned by the U.S. Congress, the UN Human Rights Commission, the European Parliament and Amnesty International.
According to the Free Burma Coalition, Pryce toured Mandalay Palace, where thousands of local citizens were forced into slave labor as part of a 1995 "beautification project." It proved a great photo op for our Debbie when her group was featured in the SLORC propaganda newspaper New Light of Myanmar. The Coalition also claims that Debbie and her guy-pals didn't meet with a single leader of the besieged National League for Democracy (NLP) party, which officially won the 1990 elections before being squashed by SLORC.
The U.S. Congressional reps also toured a controversial gas pipeline being built by the military dictatorship and oil companies Unocal and Total. Debbie's now busy promoting Unocal's bogus claim that there's "no forced labor" on the oil pipeline. The pipeline project has been repeatedly cited as the site of some of Burma's worst human rights violations. The pipeline area runs through the homeland of the Karen, Mon, and Tavoy ethic nationalities. Thousands of these tribespeople have been tortured, raped, murdered and forced to clear forests for the SLORC troops.
Speaking of junk on her junket, Burma is the world's largest heroin supplier. Just before Pryce's trip, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Gelbard stated, "Before Burma's military took over in 1962, Burma played a relatively minor role in the global drug trade. But by the 1980s, it had emerged as the world's largest producer of opium and heroin. SLORC is protecting the drug trade and flaunting its defiance of international concern."
Pryce will no doubt claim that "constructive engagement" with Burma justifies her visit. Desmond Tutu, Archbishop of South Africa, disagrees: "International pressure can change the situation in Burma. Tough sanctions, not constructive engagement, finally brought the release of Nelson Mandela and the dawn of a new era in my country."
Who would've thunk it? Our own Little Debbie, fan of the jackboot! If you're not, contact the Ohio Free Burma Coalition at 262-1208.
You shouldn't be shocked that a couple of neo-Nazi yahoos from Colville, Washington were shooting at state troopers in Wilmington, Ohio. Floyd Cochran, a former high-ranking Aryan Nation official, currently an Anti-Racist activist, has been warning about the exportation of white supremacist terrorists into southeast Ohio and Pennsylvania for the last four years.
White supremacist Mark Thomas, tied to the Midwest Bank Bandits and the Aryan Republican Army, is only four hours from Wilmington in Ulysses, Pennsylvania. Thomas has also worked for the Posse Comitatus and Larry Wayne's National Alliance. And Tony Gamble, Cincinnati-based Klan leader, admitted in sworn testimony that the Aryan Nation's Christian Identity Church in New Vienna, Ohio, some 10 miles from Wilmington, helped him with recruiting.
Be afraid, be very afraid. What you're witnessing is the convergence of neo-Nazi and Klan groups under the pseudo-theology of so-called "Christian Identity." Here in Ohio, we're in the crossfire. To our north in Michigan you have the racist Resistance Records, fueling neo-Nazi "boneheads." A year ago Christmas, they were able to turn out 500 of these thugs for a gathering in Cleveland. In rural West Virginia we have William Pierce, author of the infamous Turner Diaries, Tim McVeigh's favorite book. It's a blueprint for fermenting a race war, by blowing up federal buildings with fertilizer bombs and hanging every white woman who's ever "race-mixed." In Pittsburgh, Edmund Foster's Klan now has an Adolph Hitler Free Corps. With both the Aryan Nation and Klan embracing Christian Identity theology, Hitler is literally worshipped as a Biblical prophet.
Remember, the Oklahoma City bombing occurred approximately 12 hours after the execution of admitted white supremacist and cop-killer Richard Snell. The white supremacist terrorists teach teenagers that it's okay to kill cops, blacks and Jews and anyone else who disagrees with their blasphemy. As long as the neo-Nazis are allowed to safely set up a compound in New Vienna, expect more visits from the likes of the crazy Kehoe brothers.
03/05/2002
by Bob Fitrakis
What the hell’s happening in Ohio? The Kehoe brothers, Chevie and Cheyne, white supremacists, shoot it out with state troopers in Wilmington, Ohio; Aryan Nations, the American Nazi party, Klansmen, racist skinheads and Christian Identity hate preachers converge at the Capitol; and Peter Langan, leader of the Midwest Bank Bandits and the Aryan Republican Army, is busted living on the south side of Columbus--here in the heart of it all.
White supremacists who’ve long dreamed of their "own private Idaho"--where Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler established his 20-acre compound in rural Hayden Lake in the early ’70s--now have their sights set on Ohio.
Floyd Cochran, former high-ranking Aryan Nations official turned anti-racist activist, repeatedly warned that Ohio, especially the southeast portion, is a prime target of white supremacists. "Just last fall I spoke in Athens, Ohio before a feminist group and I warned them of the growing danger in Ohio. The organizer told me that I should quit frightening people, that she lives in Ohio and I don’t know what I’m talking about," recalled Cochran.
Unfortunately, Cochran knows all too well the dangers of Aryan Nations. He lives in Pennsylvania, close to Mark Thomas’ farm outside Macungie. Thomas, who was indicted on January 30 as a co-conspirator in the Midwest Bank Bandit robberies, is a key link between American white supremacists organizations. Thomas has served as national leader of the violent anti-government Posse Comitatus, as "Imperial Chaplain" of the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, as a Christian Identity preacher, and until his recent indictment, currently the Aryan Nations’ leader in Pennsylvania. During the 1990s, Thomas attracted scores of skinheads and assorted white supremacists to rallies and weekly "Bible Studies" at his Macungie compound. Thomas’ tactics revolve around creating a united front of racists and anti-Semites. What we saw in Columbus three weeks ago at the Statehouse is the type of coalition Thomas craved.
It should come as no shock that the Kehoe brothers from Colville, Washington, a short distance from Butler’s Hayden Lake compound, shot it out with state troopers in Wilmington. They were, no doubt, in the area for the gathering of the racist tribes. Just 10 miles from Wilmington is New Vienna, where Ohio racists are dreaming of a white revolution and building for that day. Anthony "Tony" Wayne Gamble, Imperial Wizard of the Knight Riders of the KKK, testified back in June of 1995 in a case concerning the tearing down of the Klan cross in Cincinnati. He revealed how his Ross, Ohio-based Klan members worked with Aryan Nation supporters at the Christian Identity House of the Good Shepherd’s church in New Vienna. This is where the Klan’s Cincinnati Christmas cross was built in 1994.
This Klan/Nazi merger under the guise of white supremacist Christian Identity theology is pivotal to understanding the current racial violence in Ohio. As Klanwatch reported in March 1995, the more violent white supremacist group Aryan Nations staged an alarming comeback in 1994. In 1993, Aryan Nations was in only three states. Aided by money provided by the Midwest Bank Bandits, the Idaho-based group swept into 15 new states in 1994, including Ohio, and ended up in 30 states by 1995. Aryan Nations had declined dramatically after its peak in 1983-84, after its offshoot, the Order, killed a state trooper, an Aryan Nation member, and Jewish talk show host Alan Berg. The Order, like the Midwest Bank Bandits, specialized in armed robberies to finance the racist revolution.
With the rise of the Aryan Nations in 1994, so rose militia and states’ rights organizations in the aftermath of the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho shoot-out between the FBI and the white separatist Randy Weaver; and the destruction of the Waco, Texas Branch Davidian complex in 1993. Ohio saw the dramatic rise of the Ohio Unorganized Militia. Michael Hill, chaplain in the Militia and an organizer of Ohio’s One Supreme Court, a common-law court that meets regularly in Columbus, was shot to death during a traffic stop on June 28, 1995 in Muskingum County. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Michael Hill’s widow, Arlene, held a memorial service for her slain husband on Sunday, June 30, 1995. It casually mentioned that Colorado preacher Pete Peters and North Carolinian Nord Davis "are scheduled to speak." What it failed to mention was that Peters is one of America’s more influential and active Christian Identity propagandists and theologians. His sermons are based on the militant Christian Identity and anti-Semitic beliefs that Jews pose a satanic threat to American civilization, that black and other people of color are subhuman and that homosexuals should be executed.
In Michael Barkham’s book, Religion and the Racist Right, he discusses Peters’ Remnant Resolves--a statement of political principles concerning Identity believers. Peters holds that God’s law is "binding...on all men, regardless of their political persuasion or personal beliefs." Thus, "the role of civil authority is to administer God’s law." The logic of this belief is that secular humanist civil authorities, whether cops or judges, don’t have to be obeyed. God’s law, of course, is known only to the likes of Michael Hill, Pete Peters, Tony Gamble, Richard Butler, Mark Thomas and their racist ilk.
Nord Davis, the other speaker mentioned by the Dispatch, is a well-known North Carolina white supremacist who organized a trip to Jordan during the Gulf War to support Saddam Hussein. After all, it’s standard Christian Identity doctrine that the Zionist Jews, the spawn of Satan, are spiraling history toward Armageddon. The presence of preeminent racists like Davis and Peters at Hill’s memorial established all-too-clear links between the Ohio Unorganized Militia and the white supremacist movement.
The anti-government sentiments of the militia movement make it a prime recruiting ground for white supremacists. A May 1995 Newsweek article reported that federal investigators of the Oklahoma City bombing were "looking closely at a white supremacist group headed by Robert Millar in Elohim City, Oklahoma."
Following the Oklahoma City bombing, the militia movement came under intense government scrutiny. The media revealed that both suspects, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, had attended militia meetings in Michigan. Federal prosecutors charged that McVeigh’s motivation in the bombing was his intense hatred of the federal government for its destruction of the Branch Davidian complex. Moreover, media reports claimed that McVeigh’s favorite book is the notorious Turner Diaries, written by former American Nazi Party leader William Pierce, the founder of the National Alliance. The Diaries, billed by the neo-Nazi National Alliance as a "handbook for white victory," is a primer for race war masquerading as a violent fantasy novel.
Written in 1978, the Turner Diaries proved an inspiration to the Order. "Today has been the day of the rope--a grim and bloody day but an unavoidable one.... But the night is filled with silent horrors from tens of thousands of lampposts, power poles, and trees throughout this vast metropolitan area, the grisly forms hang.... There are many thousands of hanging female corpses like that in the city tonight, all wearing identical placards around their necks. They are the white women who are married to or living with blacks, with Jews, or with other non-white males," Pierce wrote.
Pierce, like Thomas, lives in a state bordering Ohio, near the community of Millpoint, West Virginia. The Church of the Creator (COTC), one of the most vicious American racist organizations, sold its property in North Carolina to Pierce in September 1992. The COTC operated openly on High Street in the Ohio State campus area during the late ’80s and early 1990s. Under the leadership of Joey Hagar, neo-Nazi skinheads terrorized the campus community culminating in the murder of a black woman. Their cry was "Rahowa!" (RAcial HOly WAr). That incident, and intense pressure of anti-racist activists caused the demise of the local organization.
The climate for racist recruiting is ripe. As Floyd Cochran likes to point out, David Duke’s 1990 political agenda is now virtually mainstream Republicanism: destroy affirmative action because it’s taking white guys’ jobs away, keep those dirty spics out of California, kick those promiscuous black welfare mothers off public assistance, stop Big Government regulations, build more prisons, and gut education. In the economic transition from an urban industrial to a high-tech, post-industrial suburban society, lawmakers decided to use ordinary people as the shock absorbers on the rough ride to the 21st century. To many at the bottom, trickle-down looks like trickle-on economics. An industrial state like Ohio is an easy place to find displaced factory workers and small farmers desperately wanting someone to blame for their problems. These disgruntled white men are more than willing to listen to Rush Limbaugh or even the Klan, who basically offer the same scapegoats: blacks, gays, Big Government conspiracies, liberals, feminists and immigrants.
A 1995 Klanwatch Intelligence Report listed the following hate groups as active in Ohio: the International Ku Klux Klan in Sandusky, Knight Riders in Ross, Knights of the KKK in Columbus, Northern Knights and Aryan Nations in Dayton, Aryan Racial Loyalist Party and White Christian Guard in Euclid, National Alliance in Parma, the G.A. Kleve Propaganda Ministry in Maple Heights.
The racist targeting of Ohio has spawned a homegrown anti-racist response. Anti-Racist Action (ARA), perhaps the fastest growing anti-racist organization in the nation, is headquartered in the north campus area in Columbus. ARA spokesperson and co-founder Jim McNamara has long argued that government officials are making a big mistake by pushing the "just ignore them" line. Ex-Aryan Nation official Cochran agrees, advising ARA members to protest their presence so it’s harder for them to recruit.
"It’s true that the number of real, live American Nazis is small right now, but don’t tell us to just ignore them. Don’t tell us they’re just a joke. Tell it to the friends of Eric Freeman, the 11-year-old white kid killed by his older brothers David and Brian, under the inspiration of Mark Thomas. Tell it to the families who lost loved ones in the Oklahoma City bombing. Tell it to the cops that were just shot at by the Kehoe brothers. I hate to say ‘we told you so’ but they’re not a joke. They’re for real and they kill," said McNamara.
The Detroit-based Resistance Records is part of the racist movement using rock music with a hate message to recruit young people. A Resistance Records music festival in Cleveland in 1995 drew some 500 racist "boneheads." ARA, comprised mostly of college students, makes it a point to bring its message of racial harmony to challenge the hate spewed at the racist concerts. An alliance of ARA activists, Barry Edney’s Ordinary People’s Movement and Cornell McCleary’s Coalition of Concerned Black Citizens, in conjunction with the local NAACP, may have come up with the best tactic to combat racists. Their ‘outing’ of Klan members in 1995, by taking busloads of people to the homes of known white supremacists, appears to have shaken the racists up in Ohio. This action, despite being widely denounced by Columbus’ power structure and the mainstream media, made a lasting impact on Klan leader Tony Gamble. Under oath, Gamble said "There’s seven Ron Lee’s" in his KKK organization: "These people don’t want their name to be shown on TV because if anti-protesters found out where they lived, they would bring busloads of people and picket up and down in front of their nice homes. They have good jobs. They don’t want to lose their jobs," Gamble explained.
Ignore them, Mayor Lashutka and Governor Voinovich say, and they’ll go away. In reality, they’ll go to the churches, the high schools, the campuses and preach their doctrine of hate. And just like the governor invites the importation of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals from all over the nation, so will the toxic Nazi slime continue to ooze in from Idaho, Washington, Pennsylvania, Michigan, West Virginia and elsewhere.
03/12/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
Speaking of lingering illnesses, sick things continue to happen over at the Franklin County Clerk of Court’s office. The odor of the Jesse Oddi regime is as rank as ever. Calls from terrified and tormented female employees continue to the Columbus Alive. Reports of blatant intimidation, at least one death threat from a high-ranking staff member to a former lover, and an assault in the parking garage on an employee have all been duly noted.
Oddi’s chief concern at this point is covering up the fact that his chief deputy and close friend, Kenny Griffith, allegedly twice impregnated a staff member; both are married to other people. A sealed paternity agreement has failed to cover up the most widely known secret in the Courthouse. The second most widely known secret is the Clerk’s office’s inability to collect forfeited bonds from a certain bond company. Have the feds thought about using the RICO racketeering laws yet to clean up the stench?
While we’re on the subject of organized crime, the governor’s disgraced former chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, is back in business. He still hasn’t adequately explained how he and his lovely wife paid everyone’s favorite minority contractor, Tommy Banks, for those additions to their Marysville home. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that Mifsud is now working as a consultant to Governor Voinovich’s U.S. Senate campaign (suggested slogan: "We gotta Senator you can’t refuse") and was recently hired as a consultant by Ohioans for Affordable Energy, a front for utility giants Ohio Edison and Centerior Energy Corporation to fight electric utility deregulation.
Large industrial users are pushing for deregulation and more competition, so it’s not surprising that Mifsud would line up with the forces favoring political favoritism and government-enforced monopolies. Mifsud knows a lot about favoritism. He’s still being investigated for what one prominent state treasury official calls "the most blatant misuse of power I have ever seen" in the awarding of state bonds. Maybe if Governor Voinovich is elected to the Senate, he can ask the feds to use the RICO laws to investigate Mifsud.
O.K., I’ve got a better idea for a slogan for the Guv’s Senate campaign: "Why not the worst?" Sure, it’s a bit exaggerated, but let’s look at the facts. Under the Voinovich administration, Ohio has dropped to 41st in state funding of higher education; just last week, stats were released showing that Ohio was seventh in the production of toxic pollution generated by medical waste incinerators; and we were fourth in the number of active anti-government militia groups. So, if we use this pro-ignorance, pro-pollution, pro-terrorist index, add in the governor’s jail- and prison-building spree and plans to build a six-state radioactive waste site in Ohio, it’s hard to imagine any governor with a worse legacy. Sure, you could dredge up the Rhodes legacy, or go out of state and argue for Spiro Agnew or Huey Long, but I’m telling you, their numbers don’t stand up to our George. And I’m not even including the Guv’s stellar stats on most alleged mobsters appointed to the Turnpike Commission.
But Mifsud’s comeback pales in comparison to Chief Jackson’s attempt to rehabilitate Commander Walter Burns. Bringing Burns back as head of Internal Affairs is an affront to every citizen and every police officer in Columbus. Burns took control of the evidence in the Menucci prostitution case, logged it in, but never inventoried it, and while in his custody, virtually all of it disappeared. The FOP is right in fighting against such flagrant corruption in a commander. To facilitate the FOP’s battle against the Jackson-Burns cabal, we’re asking officers who have information concerning Jackson and Burns to "drop a dime" on the duo: call the Alive at 221-2449.
Campus Partners, a.k.a. "Partners in Crime," are at it again. Campus Partners’ President Terry Fogler outlined last week why several city blocks near 11th Avenue and High Street must be leveled and rebuilt. Fogler wants to use the city’s "eminent domain" power to take private property and businesses in order to build new private property and businesses. The U.S. Constitution calls for the taking of private property only for "public use." I doubt a new Limited store, courtesy of OSU Board of Trustees President Les Wexner, or a Max and Erma’s, qualifies as "public use." Historically, it’s meant roads, airports and parks. The city’s plutocrats, as usual, talk all the time about the virtues of capitalism and a free market, but they want to use public money to get in on the natural process of gentrification occurring in the Short North and south campus area. An architect who worked with Les Wexner says this is all driven by the mogul’s desire for "a master plan" for everything: New Albany, Easton, the Riverfront and the campus area.
Finally, make sure you read Lamar Hunt’s interview in the March 7 Business First. It could be a new record for a sports franchise owner’s Modell-ing of a city. The Crew’s only been in town a year and he’s already hinting that they’ll leave unless we pass a three-year sales tax for a arena/stadium complex. If we don’t build the billionaire owner of the Crew a custom 30,000-seat soccer stadium, he’s taking his ball and going home, or to wherever he can browbeat suckers into forking over their cash for his profits. "If it doesn’t pass, clearly we’ll need to look at some different direction as to what path it can go. I don’t think the Ohio State alternative is a reasonable one, though," Hunt told Business First. See ya!
03/19/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
U.S. Representative Deborah Pryce (R-15th District) is distancing herself from corporate interests that may have financed a trip for herself and three other federal legislators to Burma. The Clinton administration is considering sanctions against the oppressive regime that rules the country because of human rights abuses and the recent overthrow of the democratic government and imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi, the former leader and a Nobel Prize winner.
The trip for Pryce and fellow Republican Representatives Tom DeLay of Texas, Bill Paxon of New York, and Dennis Hastert of Illinois, was financed by the Asia Pacific Exchange Foundation, a tax-exempt Washington group; the delegation, two aides, and Delay’s and Pryce’s spouses stayed at a government hotel. While the legislator maintains that she had no idea the organization that financed the trip was in any way linked to Unocal, which since 1995 has been heavily invested in offshore gas production and is building a $1.2 billion pipeline in Burma, at least one of the delegation, Rep. Hastert, told the Associated Press last week that he flew over and viewed the pipeline. Pryce has said that she did not participate in that excursion.
Pryce maintained Monday after a meeting of the Columbus Rotary Club where she spoke about civility in public life that she had no idea her trip to Burma would become so controversial. "I don’t know who’s criticizing [the trip to Burma] because it was an incidental stop on a larger trip to Asia. Most of our time was spent in China. But we worked at length on some of the civil rights problems over there, and worked at length on the drug trafficking up in the Golden Triangle, and learned a lot about that."
Pryce pointed to her record of voting for legislation requiring President Clinton to ban further U.S. investment in Burma if the regime moved against Aung San Suu Kyi or intensified its repression. "The legislation clearly states that there will be no U.S. assistance to the government of Burma until substantial progress has been made in improving basic human rights and implementing a democratic government. I stand by that vote today. If Unocal or any other group was attempting to lobby me to change my opinion by taking me on that trip—they failed," the congresswoman wrote in a March 17 press release faxed to Columbus Alive in response to several questions.
But Pryce’s office never issued a press release prior to the trip announcing her plans, nor did it issue one afterward detailing her efforts to address human rights problems in Burma. And though she is firm in her claim that, "The purpose of our meeting with the [State Law and Order Restoration Council] leaders in Burma was to pressure them into releasing Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the pro-democracy movement," this statement conflicts with information give to the AP. "The group didn’t meet with opposition leaders, [Asia Pacific Exchange Foundation President Richard G.] Quick said, because the lawmakers expressed no interest. At about the same time, Representative John Porter (R-Ill.), was denied a visa when he sought a visit to explore human rights issues."
A Columbus Alive column in the February 26 issue broke the news locally about Pryce’s trip to Burma, and scolded her for insensitivity to the human rights of the Burmese people. Pryce responded in a letter to the editor in the next issue claiming that she was "....part of a group that traveled to Burma to verify allegations of human rights abuses, investigate heroine[sic] trade through the Golden Triangle and learn about Sino-Burmese relations."
In a page six AP wire story in Sunday’s Columbus Dispatch, she repeated the claim about "looking into alleged human rights abuses" and the drug trade, but added a fuzzy new wrinkle. She also went, the Dispatch reported, to "...try to improve the process used when American families adopt Chinese babies."
Although never accused of it, Pryce went out of her way in her letter to the Alive to deny that it was a "luxury trip." Pryce, while supposedly investigating human rights, went to Burma as a private citizen with her husband and gave the State Department "no advance notice of the trip," according to the AP.
As originally reported in Alive, the trip was paid for by the Asia Pacific Exchange Foundation, an organization that Counterpunch magazine describes as "a shady outfit run by a former Vietnam vet named Richard Quick, funded by the private sector and sympathetic to despotic Asian regimes, especially Burma, China and Singapore."
Quick refused to tell the AP where it got its money, but Unocal acknowledged that it was among the foundation’s sponsors. Unocal spokesman Barry Lane declined to say how much money the company has paid the group, but the AP pointed out, "By donating to Quick’s foundation, Unocal could claim a tax deduction for underwriting a congressional fact-finding trip to its pipeline, in effect using a taxpayer subsidy to lobby against U.S. policy."
Alive pointed out that both Representative Hastert and DeLay receive substantial campaign contributions from Unocal.
As trip planner Quick told the AP: "Itineraries for trips are set to meet the interests of the lawmakers and their aides. If that coincides with the interests of one of the contributors, so be it."
The January 18, 1997 issue of The Economist stated, "Arguably, there’s only one project that really matters to the military junta that runs the country. That is the pipeline being built by two oil companies, Unocal of California and Total of France." The Economist estimates that the project "accounts for about a third of all foreign investment committed" in Burma. When completed, the pipeline will increase the junta’s export earnings by 25 percent; the ruling military dictatorship calls it Yadana, "treasure."
Burma’s military took power in 1962, and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1988 in order to smash the burgeoning pro-democracy movement. Thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were massacred in the process. After international pressure, elections were held in 1990. The democratic opposition led by Aung San Suu Kyi received 82 percent of the vote, yet SLORC refused to turn over the government. Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, and most of the legitimately elected officials were imprisoned.
In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Despite repeated condemnations by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and Amnesty International, Suu Kyi remained under house arrest until 1995. Amnesty International, which monitors and provides information on political oppression, reported in October 1993 that SLORC was using forced labor to beautify "Myanmar"—their new name for Burma—for the tourist trade. All citizens were required to work six months of the year for SLORC "...ill from malnutrition and malaria. They received no medical treatment, but instead are forced to continue working until they collapse and are abandoned by the side of the road," the report said.
The Burmese economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the military. As one U.S. official put it, "Any money they obtain from foreign sources they pour straight into the army." Consequently, company after company pulled out of Burma in protest. In 1994, Levi Strauss and Company left Burma and announced that: "...under current circumstances, it is not possible to do business in Burma without directly supporting the military government and its pervasive violation of human rights." Other companies that have pulled out of Burma are Liz Claiborne and Eddie Bauer, which has a huge distribution center in Columbus.
An international human rights campaign won the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995. One of the key spokespersons in the campaign against Burma is Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa: "International pressure can change the situation in Burma. Tough sanctions, not constructive engagement, finally brought the release of Nelson Mandela and the dawn of a new era in my country."
But, in late May 1996, SLORC was cracking down again on the pro-democracy movement. Amnesty International cited the arrests of over 300 National League for Democracy (NLD) Members of Parliament-elect and pro-democracy activists. Two died in custody, one in June and one in August, according to Amnesty.
A local human rights activist wrote Pryce after the crackdown asking her to take a stand. In her response dated July 1, 1996, instead of mentioning the recent crackdown, Pryce wrote: "According to an Amnesty International report released in October 1995 the SLORC has released over 2,000 political prisoners since 1992, but arrests have also continued."
Pryce also outlined her strategy, "These limited sanctions and limited engagement strategy appear to have contributed to the release of Aung Sann [sic] Suu Kyi and other political prisoners." She did concede that "SLORC continues to violate human rights through abuse, impressment and forced labor." Pryce’s solution to the vicious human rights violations in Burma: "I will continue to monitor events as they unfold in Burma."
On September 17, 1996, the eve of SLORC’s seventh anniversary in power, the U.S. Congress voted sanctions against the military dictatorship. The Cohen-Feinstein amendment—section 569 of the Foreign Operations and Appropriations Act—passed despite intense lobbying against it by Unocal and its corporate partners. The Cohen-Feinstein amendment, which Pryce voted for and proudly cites, is a compromise to the mandatory sanctions demanded by Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, that allows the U.S. President to prohibit only new U.S. business investments in Burma if SLORC physically harms, re-arrests, or exiles Aung San Suu Kyi.
Dr. Sein Win, Prime Minister of the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, dubbed the bill a modest "first step." Burma’s pro-democracy forces and international human rights activists advocate sanctions. On September 27, 200 NLD loyalists marched to Shwe Dagon pagoda after being turned away from Suu Kyi’s University Avenue dwelling. Riot police and SLORC soldiers violently attacked the NLD activists.
The next day, the SLORC-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper, accused the U.S. Burma mission of aiding and orchestrating NLD activities. On September 29, SLORC added Australia and various European nations as Suu Kyi’s "foreign masters." SLORC claimed the NLD and the U.S. government "intended to incite riots and upheaval in the entire country." Hundreds of pro-democracy activists were arrested and the U.S. government slapped a visa ban on members of SLORC in retaliation. On September 30, President Clinton signed the Cohen-Feinstein amendment into law.
On November 9, SLORC thugs, wielding chains and knives and equipped with walkie-talkies, attacked and beat Aung San Suu Kyi. The U.S. government issued a statement saying that it was "outraged" and on November 14, called for dialogue between SLORC and the democratic opposition.
In the November 21 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review, Robert S. Gelbard, the U.S.’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, reported that: "Since the formation of SLORC in 1988, opium production in Burma has doubled. And the nature of the drug trade has changed in an unmistakable way: Burma’s most important narco-traffickers are no longer holed up in jungle hideaways. They are buying real estate in Rangoon and Mandelay, investing in Burma’s economy, and openly courting military officials." The U.S. government estimates that 60 percent of the heroin in the United States originates from Burma.
Celebrating International Human Rights Day
Within this heated atmosphere, Pryce planned her junket to Burma. Her delegation arrived in the country on December 8 and left on December 13, although a Pryce aide would later tell human rights activists that she was only in the country for a day. Perhaps it seemed like a day, as Pryce and her cohorts were wined and dined by SLORC. As detailed in Burma Alert, Vol. 8, No. 1, on December 9, General Maung Aye, SLORC vice chairman, deputy commander-in-chief of Defense Services, and commander-in-chief of the army, hosted a dinner for Pryce and the delegation. The same day, SLORC suspended classes at the universities and other educational institutions in Yangon.
December 10 was International Human Rights Day. On December 11, Pryce’s delegation flew to Mandelay in a government aircraft and was welcomed by chairman of the Mandelay Division Law and Order Restoration Council and Central Commander Ye Myint, according to Burma Alert. They visited Myanan Sangway palace, newly restored by slave labor, and lunched with Major General Myint. Pryce reportedly then shopped for souvenirs while SLORC leaders sent in troops to break up peaceful demonstrations in Mandelay that same day.
On December 12, Pryce and delegates flew on government aircraft to Rangoon and toured the Myanmar Gems Museum with high-ranking SLORC officials. Also that day, they flew to Kengtung and observed the official destruction of an opium field by military personnel. The delegates also found time for a brief stop at a local market. Meanwhile, SLORC officials took time from their busy entertainment schedule to send 10 or so tanks into central Yangon to crush pro-democracy demonstrations, according to Burma Alert.
According to Burma Alert, on December 13, the Pryce delegation visited the controversial Yadana natural gas project pipeline and met with Managing Director L. Morris of Texaco Exploration Myanmar, Inc. (a subsidiary of Texaco). That night they were whisked back to the Strand Hotel for a dinner hosted by Ministry for Energy U Khin Maung Thein. While Pryce dined with SLORC officials, Suu Kyi’s house remained barricaded and she was unable to leave.
The Burma pipeline runs through the homeland of the Karen, Mon, and Tavoy ethnic nationalities. Human rights groups claim that thousands of these groups have been tortured, raped and murdered by SLORC troops, and forced to clear forests. The U.S., the U.N and human rights groups all insist that there is forced labor being used to build the pipeline. The AP reported: "At the sites he was shown, Hastert said, he saw no evidence of abuses. Instead, well-paid villagers were operating heavy equipment. ‘It was a good insight for me,’ he said."
Pryce maintains that she was not part of the fly-by detailed in Burma Alert, and she commented Monday that she was concerned about the Asia Pacific Exchange Foundation being linked to Unocal. "That [link] came to light after I returned. It’s very disturbing that a 501(C)3 organization, a non-profit who represents itself as aboveboard, could possibly be a lobbying arm for one of the contributors," she said. She added, however, "That really didn’t have any effect on me because I didn’t make that part of the trip...to see the building of the, I guess it’s a gas pipeline or something. I wasn’t even on that part of the trip, so I’m not certain. But if that’s the case [that the Foundation is a lobbying arm of Unocal] then they need their tax-exempt status revoked, if that’s what’s going on."
Pryce’s whirlwind tour of Burma, where she failed to meet with a single pro-democracy representative and reportedly dined with SLORC generals, was not originally linked to promoting human rights.
In late January, local Free Burma Coalition activists met with Pryce aide Tim Day. Notes of their meeting record that Day informed them that it was a "privilege to be allowed to go there [Burma]" and that the purpose of Pryce’s trip was the "drug problem." Day also stated that there was "not much discussion regarding human rights and democracy." Although, he added, "human rights is a big concern for Pryce."
It also proved a great photo opportunity. Pryce and her delegation were prominently featured in SLORC’s propaganda, the New Light of Myanmar. What better way to celebrate International Human Rights Day?
--Also contributing were John Hay, Cary Jordan, and Sally MacPhail
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03/26/1997 by Bob Fitrakis
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04/02/1997
News Bites
State Representative William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, the Speaker Pro Tempore of the Ohio House, is a member of the little-known and highly secretive far-right Council for National Policy (CNP), according to author and investigative reporter Russ Bellant. Bellant says that "The CNP is attempting to create a concentration of power to rival and eventually eclipse traditional centers of power in the U.S."
Newsweek reported that the CNP’s first executive director, Louisiana State Representative Woody Jenkins, told Council members, "I predict that one day before the end of this century, the Council will be so influential that no president, regardless of party or philosophy, will be able to ignore us or our concerns or shut us out of the highest levels of government."
Batchelder, who narrowly lost a bid to be Speaker of the Ohio House, bears close scrutiny in Bellant’s opinion. Chip Berlet, of Political Research Associates, agrees. Berlet points out that the CNP includes "a former Ku Klux Klan leader and others who champion segregationist policies." Berlet concedes that these charges may seem "shocking," yet can be easily verified. He describes the beliefs of the CNP members as "not only traditionally conservative, but also [ascribes to them] nativism, xenophobia, theories of racial superiority, sexism, homophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, reaction, and in some cases, outright neo-fascism."
A quick check of Batchelder’s recent political activities in the last year or so showed that he praised Cleveland Mayor Michael White as "a very courageous guy" after White attacked public employees’ unions. He also sponsored legislation that the Audubon Society deemed anti-environmental. And, Batchelder re-wrote the Ohio banking laws so that they were pro-banking and not in the best interest of Ohio consumers, according to consumer advocates.
Harvey Wasserman, senior nuclear adviser for Greenpeace, recalled that, after a pro-environmental commentary he did on WCBE, Batchelder wrote and accused him of being "in the fever swamps of the far left."
"What I remember about the tone of the letter," Wasserman added, "was all the nasty name-calling."
Bellant, the author of The Religious Right in Michigan Politics (1996); The Coors Connection (1988); and Old Nazis, The New Right, and the Republican Party (1991), monitors ultra-right political organizations. Bellant says the "membership of the Council comprises the elite of the radical right in America" and that "many Council members would prefer that their participation not be made public."
During the Iran-Contra scandal, the State Times of Baton Rouge reported that Oliver North was a CNP member and quoted the CNP’s Norman Blackwell, "The policy [of CNP] is that we don’t discuss who attends the meetings or what is said. The Council for National Policy is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 membership organization." Bellant says individuals pay $2,000 per year to be members of the CNP. For $5,000, one can become a member of the Council’s board of governors, which elects the executive committee of the CNP.
Some of the more well-known board members of the CNP include: the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the leader of the now-defunct Moral Majority; Phyllis Schlafly, a leading anti-feminist; the Rev. Pat Robertson, right-wing TV evangelist; and Joseph Coors, whose family finances an interlocking network of ultra-conservative and far-right institutions. In 1983, the CNP bestowed their Thomas Jefferson Award to Senator Jesse Helms.
The lesser-known members of the CNP, like Batchelder, perhaps give better insight into the organization’s politics:
- Richard Shoff, a former Ku Klux Klan leader in Indiana.
- John McGoff, a supporter of the former apartheid South African government.
- David Noebel, author of Rhythm, Riots and Revolution, a ’60s book that attempted to show that folk music was a Communist plot.
- R.J. Rushdoony, the theological leader of America’s "Christian Reconstruction" movement that advocates that Christian fundamentalists take "dominion" over America, abolish democracy, and institute Old Testament law. "Homosexuals ...adulterers, blasphemers, astrologers, and others will be executed," as well as disobedient children.
- Reed Larson, head of the anti-union National Right to Work Committee.
- Don Wildmon, TV censorship activist and accused anti-Semite.
Bellant specializes in the difficult task of tracking the historical roots of far-right groups. In his last book he noted: "The Council’s creation was inspired by business and political leaders who are also leaders of the John Birch Society." This, in Bellant’s analysis, is an important factor since it places the CNP, not within the boundaries of mainstream democratic conservative thought or traditional Republican Party ideals, but within the anti-democratic nativist tradition in American politics. The John Birch Society, for example, saw President Dwight Eisenhower as part of the international Communist conspiracy.
The Birch Society and the CNP have been intertwined since the Council’s inception in 1981 when Tim LaHaye, a Moral Majority leader, received backing from Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, a member of the Birch Society’s National Council. By 1984, both John Birch Society Chairman A. Clifford Baker and Executive Council member William Cies were CNP members. According to Bellant, "Five board members of Western Goals, essentially a JBS intelligence-gathering operation, joined the CNP as well." It was later revealed during the Iran-Contra scandal that Western Goals was used to funnel aid to the right-wing Contra guerrillas.
In 1982, Tom Ellis succeeded LaHaye as CNP president. Ellis was a director of the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that finances efforts to prove that African-Americans are genetically inferior to whites. Recipients of Pioneer Grants have included eugenicists William Shockley, Arthur Jensen and Roger Pearson. Pearson is on record advocating that "inferior races" should be "exterminated."
The John Birch Society, founded in 1958, was initially identified by scholars as a racist and anti-Semitic organization. The JBS spent much of its time in the ’60s organizing against Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. They accused King and civil rights activists of being Communist-controlled.
While the Birchers are regarded as extremists, both Bellant and Berlet warn that the CNPers like Batchelder are accepted as mainstream Republican Party leaders despite the company they keep.
--Bob Fitrakis
04/09/1997
Just vote no!
by Bob Fitrakis
I saw the worst minds in Columbus naked, hysterical, blinded. "News flash from CD101, the Velvet Underground just announced a single reunion concert in Paris. Sources close to the station believe if we’d only built an arena, they would have held it here in Columbus...."
To the shills at CD101: you’re so pathetic, you just don’t get it.
It’s called "Arena Envy." It’s in the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses-Revised (DSM-R). It’s a behavioral illness that primarily affects 20-something white males and multi-millionaires. They think life would be really great if they just had a big arena. I mean, a Big Arena, perhaps swollen to include a stadium. Most of the city’s problems are reduced to not having another new, even larger, arena than the Schottenstein/Value City edifice.
It causes hysterical blindness so they can’t read pertinent news publications like Business First, which wrote on February 28: "A survey of local and national experts conclude that Columbus’ ability to attract enough events to support two arenas is doubtful. Bruce Schilling, a sports marketing consultant and former VP of a Philadelphia arena management firm, states: ‘If two arenas are competing that close--it doesn’t matter what the size of the market is--I can’t see it working out without being subsidized.’"
Speaking of subsidies, these 20-somethings are in the guru-like clutches of OSU President Gordon Gee, probably the single most subsidized man in central Ohio. If the 20-somethings weren’t suffering from Arena Envy, they’d realize that Gee--the pro-arena drum major--probably pays less sales tax than anyone in the state. His house is provided by The Ohio State University, as are his cars, food, utilities, and most other worldly needs. Except for the closet full of bowties, it’s hard to imagine what he pays sales tax on.
Also, being so desperate for a huge arena causes one to be easy prey for perverts and blackmailers. Some are so unhinged that even the promise of a one-year-old soccer team leaving Columbus causes them to cough up a quarter billion dollars that would be better spent on 12-step programs or remedial math education. If they took that remedial course, they’d discover how the numbers on their really humongous arena/stadium complex are cooked. As they lurch around in a zombie-like trance, they mumble, "We have to build the arena because the good corporations gave us $56 million already. We can’t waste it."
They’d see that most of the so-called $56 million in private sector donations is dubious at best; at least $51 million dollars of it is questionable. The pro-arena Work Group Report dated December 14, 1995 originally included on page 106 $500,000 in naming rights. Thus, when they sold the naming rights to Bank One, it was not a private donation. It was the selling of a public asset already included in the arena/stadium revenue stream. Bank One isn’t donating a dime, it’s buying advertising and public relations.
And, in February when it was decided not to build 750 public parking spaces at the arena site, backers essentially privatized parking that resulted in the Nationwide garage reaping the rewards. So, Nationwide’s donation of parking fees to the arena/stadium complex is simply kicking back a percentage of their windfall profits.
Still, this "Arena Envy" crew is used to paying $99.95 for vacu-jacks and five bucks a minute to Big Busty Babes in Moldavia. Moldavian women are said to like big arena guys.
Also, the obsessive-compulsive nature of the disease causes one to overlook the blatant hypocrisy in personal relationships. Hence, the hypocritical whining of the Columbus Dispatch that is, on the one hand, strongly urging the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision declaring Ohio’s public school financing unconstitutional because of the tax burden it will place on the people, while on the other hand, demanding that Columbus taxpayers subsidize billionaire Lamar Hunt’s and the Wolfe family’s sports fetish.
Sometimes the sickness in its advanced stages manifests itself in delusional flights of altruism. "Arena Envy" sufferers wander the streets touting how the arena and stadium will provide much-needed "jobs" and how much this is going to "help the black community." Not even the harshest dose of reality therapy can shock them back to the real world. Analyzing the way teams blackmail cities, Tim Crother wrote in Newsweek that a city "...is going to shell out millions in civic resources that would be better spent on schools, cops or real job creation."
The low-skilled jobs selling peanuts and popcorn and taking tickets are hardly the stuff of social mobility. Indeed, Columbus already leads the nation in these types of low-paying McWorld service jobs. Let’s face it, it’s likely the only thing black in the hockey arena will be the puck, and perhaps a few African-Americans hired to clean the latrines.
Tough love is called for to save these 20-something white males--even though it’ll make them howl in agony. Vote no on Issue One.
04/16/1997 NOTHING
04/23/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
Billionaire Lamar Hunt and the multi-millionaire John Wolfe are "hookin’ it up for us, good" here in Columbus. A Dispatch editorial called Hunt’s much-touted agreement to manage the downtown arena/stadium complex a "superb deal." They’re right, of course--it’s an unbelievable unbid sweetheart of a deal for Wolfe’s business partner in the sports biz.
By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the story--or better put, fairy tale--about what a great and magnanimous man our Mr. Hunt is. After all, "he’s putting up $75 million dollars of his own money" for the arena/stadium complex.
Pardon?
Using the pro-arena guy’s own numbers--that is, using both the Deloitte Touche Economic Impact Report and the Work Group Study, published in December 1995--the five percent ticket surcharge on the arena/stadium complex projected over 25 years comes out to $74,626,052.
Shocking coincidence. The ticket surcharge rounds to $75 million over 25 years, the exact amount Lamar has "pledged" over the same period. I’ll pledge $100 million and be even a greater guy if you raise the ticket surcharge to six percent! What a guy, this Lamar! He gives back the ticket surcharge paid by the fans and calls it a personal contribution.
Let me tell you about the couple thousand dollars I donated to Columbus Public Schools last year. I sent it in with my property tax form. At least mine was my own money. Lamar collects others people’s money and calls it a contribution. How do you think he got those billion dollars anyway?
Not that Lamar’s cheap, he’s really cheap. His Hunt Sports Group will put up an estimated $2,629,460 for an unbid management contract with the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority, and he will make--using their figures--$358,556,175 over 25 years.
You got it, folks. Put in less than $3 million of private money, make nearly $360 million off a "public" facility. What a deal. All we gotta do is build him his public arena for his hockey team and his custom-tailored soccer stadium for his soccer team. By building a "public arena," as opposed to private, Hunt doesn’t have to pay an estimated $2 million in property tax a year to the Columbus Public Schools.
Oh, we forgot to calculate the profit he’ll make on the hockey tickets since the $360 million is from "other events." Also, we could throw in TV rights, league distribution revenue and merchandising fees for his and Wolfe’s NHL hockey franchise. Hunt’s annual revenue from the tickets, media and NHL dollars is estimated to be $26,044,000. Now, again, using their numbers, let’s multiply it by 25 years and add four percent for inflation. That’s $651,360,440. A lotta money, you say. But well worth it, since the soccer stadium alone is estimated to add around nine full-time permanent jobs to the local economy. Hunt knows the score and he knows how to score, particularly with an easy mark like the Columbus pro-arena guys.
No wonder Whalers owner Peter Karmanos Jr. says he’d sign the same deal tomorrow and bring his NHL team to town if you’d let him. Who the hell wouldn’t? Did I tell ya I’d be willing to put up $125 million myself if you raised the ticket surcharge to seven percent? Think of the logic of this. The chief tenant of both the public arena and the customized public soccer stadium is going to "manage the facility" and cut a tough deal with himself.
They could have easily bid this contract to other sports and entertainment management groups. On May 25 and 26 of 1995 the pro-arena guys at the Franklin County Convention Authority met with sports management officials from Ogden Corporation in Anaheim, California. On June 22, 1995, they discussed with Ogden corporate representatives the possibility of putting up money in exchange for managing the arena/stadium facilities. On July 6, 1995, they met with the SMG sports managers to discuss operating the arena. On September 7, 1995, they met with Leisure Management, Inc., an arena and stadium developer, operator and consulting group.
Surely it must’ve occurred to the Franklin County Convention Authority people, public officials entrusted with tax dollars, that they could competitively bid the project and make a lot of money for Franklin County taxpayers.
But no, it must’ve slipped their mind. They prefer Soviet-style corporate socialism where a whole bunch of poor and working people are taxed and are supposed to feel privileged that our money will go to make the billionaire Lamar Hunt and his wealthy Wolfe buddy richer.
Don’t buy the hype. And I do mean big time Dispatch-peddling, million-and-a-half-dollar TV and radio propaganda ad hype to sell you the arena/soccer stadium complex.
It’s not a great deal. It’s a scam of the highest order. It’s a rip-off of the first degree. It’s the rich boys hookin’ up and wirin’ a sweetheart deal. They’re on the hunt; your wallet’s their prey.
NEWS BITES
04/23/1997
Hong Kong connection
The thread that binds The Limited
The Columbus Dispatch’s reprinting of a New York Times news brief on April 1, 1997, reporting accusations of The Limited smuggling Chinese garments into the United States under Hong Kong labels, may be part of a much older and larger story. It’s a story about Les Wexner’s Limited empire more familiar to readers of the Philadelphia Inquirer or New York Times than Dispatch devotees. Central Ohioans are more familiar with the Wexner mythology: a billionaire philanthropist who started The Limited some 34 years ago with $5,000 borrowed from an aunt. They are less likely to know about The Limited’s questionable business practices.
In a New York Times Magazine article dated June 8, 1986, Wexner was deemed "An ebullient cheerleader, an introspective loner--part visionary, part buccaneer ...." The article called Wexner a "rag-trade revolutionary" and noted he "seldom loses." The buccaneering aspect of Wexner’s business practices were emphasized. The ability of The Limited to quickly copy or "knock off" more expensive cutting-edge designer fashions and mass-market them to today’s suburban mall culture is legendary. In so doing, Wexner, according to the New York Times Magazine, has "created his own global manufacturing and distribution network."
In 1985, according to the Times, 200 million garments were processed in the Columbus distribution center--"three for every American female between the ages of 15 and 55." These almost exclusively foreign-manufactured garments are produced in places like outland China, where laborers earn as little as a dollar a day.
In 1978, The Limited borrowed heavily to buy Mast Industries, a contract manufacturer and importer. At the time, Mast had ". . . interests in a dozen factories in Asia and long-standing relationships with 190 others around the world. It also coordinates global transport," reported the Times. "Mast is The Limited’s trump card," a president of a competing chain told the Times, "It’s light years ahead in terms of getting things done in the Far East."
Mast employees specialize in the rapid transportation of garments from China, Korea and Hong Kong. They greased the wheels that allowed The Limited to fly an average of three merchandise-filled 747’s a week into the United States by the mid-’80’s. The imported garments were moved by Limited-owned tractor-trailers operated by Walsh Trucking, a New Jersey-based company. From east and west coast ports, Limited trucks raced to their Columbus distribution center.
Walsh Trucking Co. was incorporated in the state of New Jersey in May 1973 and has had a controversial business history. In August 1984, for example, a federal jury ordered Walsh Trucking to pay $39.6 million to a smaller competitor that had filed suit claiming that its business in New York City’s garment district was being sabotaged by Walsh. International Distribution Centers, Inc. convinced the jury that Walsh deliberately set out in November 1982 to destroy International’s apparel trucking routes between the garment district and Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and Allentown, Pennsylvania.
In 1988, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Walsh was charged with making "illegal pay-offs to reported mob figures and officials of Teamster Local 560, which had been under judicial control in an effort to rid it from mob influence." In a two-count federal indictment, a Walsh Trucking executive was charged with making "at least 79 monthly payments ranging from $1,500 to $3,000" to buy a sweetheart labor contract from Local 560.
The indictment, unsealed on May 16, 1988 in New Jersey, named as unindicted co-conspirators convicted Genovese crime family boss Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, alleged crime family captain Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello and three former officials of Local 560--the Provenzano brothers, Anthony, Nunzio and Salvatore. The Provenzanos, alleged mobsters, have been convicted on various charges in the past.
U.S. Attorney Samuel A. Alitio Jr. told the Associated Press that the indictment was "‘extremely important’ because it illustrated alleged mob infiltration of legitimate business and how reputed mob influence could give a company the ‘jump’ on its competitors."
Highly placed law-enforcement sources have told the Alive that information about The Limited’s business ties to Walsh Trucking was included in the controversial Shapiro homicide file that Columbus Police Chief James Jackson ordered destroyed. Arthur Shapiro, a prominent Columbus attorney, was killed in a mob-style murder in 1985. Shapiro was reportedly working on land dealings for Wexner’s New Albany community when he was murdered. Columbus’ Civil Service Commission specifically found Jackson’s destruction of the file improper. Jackson argued that he destroyed the Shapiro file because it contained bizarre and half-baked theories implicating prominent people and businesses that would have exposed the city to possibly billions of dollars in damages if the document was ever made public. Police sources contend that Jackson’s opinion of the Shapiro file is ludicrous, and that the file was probably destroyed because it contained embarrassing and all-too-real business connections between Walsh Trucking and The Limited.
Whether it’s smuggling in Asia or business relations with alleged mob trucking companies, central Ohioans know very little about the inner workings of The Limited empire that stands in their backyard.
--Bob Fitrakis
NOTHING ON APRIL 30
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05/07/1997 by Bob Fitrakis
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05/07/1997 by Bob Fitrakis
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05/13/1997
BOB BITES BACK: DEAD LINK
05/13/1997
City employee questions fund-raising tactics
Will Schoonover, an employee at the Franklin County Engineer’s Office, wants to know if there’s a "double standard" in Franklin County concerning the prosecution of Republican County officials. And he’s left an interesting paper trail in pursuing that question.
Schoonover, a self-described "lifelong Republican" and 12-and-a-half-year law enforcement officer, who’d been both a former city police officer and deputy sheriff, spent three years as a detective investigating everything from "homicides to bad checks."
On March 12, 1996, Schoonover wrote Attorney General Betty J. Montgomery regarding allegations that Franklin County Engineer John Circle engaged in "questionable and unlawful conduct." Schoonover wrote: "For years John Circle solicited political donations from his classified employees and integrated the procedure into the actual hiring process. This activity ceased only when former State Auditor Thomas Ferguson became the subject of a criminal investigation."
Since 1974, Ohio Revised Code Section 124.57 states, in part: "...nor shall any person solicit directly or indirectly, orally or by letter, or be in any manner concerned in soliciting any such assessment, contribution, or payment from any officer or employee in the classified service of the State and the several counties, cities, or city school districts..."
Schoonover said that when he was hired as a classified employee in 1989, he was "handed an authorization form for payroll deduction" that he was asked to sign. The deduction authorized a 1.5 percent "kickback of my pay each payday" to John Circle’s campaign fund, according to him.
He recalled in his letter to Montgomery, "I was told that if I had a problem with signing the form that I’d better talk to my supervisor about it. It seemed clear to me that if I didn’t sign it might have a negative impact on my employment. I was well aware that I had a 120-day probationary period to complete during which I could be terminated for no reason at all." Schoonover also enclosed copies of 1994-95 solicitations from the John Circle Committee, William L. Curlis, Treasurer.
Schoonover hoped that Attorney General Montgomery, a Republican, would show the same investigative zeal against a fellow party member as former Attorney General Lee Fisher, a Democrat, displayed against fellow Democrat and State Auditor Thomas Ferguson. Ferguson retired in January 1995 after 20 years as auditor. On March 4 of that year, he pleaded "no contest" to nine counts of soliciting his employees for campaign contributions.
A month later, William M. Connelly, Montgomery’s constituent liaison, informed Schoonover that "The issues raised in your letter may be appropriately addressed by County officials." Connelly noted that the Attorney General’s office "has the authority to enforce consumer protection statutes, Ohio’s Patient Abuse and Neglect law, Medicaid fraud, environmental protection laws, and several other specific sections of the Ohio Revised Code." Surprisingly, he told Schoonover, "The issues you have raised are not within the Attorney General’s enforcement authority."
Following Connelly’s advice, Schoonover wrote Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes on April 18, 1996 "requesting that you commence an investigation of the activities of John Circle..." He added: "The time has come for him to answer for his unlawful and unethical conduct." Not quite, the paper trail indicates.
By June 3, 1996, Schoonover had turned to the state again. In a letter to Sandra Drabik, director of the Ohio Department of Administrative Services [DAS], he wrote "I believe that the Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney may not pursue the prosecution of this matter as he should." Schoonover requested a "special counsel." On July 18, 1996, Deborah Archie, chief legal counsel for the Ohio DAS, declined involvement since it was under investigation by the Franklin County Sheriff and "not timely."
In a second letter to Sheriff Karnes on September 2, 1996, Schoonover noted that he’d talked to Lieutenant Doug McLoughlin on August 28 and found the conversation "disturbing to say the least."
"...in speaking with Lieutenant McLoughlin I am led to believe that the investigation was far from thorough. Further, I get the strong impression that the investigation was undertaken with no real intent of prosecution," wrote Schoonover.
He informed Karnes: "I asked Lieutenant McLoughlin about his findings and he would only say, ‘There isn’t much there,’ and that he found only ‘a few instances where coercion was used.’"
"This matter smells of political scheming," Schoonover surmised. In a letter written the same day to Michael Miller, then-Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney, Schoonover requested that Miller "disqualify your office and participation...in the prosecution of any and all matters concerning...John Circle."
Schoonover noted that Miller’s office had previously "defended John Circle both in the Court of Common Pleas and before the State Personnel Board of Review when he was charged with violating Ohio Laws and Administrative Rules." But, perhaps more important for Schoonover was the fact that "your [Miller’s] son Tony had been working for John Circle this summer," and that "the investigating officer, Lieutenant McLoughlin indicated from the start of this investigation that he has doubts as to your office prosecuting this matter."
Schoonover asserted that, "the State had no problem prosecuting former Auditor Ferguson for the same violations of Ohio law that Mr. Circle is guilty of. I will not stand by and allow politics to make a mockery of the law."
Miller replied on September 9, contradicting the letters from Montgomery’s and Drabik’s state offices: "You state, quite correctly, that the office of the Attorney General and/or the Director of the Department of Administrative Services have concurrent jurisdiction with this office."
While Miller pledged to "fully cooperate" if the "Attorney General of Ohio or the Director of the Administrative Services does investigate this matter," still Schoonover was less than convinced as he noted that Miller’s letterhead contained the name William L. Curlis, executive administrator, the same Curlis who acts as campaign treasurer for Circle, and virtually ever other elected Republican in Franklin County.
With Miller’s concession that the state Department of Administrative Services had equal authority, Schoonover turned again to Drabik on September 23. He once again reiterated the charges in a letter and hopefully concluded: "I await word from you as how you intend to proceed in this matter...."
Nearly two months later, he still awaited Drabik’s reply as his letter remained unanswered, and he mailed another missive. "This inaction is inexcusable," he wrote. "An additional and probably the major reason the Franklin County Prosecutor cannot prosecute this case is the fact that John Circle’s Campaign Committee Treasurer is William L. Curlis. ...Mr. Curlis himself could be in legal trouble and subject to prosecution. This case must go forward and prosecutions must be pursued," Schoonover pleaded.
On December 9, he turned again to Betty Montgomery’s office for justice. In 1996, under pressure from Schoonover’s letter-writing campaign, Circle sent letters to the spouses of classified employees to solicit donations. On January 14, 1997, William A. Klatt, first assistant Attorney General, responded, "We have carefully reviewed your complaint, the report of the Franklin County Prosecutor, and the conclusions of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department. As a result, we have concluded that there is insufficient evidence to warrant expending valuable state resources on further investigation...."
On March 11, 1997, Schoonover wrote newly elected Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney Ron O’Brien requesting a special counsel and pointing out the role of O’Brien’s office’s Executive Administrator Curlis in the alleged "unlawful solicitations." O’Brien responded on March 21 that he concurred with Klatt’s letter, and had concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" to appoint a special prosecutor. "Thus an appointment of a special prosecutor as you have requested, will not be sought," O’Brien wrote.
And the Circle goes unbroken, by and by.
--Bob Fitrakis
05/21/1997
The Y-town Expresser
Makeway when Youngstown politics takes over
by Bob Fitrakis
Irony, anyone? Let’s see, last July 3, nine people were killed in an explosion at a Scottown, Ohio fireworks store operating under a "variance." So, instead of making it more difficult to obtain such fireworks, state Representative John Carey, R-Wellston, legalizes them.
And, per usual in Ohio politics, much more is afoot than meets the eye. This appears to be a Youngstown Express bill, brought to you by the same people who brought you vending and trash removal. (Hint, hint. Never have I had so much trouble getting business people opposed to the bill to talk on the record. Their muttered "No comments" usually included a decidedly profanity-punctuated, off-the-record reference to winding up at the bottom of a river, or in one case, a specific lake in the Youngstown area.)
House Bill 6, under the shroud of "safety," is less about regulating safety than about squeezing the little guy out of the fireworks industry. Did I mention vending and waste hauling? The bill would raise the license fee for fireworks manufacturing from $1,500 to $2,750, the second highest in the nation. Moreover, there’s been a moratorium on manufacturer’s and wholesale fireworks licenses in Ohio since 1987 making the B.J. Alan Company of Youngstown very happy indeed. It’s always easier when you can get politicians to muscle out your competition.
Section 3743.65B is the key to the whole charade. It legalizes Class C fireworks. Are Class C fireworks dangerous? Naw. Misuse will only lead to ear damage, blindness and lost fingers and toes. And since there’s very little drinking on the Fourth of July, there’s nothing to worry about.
The few remaining operators who survived the ’87 moratorium brazenly advertised on billboards, radio and television that they had fireworks for sale throughout the state, even though the use of fireworks in Ohio is illegal and they could only sell for out-of-state use.
The question remains: Why are politicians rewarding essentially the same people who ran these "loophole" operations with a brand spanking new monopoly? In order to craft this new monopoly, the B.J. Alan Company has utilized the services of former state Senator and ex-Ohio Democratic Party Boss Harry Meshel. Meshel will use his political skills to guide the fireworks bill through the Senate, according to several sources. Two industry sources and one Republican staffer all said they heard Meshel and Bruce Zoldan of the Alan Company plotting to eliminate a rival fireworks manufacturer, Larry Lomaz of Midwest Fireworks in Deerfield, Ohio. All report similar comments that go like this: "If we can’t get ’em on the square footage, we’ll get them on the non-violent felon clause."
Curiously, a House staffer noted that the original bill contained language without any explanation that no showroom should be more than 5,000 square feet. "This would’ve eliminated one of the Alan Company’s chief rivals," which has an 11,000-square-foot showroom, the staffer said. Another small manufacturer called the state fire marshal complaining about the legalization of fireworks. "Twenty minutes later, I get a call from Zoldan, a private citizen I haven’t talked to in years, saying ‘I hear you don’t like the bill,’" the unhappy manufacturer explained.
When I called the state fire marshal for comment on Monday, he wasn’t in, but I was referred to Bill Deets, the public information guru at the Department of Commerce which oversees the fire marshal. I asked why the fire marshal is not coming out against the legalization of fireworks. Deets replied, "The fire marshal and the Department of Commerce are disinterested parties with no official position," on the legalization of fireworks. He continued, "The issue of legalization is a political one that’s up to the legislature. We’ll enforce whatever the legislature puts into effect, even though we believe fireworks are inherently dangerous." Deets also acknowledged that Senator Meshel was involved in crafting the legislation with the Commerce Department.
Another call to the Republican staffer: "Hey, was the Commerce Department involved at all in the fireworks bill?" Answer: "It was the Commerce Department that crammed this thing down our throat. Don’t use my name!"
Finally, I got a fireworks manufacturer to go on the record. Mike Beyer of the Comet Company. "Class C fireworks is generally pretty safe stuff if used correctly. The problem is, a lot of times people aren’t sober or kids are using it, which leads to trouble."
"Any other problems, Mike?" I queried.
"Well, a lot of this stuff is imported from China, and once in a while they mislabel Class B fireworks as Class C ‘consumer’ fireworks. I’ve got three cases of Thunder Kings in my shop right now. They’re mislabeled; definitely Class B. And before them, I had something called Flower and Thunder. Another mislabeled exhibitor fireworks. Some of it’s real nasty. Most of it’s all right."
Sounds a lot like Ohio politics. Most of it’s all right. Some of it’s real nasty. And it don’t get any nastier than the Y-Town Express. Did I mention vending and trash hauling?
05/28/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Local community, religious and labor activists are organizing to oppose the for-profit Columbia/HCA’s takeover of the non-profit Doctors Hospital ("Doctors"). Cathy Levine, spokesperson for the local Coalition for Community Health Care, said her organization is demanding that the Doctors board of trustees "provide us with disclosure of the letter of intent between them and Columbia/HCA, as well as the operating agreement, evaluations and all other transaction documents."
This is required under House Bill 242, that Governor Voinovich signed into law on May 7, 1997. According to Robert Kuttner, writing in the St. Petersburg Times, Columbia/HCA has a track record of coming into communities with "stunning speed and often negotiat[ing] binding letters of intent with the Boards of non-profit hospitals before communities could consider whether the local hospital should be sold."
Columbia is renowned as the biggest and most aggressive for-profit hospital chain in North America. By the end of 1996, it was the nation’s 10th largest employer with 240,000 employees, growing from four hospitals in 1989 to 340 by 1996. Levine and the Coalition regard Doctors as a "public asset"; they argue that the community must be involved in any decisions concerning its future operations. In a statement of concern, they contend that, "Arguments for confidentiality in business deals don’t belong here. Our tax dollars and donations have gone to support non-profit hospitals for years. We are owners and investors and we must safeguard our interest."
A May 11 New York Times article reported: "From San Diego to Providence, communities weary of Columbia’s hardball tactics have recently resisted its attempt to buy local hospitals." According to the Times article, Columbia’s business practices include "...in-your-face-marketing...hospital takeovers, cost-cutting and layoffs, volume purchasing, complex pricing strategies and large monetary incentives for managers that meet financial targets."
"One former administrator who works for a not-for-profit hospital said a training process that is taking six months at his current employer had to be done in as little as two weeks at Columbia," stated the Times.
Critics accuse Columbia of buying non-profit hospital assets cheaply without assurances that it will continue to provide the same level of services to the poor and uninsured. As Kuttner explained, "...in a purely for-profit enterprise or system, there’s no place for uncompensated care, unprofitable admissions, research, education or public health activities--all chronic money losers from a strictly business viewpoint."
A key question posed by the Coalition is whether the deal will be good for the greater Columbus community. Specifically, will Columbia’s competitive business practices jeopardize other public and non-profit hospitals in the community? In short, "Will we be worse off with this deal?" The Times article led with a story of Columbia’s Palms West Hospital placing a billboard 100 yards from another medical center saying "Why Stop Here?" and advertising their own nearby location.
The Coalition insists that the public "must receive full value for the public assets being sold." They’re demanding an "independent, objective expert" to evaluate Doctors’ assets. They also want to know if there were other competitive bids, including local non-profits. Reportedly, Doctors mailed its fund-raising Development Foundation members "Talking Points" on the Columbia takeover. In it, it failed to mention a serious bid by the Ohio Health Corporation, the holding company for Grant/Riverside.
Recently, the attorney generals of California and Michigan rejected Columbia hospital takeovers in San Diego and Lansing. Here in Ohio, the Ohio Department of Insurance challenged Columbia’s agreement to take over the assets of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio, the state’s largest insurer with yearly revenues of $2 billion. Columbia had crafted a deal that would have allowed them to purchase 85 percent of the Blue’s assets for $299.5 million, with an option to buy the remaining 15 percent at $1. Legally structured to avoid the appearance of a conversion, the original Columbia-Blue Cross deal would have eliminated any payout obligation to either policy holders or a charitable foundation. Moreover, under the proposed acquisition, Columbia pledged to pay three top executives of Blue Cross more than $15 million in severance payments masquerading as consulting fees and agreements not to compete. Millions more would have gone to the Blue’s outside attorney for a consulting fee and a covenant not to compete.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery is quoted in the St. Petersburg Times as saying, "Fifteen-million dollars in severance packages for three officials of an organization founded as a charity and operated to help the sick and the needy strikes me as both inappropriate and excessive."
The Coalition--which includes the Ohio AFL-CIO, AFSCME Ohio Council 8, District 1199-SEIU, the National Association of Social Workers (Ohio chapter), the Ohio Council of Churches, the Ohio Primary Care Association, Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio, and the Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio--is asking for public hearings in each Doctors Hospital as soon as possible and prior to the sale.
Columbia markets itself with claims that it provides lower-cost, high-quality health care. A New York Times computer analysis demonstrated that the medium price paid by Columbia patients is 8 percent higher than the industry’s norm. There is no conclusive evidence that Columbia provides better care than other hospitals. But, they were fined $25,000 in nearby Indianapolis for understaffing a neo-natal intensive care unit. An Indiana investigative report found technicians, without proper supervision, handling complex assignments like inserting feeding tubes in premature infants. And the newborns were attended as infrequently as every three hours.
The Coalition’s efforts in Columbus are being mirrored across the nation. As the New York Times noted: "In many communities, groups have rallied against hospital takeovers by Columbia, sometimes under the slogan of ‘ABC,’ or ‘anyone but Columbia.’"
--Bob Fitrakis
06/04/1997
Leisure time
Death-row inmates rot while defamation claim fought
by Bob Fitrakis
Those of you concerned with whether or not the state of Ohio will fry an innocent person in "Old Sparky" should pay attention to an obscure civil case soon to come to trial in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, Fox Investigations v. Linda Leisure #95-CV-8854.
I wrote of Linda Leisure’s plight in a column called "Keeping the Faith" in the October 2, 1996 Columbus Alive. Fox Investigations is a private investigation firm headed by Richard H. Smith, an ex-Columbus police officer and an ex-investigator for the Ohio Public Defender’s Office (OPDO). Leisure, a former employee of Fox, sent a letter to Common Pleas Judge James O’Grady on October 25, 1994 alleging that Smith wanted her "to falsify time records and interviews on these murder cases." Leisure worried that death-row inmates were being denied "due process." Her actions resulted in a Free Press investigative report on the OPDO that I wrote in January 1995 alleging that various irregularities occurred in death row cases when Smith worked there.
Fox Investigations is suing Leisure for $150,000 in damages due to "loss of reputation." Smith is represented by his son-in-law, attorney Steve Edwards. Leisure is now without an attorney and is representing herself.
A legal axiom states that in order to sue for "loss of reputation" you first must have a good reputation to lose. This seems a mighty long stretch for Smith. His Internal Affairs file sheds new light on the highly publicized circumstances under which he left the Columbus Police Department in October 1981. An investigative summary of Internal Affairs Bureau case #81-149 regarding "misconduct on the part of Richard Smith" noted: "On October 9, 1981, and during the next five working days, seven (7) female victims were interviewed and they identified Officer Smith as the person who exposed himself to them on October 9, 1981." In police report #061278, a 17-year-old female alleges that a suspect she later identified as Smith stated, "Look what I have." The report states: "Suspect was sitting in his vehicle with his pants unzipped and his penis out playing with it."
Another 17-year-old was walking her seven-year-old sister and eight-year-old female cousin to Schiller Park, when a suspect in a green car later identified as Smith graphically asked her for oral sex and appeared to be "masturbating in his car." A 30-year-old woman was pushing her infant daughter in a stroller when a suspect later identified as Smith, according to police report #061281, "stated ‘Nice ass’ and began masturbating." A 23-year-old woman claims in police report #061684 that a suspect later identified as Smith "had his pants pulled down below his buttocks exposing himself."
According to an Internal Affairs memo, on October 10, 1981, Smith admitted himself to Upham Hall, Ohio State University Hospital. These October 9 allegations against Smith, coupled with previous reprimands for various acts of misconduct including engaging in sex while on duty, ended his career as a police officer.
But he bounced back, and was hired at the Ohio Public Defender’s Office in April of 1983. Smith’s career as an investigator for the OPDO was rocky to say the least. Chester "Briss" Craig, a former deputy investigator and Smith’s boss, charged that Smith and other investigators "were turning in false reports and were not providing the support services to the attorneys as required." The state Highway Patrol amassed over 1,800 pages in its investigation report concerning Craig’s charges. Fellow employees alleged that Smith usually referred to black defendants he worked for as "niggers" and white ones as "scumbags." Smith reportedly told several of his fellow workers that he didn’t like "working for a nigger" in reference to Craig.
Craig informed Ohio’s Inspector General that Smith and other investigators "had not met with or conducted any kind of investigation on behalf of these [death-row] clients...many of these clients, mostly black, indicated they had never heard the name of the investigator mentioned and that they never met with such person." Craig provided the Free Press a list of 15 death-row inmates who may have been denied due process due to negligence by their investigators. Amidst the growing scandal at the OPDO, Smith left voluntarily on a disability claim.
Then he emerged again with Fox Investigations and not so surprisingly, the same charges arose anew. On November 14, 1994, Leisure voluntarily underwent a polygraph examination. A copy of the exam reads, "Did Richard Smith ask you to inflate your mitigation bill on the Brian E. Long case?" "Yes." "Did Mr. Smith ask you to alter summaries on the Brian E. Long case?" "Yes." Examiner M.D. Ketter concluded, "No deception indicated."
In a written comment dated June 2, Edwards said: "...the bills submitted to the Court were based on bills submitted to it by Linda Leisure in her own handwriting. If my client’s bills were inflated then it was because Linda Leisure submitted inflated and false bills to my client. This matter does not involve any representation of death row inmates.... My client has an excellent reputation as an investigator. The charges by Miss Leisure that go to his honesty and competency as an investigator are completely unfounded."
For her efforts to establish justice, Leisure is being sued by Smith for damage to his reputation. Absurd. It makes about as much sense as Paula Jones’ claim that she wants her good name cleared after she made the incident public although a trooper has testified under oath that she offered to "be the Governor’s girlfriend," and her sister said she smelled dollars from the beginning.
06/11/1997
NEWS BITES
Burma battle continues
The Burma issue appears to be boiling over in southern California as the country’s chief corporate investor held its annual shareholders meeting. On Monday, June 2 at 9 a.m., over a hundred human rights demonstrators protested at Unocal’s Hartley Center in Brea, California against Unocal’s controversial oil pipeline project in Burma.
Free Burma and rain forest activists, concerned shareholders, members of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) Union, as well as indigenous people from Burma, confronted Unocal officials over their business dealings with Burma’s brutal military junta, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Some demonstrators dressed as rain forest animals to call attention to the wildlife being destroyed by the pipeline; others as pigs to satirize Unocal’s corporate behavior. A fierce pipeline dragon danced to the sound of traditional Burmese gongs and drums.
Inside the shareholders meeting, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, the University of Washington and the Methodist Board of Pensions proposed a resolution calling upon Unocal to inform shareholders of the costs of boycotts, lobbying and litigation brought on by its business in Burma. "I question not only the financial costs but the impact of the more serious moral costs which in time will negatively affect the company’s future through lawsuits and international disrespect," stated Maryknoll Father Joe La Mar.
Another resolution asked that Unocal investigate allegations that its Burmese business partners, the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), is laundering drug money from the heroin trade. The Paris-based Geopolitical Drug Watch has identified MOGE as the "main channel for laundering revenues of heroin produced and exported under the control of the Burmese Army."
Unocal has come under increasing pressure to withdraw from Burma. On April 22, President Clinton implemented sanctions banning new U.S. investment in Burma. Two lawsuits are pending in federal court on behalf of victims of human rights abuses related to Unocal’s pipeline venture.
On May 6, Columbus’ local Amnesty International Group #87 hosted Steve Fesler, who observed first-hand the human rights abuses during his two year stay as a teacher in a Burmese refugee camp on the border of Thailand. The mostly young refugees that Fesler taught were easy targets for the Burmese Army and their allies. "There’s just too much money to be made in Burma through the pipeline and raping the rain forest. They’re destroying perhaps the last teak forest in the world and selling it at 27 cents a board foot. The people who don’t flee into the Thai refugee camps are used as slave labor by SLORC for the pipeline. If they resist, they’re beaten and killed," Fesler reported. "Since I left, one of villages I stayed in was destroyed by the SLORC and two people killed," an emotional Fesler explained.
U.S. Representative Deborah Pryce, who came under fire for visiting Burma as SLORC’s guest last December on Human Rights Day, voted to support the sanctions. While Fesler applauds that move, he points out that the sanctions deal only with "new investments" and "if Unocal gets the pipeline built for SLORC, so much cash will flow in it’s hard to imagine how the junta will ever be driven from power."
--Bob Fitrakis
06/11/1997
NEWS BITES
Twenty or so demonstrators rallied at the federal building on Sunday "to show their outrage at the forced relocation of indigenous people" from Big Mountain in Arizona.
Mark Stansbery, of the Community Organizing Center, stated that: "Once again, treaties have been broken and indigenous people are being forcibly evicted from their traditional lands." Protesters held signs that exclaimed, "Stop the Centuries of Cultural Genocide," and "Peabody Coal Out of Big Mountain" and passed out fliers. The protesters moved to the downtown Arts Festival to hand out fliers. The demonstration is a precursor to a National Day of Action in Washington, D.C. scheduled for Monday, June 16, and a response to a call by the Dineh, or Navajo as the Spanish conquistadors called them, for local support groups.
In the 1860s, Kit Carson started a campaign to remove the Dineh from their ancestral lands in order to open it to white settlers. In the winter of 1864, the starving and freezing Dineh surrendered to Carson’s forces. The Dineh were force-marched 300 miles across the desert and interned at Ft. Sumner in New Mexico. Known as "The Long Walk" in Dineh lore, many died along the trail. Some historians report that Hitler based his concentration camps on descriptions of the Dineh internment camp.
The Dineh were eventually returned to their ancestral land that includes Big Mountain. The Hopi people live in an adjoining reservation. In 1882, the Dineh reservation was enlarged to completely surround the Hopi land.
The current dispute stems from the discovery of large and rich coal, oil and uranium deposits buried beneath the surface of Dineh territory. In 1962 the Commissioner of Indian Affairs approved an exploration lease for over 75,000 acres of Dineh tribal land. This is now the home of Peabody Coal Company’s profitable Kayenta mine.
A split developed between Dineh and Hopi people over preserving or leasing the ancestral land. In 1972, the U.S. government declared land in dispute between the Hopi and Dineh a "joint use area." This only made matters worse. So, the U.S. government stepped in and began to forcibly remove both the Dineh and the Hopi from the joint use area. The government set March 31, 1997 as the final deadline to have all the indigenous people "relocated" from Big Mountain. Although the deadline has passed, a handful of indigenous resisters has refused to leave what they regard as "sacred land." The resisters charge that the current Dineh and Hopi tribal councils are "hand-picked" by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs over the objections of traditional spiritual leaders and tribal elders.
"What you have here is a small band of resisters fighting corporate greed and living in poverty during an ongoing war for self-determination; it’s a land grab by the U.S. government," said Stansbery. The Native American Indian Center in Columbus supports the Big Mountain resisters with shipments of food and clothing.
The Big Mountain support group is holding its first fundraiser Thursday, June 13 at the Sugar Shack on Fourth Street. For more information, call 424-9074.
--Bob Fitrakis
06/18/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
What's up with the Guv and airplanes? First there was the problem when our U.S. Senator wannabe had to curse out some air traffic control-type who wouldn't let him skedaddle out of town because Air Force One and President Clinton were coming in for a landing.
Now, the Guv had some mysterious, but conveniently timed, airplane "engine trouble" that kept him from testifying before a House Subcommittee on Health and Environment in Washington. Gosh darnit!
On April 16, 1997, Governor Voinovich testified before the House Government Reform and Oversight Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs regarding the U.S. EPA's proposed ozone and particle matter revisions. The Guv gave his usual pre-programmed jukebox spiel claiming that the newly proposed environmental standards would endanger a substantial number of jobs. Then, Congressmen Waxman and Sanders pressured Voinovich to be more specific about which jobs would be lost and where. Basically, he had no answer to their questions. In sum, our George got a pretty good battering over his "environmental standards kill jobs" rhetoric.
While this exchange was left out of Jonathan Riskind's Dispatch Washington Bureau coverage of the subcommittee hearing, he did include the following: "... The Governor came under fire from Northeastern lawmakers who said that Ohio and other Midwestern states are sending massive amounts of pollution their way because of the way air streams flow." No doubt that's why scientists from upstate New York fought to close down Columbus' infamous trash-burning power plant while Voinovich sided with Mayor Lashutka and battled to keep it open.
The Guv was due back in Washington to testify before a Commerce subcommittee on the same matter in a hearing scheduled on May 1. All seemed well into the late evening of April 30, then the next morning, the "airplane jinx" thing reared its ugly head. No fakin'! It was engine trouble, and his dog ate the plane keys.
Luckily, this did not stop the governor from faxing basically the same testimony he'd given on April 16 to the subcommittee. It appears little time or effort had been spent to update the Governor's remarks or to refute those nasty environmentalists in Congress.
With the Governor's track record of bad luck with planes, far be it for me to suggest that he was blowing off the subcommittee because he hadn't done his homework.
Curiously, the Guv's public schedule on May 1 shows a 1 p.m. speech to the Juvenile Crime Summit in Columbus at the Adam's Mark Hotel. If we consider the timing and the logistics involved, the subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m. in Washington, members of the subcommittee would have given opening statements followed by the governor's testimony, that would have been unlikely to finish before 10:30 a.m. Now, let's factor in subcommittee questions and travel back to the airport, and it's improbable that he would have made it back for a one o'clock speech.
All of this raises some interesting questions: Did the governor blow off a Congressional subcommittee? Did he plan to testify and flee town before a second battering? Did he cuss out his plane's mechanic or kick the aircraft? Just what was the "trouble" with the governor's plane? Inquiring minds want to know.
Lighten up, Leland
A recent exchange of letters between the Rev. Gary Witte and Ohio Democratic Party Chair, David Leland, sheds some light on "New Democratic Party" thinking. Witte, an Amnesty International activist, charged in a June 4 letter that the Democratic Party's new game is: "How to out-Republican the Republicans at the expense of any scruples or values."
Witte took offense to an Ohio Democratic Party (ODP) press release dated May 30 in which Leland states, "Betty Montgomery's misjudgments have cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. Now, this recent era may let a convicted murderer avoid the death penalty. Montgomery pledged to be Ôtough on crime,' but her actions rarely meet her rhetoric." Leland also attacked Montgomery again for paying "$4.1 million to Lucasville prisoners."
Leland's Nixonesque law-and-order diatribes seem to suggest that Lucasville prisoners-those who didn't riot, and were brutalized and killed by their fellow inmates-or their families, deserve no compensation for their suffering.
Leland responded to Witte in a June 6 letter saying that, "The Democratic Party has always prided itself on being the party of inclusion. Some Democrats believe in the death penalty while others do not. The issue I addressed was not the death penalty but just one example of Betty Montgomery's string of blunders."
In the brave new world of New Democratic politics, Republican politicians that show an ounce of compassion, decency or moderation are scorned as Dem leaders like Leland shout from the sideline, "Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!"
06/18/1997
Last Monday night at Muhammad's Mosque #43, an overflow crowd in a steamy room may have witnessed a historic moment in the black liberation struggle. Columbus' chapter of the Million Man March presented Minister Benjamin (Chavis) Muhammad speaking on "Muslim/Christian Unity."
Those looking to stereotype the Nation of Islam as race-baiters, anti-Semitic or separatist would find nothing in Minister Muhammad's speech to support that claim. As Muhammad pointed out at the start of his speech: "In my 49 years I've worked with all of the black organizations: the SCLC, NAACP, CORE, I've been a pan-Africanist, a nationalist, and an integrationist. That just makes me a better Muslim."
Muhammad's conversion to the Nation of Islam on February 23 of this year shocked many American civil rights activists. Coming after the amazing success of the Million Man March on Washington in 1995 in which Chavis served as the chief organizer, his emergence as a "special assistant" to the Nation's leader, Minister Louis Farrakhan, may signal a new message from the increasingly influential organization. A test of their influence in the black community may come next October 16 which has been proclaimed "A Day of Atonement and Absence" by Farrakhan.
Minister Muhammad urged the crowd to focus not on "division" but "on what brings us together." He preached that the black community has been "too tolerant of injustice in our community, and we wait for someone to come and lead a campaign for us.
"Why do black people wait for someone else to fight for our freedom, for our justice, for our children? That's our responsibility! The call of the Million Man March was for self-responsibility. Our own self-responsibility and self-empowerment." The March was a success because it was "God-centered."
Minister Muhammad specifically called for unity among "Christians, Muslims, and Hebrews." He challenged those present to "work at being Christ-like." What brings people together, according to Muhammad, is being "righteous...doing that which we know is correct." He relayed the story of a recent visit to Houston where Nation of Islam members joined with black and Latino community activists from Kennedy Heights demonstrating against Chevron. Chevron and Gulf had polluted the subdivision some 25 to 30 years earlier, and now cases of lupus, leukemia and cancer are now all too common.
Muhammad praised Farrakhan for his recent "rapper's summit" where a peace treaty was negotiated at the Nation's leader's house in Chicago between the East and West Coast rappers. Muhammad said that Minister Farrakhan was able to convince many of the rappers to change their lyrics to uplift the black community rather than to denigrate it.
Muhammad claimed that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, "he would have spoken at the Million Man March." He went further and insisted that King would also be a member of the Nation of Islam.
Muhammad concluded that the focus of his "revival tour" is to "raise up a new generation of freedom fighters, and justice seekers."
--Bob Fitrakis
06/25/1997 MISSING
07/02/1997
NEWS BITES
Against the backdrop of President Clinton's recent call for racial reconciliation and dialogue, Gregory S. Boatwright is waging his own local campaign for what he calls "racial justice."
Boatwright and his attorney, Christopher King, have been busy at outdoor festivals passing out fliers asking: "Do you really know your cellular carrier?" and alleging racism against the billion-dollar corporation AirTouch Cellular, formerly known as Cellular One.
In April 1996, Cellular One fired Boatwright from his job as an accounts receivable operator agent. Soon after, Boatwright filed racial discrimination charges with both the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and in federal court. The documents produced by the lawsuit offer insights into the enormous challenge facing President Clinton and corporate America.
Boatwright kept a journal during his sojourn at Cellular One. On November 9, 1995, his journal noted the first racial conflict. David Fields, Boatwright's supervisor, spoke with him regarding a T-shirt Boatwright was wearing that read, "Before there was any history, there was black history." Boatwright wrote: "I asked him what was wrong with it, he stated that it was racist and that I was not to wear that, or my others. The T-shirts in question were "Jesus was a black man" ...a black T-shirt of Malcolm X, a T-shirt that had "Black King" on it, David Fields said they were offensive, besides everyone knows that Jesus was white."
Boatwright states that he asked Fields for something in writing on a dress policy since other people were wearing T-shirts "promoting alcohol and tobacco products" as well as "off-sexual humor" that he found offensive. "David Fields told me he didn't have to show me anything, that I was to do as he said," Boatwright recorded.
Within a few days, Fields' concern had turned from T-shirts to books. On November 13, Boatwright wrote Fields "...said that someone brought it to his attention that the books on my desk offended them. ...It was some 'Black power bullshit.'" Boatwright pointed out that other employees were allowed to have books on their desks and that the three books in question were not that controversial. Two of them were recently published special editions by noted author Richard Wright, Native Son and Black Boy. The other contained speeches by Malcolm X. Again, Boatwright said he asked for written policy on reading material and that Fields refused and referred him to his boss, David Drake.
Boatwright recorded: "I stated 'first my shirts, now my books, what next.'" Things went from bad to worse. On December 3, Boatwright left an urgent message for Fields reporting that he would miss work the next day because his mother was possibly suffering a second stroke. According to the journal, Fields stated, "I didn't listen to it because I didn't think it was important. ...Do you know how many urgent messages I get a day?"
Boatwright requested a transfer from Fields' supervision. But Beth Fisher, senior vice president for customer operations, intervened and challenged Fields to promote Boatwright in recognition of his excellent job performance. Boatwright and Fields were supposed to meet and review various instructional tapes on management techniques by December 27. It never happened, yet on December 18, Fields filed a "Blue-Ribbon Club" nomination form on Boatwright's behalf citing his "...positive attitude, enthusiasm and willingness to help our customers..."
On January 15, 1996, Fisher informed Boatwright that he had "been selected to be a member of the Red Carpet Club." The letter ended, "Congratulations on a job well done, and keep up the good work!" This perception of Boatwright's work would quickly change because of a customer call at 8:30 a.m. that same day. Boatwright documented both in his journal and on a company computer that an "angry ... white male" customer demanded his cellular phone service be restored. When Boatwright requested a past-due payment to restore the service, "the customer then stated, 'I don't have time to argue with a nigger, so turn my fucking service back on!'"
Boatwright turned to Drake for guidance on the issue. Drake said to run his credit and if it comes back good, "apologize for his service being interrupted and restore" it. When Boatwright complained that the customer called him a "nigger," Drake explained that the customer did not call him "a nigger," that Boatwright "just happened to be on the phone" when the customer said "nigger."
Drake "stated that I was too concerned about the wrong things ... the only thing I should be concerned about was the money. That I was beginning to be a problem," Boatwright wrote.
Boatwright's chances for promotion apparently diminished after an exchange with Fields' boss Drake on January 19. "Drake came through the department yelling 'You Yankees are so damn fickle.' He kept repeating this all day..." he wrote. Boatwright documented that he spoke with Drake in private and that Drake informed him that "...He was from the south, you know Dixie. And that down south he [Drake] had a reputation for being a rebel."
Boatwright's monthly review on January 30 did not go well: "David Fields started off by yelling that I didn't know what I was doing, 'When are you going to start doing your job?'" On February 18, Beth Wilson, in human resources, informed Boatwright that there'd been a request by his supervisors to "terminate" him. Boatwright again requested a transfer.
On February 26, Boatwright again met with Fisher and told her that since she had challenged Fields to promote him "I had had more run-ins than usual." He also told her about the "nigger" incident. "Fisher stated that there were stupid people in the world and it wasn't Cellular One's place to change them," he recalled.
On April 3, Boatwright and Wilson had a meeting scheduled to discuss his third request to leave his department. Instead, Wilson fired him for supposedly "threatening" Fields. Prior to his termination, Boatwright was sent to Dr. Willy Glover, an African- American psychologist, as part of Cellular One's employee assistance program. "It was almost like they didn't know what to do with him so they sent him to counseling," Glover recalled.
"I diagnosed [Boatwright] with adjustment disorder and occupational problems. I felt racism was operating in the workplace," Glover stated. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission concurred. In a letter dated February 10, 1997, the Commission, after investigating Boatwright's charges, found that he hadn't threatened his supervisor; that AirTouch Cellular had not "followed their progressive disciplinary policy"; that the company had conducted a "reference" and "criminal" check on Boatwright after his termination; that AirTouch had "failed to take any remedial action" after Boatwright complained of discrimination; and that Boatwright "was disciplined after reporting an incident of discrimination." On February 20, the Commission "determined that it is probable that New Par dba AirTouch Cellular fka Cellular One has engaged in unlawful discrimination practices."
After the Commission's finding, AirTouch stated: "...The company does not tolerate discrimination and will investigate any complaints of discrimination to the fullest." The Commission noted that AirTouch Cellular refused to let its managers meet with state investigators. John Stephen, attorney for the company, wrote in a letter that "AirTouch Cellular did not discriminate against" Boatwright.
"We at AirTouch Cellular have systems in place that allow employees the proper forum to voice their concerns over any problems," said Sally Victor, spokesperson for AirTouch Cellular. The proper forum for this discussion is the court of law. We're looking forward to the hearing and we're confident we'll prevail."
Meanwhile, as the case is being litigated, Boatwright, a 12-year veteran of the U.S. military and a participant in Operation Desert Storm, passes out his "Just Say No to Racism" fliers and tells anyone who will listen that he was never called a "nigger" while overseas fighting the enemy. That name's been used only by an AirTouch customer—"with the full acquiescence and approval of AirTouch," he says.
—Bob Fitrakis
07/02/2002
by Bob Fitrakis
Police Chief James "Stonewall" Jackson was at it again last Wednesday. He appeared before the Columbus Metropolitan Club at the downtown Athletic Club facility. I gave him a 9.5 in verbal spin-control gymnastics.
First, he softened the judges up with preliminary stories concerning his "Jim Crow" experiences during the late 1950s in the south. Jackson then joked about being "labeled a liberal" in the 1960s as a young Columbus police officer because he fought against racial discrimination in the Columbus Police Department. Cleverly, he failed to mention that the U.S. Justice Department—at the insistence of the African-American organization Police Officers for Equal Rights—is currently investigating his department about allegations of police brutality and discrimination against blacks. But, he was just warming up the crowd for his best mental gymnastics.
In Jackson's routine, when he became chief in 1990, the vice bureau was a den of drunkards, which may or may not be true. So, he appointed the right, honorable Commander Walter Burns to straighten out the problem. Burns, in Jackson's fantasy, was a man that the chief "depended" upon. A "valued" individual who "made people do what they were supposed to." Indeed.
Say there was a high-priced female escort operation run by a Mr. Menucci. You could count on Burns showing up, taking charge of the scene—you know, a black book, a red book, an electronic Rolodex, videos containing the names and images of Columbus' most powerful and prestigious, and assorted other accruements of the world's oldest profession—and failing to inventory the evidence. The Menucci report remains a must-read and a lasting testament, alongside the mayor's investigative report, to Burns' corruption or incompetence.
Thousands of pages of sworn testimony were deftly tossed aside by our chief as he did a double back-flip and proclaimed: "There was never any indication that Burns ever did anything wrong." A quick gloss over the death of retired Police Sergeant Mt. Vernon Johnson and his notorious protected gambling house on the west side, won high marks from media-savvy spinmeisters in the room.
You see, Jackson was simply the hardest working chief in the cop biz; he should be given kudos because he gave "special attention" to 13 allegations of misconduct brought against Burns because of his mishandling of the Menucci investigation. Deputy Chief Kerns had sustained seven of allegations against Burns. The chief dismissed six of those, sustained only one and then slapped Burns ever so slightly on the wrist.
Thus, when Jackson was called on the carpet by Mayor Lashutka and Safety Director Rice for his inexcusable and deplorable handling of the Burns case, he was under the impression that they were calling him over to "apologize" to him. Imagine the scene: "We're so sorry, James. You have an absolute right to pardon any police officer covering up criminal sexual activity among the rich and famous. Please forgive us."
Jackson simply "didn't know what it was all about." The fact that everyone else in town did still seems to elude the chief. "Some things said about me were very demoralizing," said Jackson. Yeah, but virtually all seem to have been true.
Jackson pointed to Ohio Supreme Court Justice Craig Wright as his savior. Wright read the Jackson file and testified before the Civil Service Commission that the chief did nothing wrong in the Burns affair. As a former safety director, Wright said he understood Jackson was just doing his duty. Wright and Jackson are a natural duo. After all, Wright's tenure on the Supreme Court is best known for his brutal assault on the physically smaller Justice, Andy Douglas, fracturing his rib.
But Jackson saved perhaps his most audacious move for the end. His absurd justification for destroying a public record, the Shapiro murder file, ranks as one of the great verbal tumbles of all time. The chief was really doing the city of Columbus a great favor since the Shapiro file contained "allegations against substantial and prominent people." The chief read it and "ordered it destroyed." We can all sleep better at night knowing that "substantial and prominent people" were protected from real facts in the file.
The chief, after being found guilty on two of the five counts against him and being suspended, "stuck his landing" and proclaimed, "I did nothing wrong" and "I am one of the cleanest people in city government."
As we go to press, the chief is working on a new routine wherein he does a triple somersault and sues the city for being "wronged." Don't give him a dime. He owes us all an apology.
...and in the headlights
Director of Public Safety Thomas W. Rice forwarded to the mayor on Tuesday the final Mayoral Investigative Report of the Columbus Division of Police. The investigation in its initial phase led to a Civil Service Commission hearing regarding Chief Jackson's conduct where they sustained two of five charges. Included in the report, which weighed in at more than 200 pages, are new allegations and some surprising proposals that include a civilian review panel to monitor police activity. Also included was a list of "concerns" that have been forwarded to either the Division of Police or an external agency for further actions and a list of the players involved, whose conduct caused additional "concerns."
A listing of concerns identified that were forwarded for further action:
• Allegations about the relationship of Chief Jackson and a juvenile and photos were forwarded to the vice squad for further investigation.
• Information about the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) using federal funds to hire special-duty officers for security was forwarded to a U.S. Housing and Urban Development auditor.
• Information from intelligence summaries and other police sources indicating that the late Division of Police Sergeant Mount Vernon Johnson's gambling operation had re-opened at another location in the city was forwarded to the vice section by the mayoral investigative team.
"Justifiable concerns" about the conduct and actions of some Division of Police employees, both uniform and non-uniform:
• June 1991—Chief Jackson ordered the destruction of an official Intelligence Bureau document titled "The Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis." The Civil Service Commission found Jackson guilty of this charge and issued a five-day suspension. Other official police records are also missing.
• April 1995—Narcotics Bureau Commander Nick Panzera obstructed a federal drug case and a complaint was received. Chief Jackson failed to ensure the complaint was properly filed and investigated. This allowed for the existing complaint to be hidden and not made part of the official record.
• April 1995—Thatcher received a complaint that Narcotics Bureau Commander Nick Panzera had obstructed a federal drug case. Thatcher violated Division policy by not properly processing the complaint and forwarding the information to Internal Affairs for inclusion in the statistical record of complaints and filing. "This allowed the existence complaint to be hidden and not made part of the official record."
• Some 90 written investigative summaries prepared by the investigators in the case given to Commander Burns at his direction disappeared and are still missing.
• March 1995—Marcum had knowledge of a gambling operation being conducted by retired Division of Police Sergeant Mount Vernon Johnson at a residence on the west side of Columbus. Marcum was the commander of the Intelligence Bureau at the time and was responsible for identifying and investigating possible gambling violations. He took no action to determine the legality or scope of the operation prior to the death of Johnson.
• April 1995—While Narcotics Bureau Commander, Panzera interfered with and hampered a drug investigation being conducted by the Hilliard Police Department and U.S. Customs Agency. It was learned that Panzera actually owned the rental property at which the suspect in the investigation lived. Before the investigation could be completed, Panzera told the residents they were evicted, thus thwarting the successful arrest of the suspect.
• That steps be taken by Chief Jackson to cause the reconstruction of the "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis" report and that it be placed in file at the Intelligence Bureau and shared with the homicide bureau detectives assigned to the Shapiro murder investigation.
• That steps be taken to cause the reconstruction of the Elite Escort prostitution investigation and that it be placed in file in the proper location(s).
• That Chief Jackson conduct a review of Panzera's assignment in the narcotics division relative to his job responsibilities and the potential conflict of interest regarding his ownership of rental property subject to civil forfeiture.
07/09/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
Chief James Jackson got off with only a slap on the wrist last December before the Civil Service Commission, but new details in the final report of the mayoral investigation of the Columbus Division of Police released Tuesday, July 1 seem to vindicate Mayor Gregory Lashutka and Director of Public Safety Thomas Rice. Jackson is currently on a crusade to clear his name, claiming he won since he was only found guilty of the five misconduct charges against him. The chief wants money from the city of Columbus and an apology from the investigators
The 211-page final report fills in the details and seems to documents that Jackson benefited greatly from City Council pressure that accelerated the hearing before the Civil Service Commission. Columbus Alive has previously reported many of the more shocking allegations and facts in the report; still, the final version is well worth reading since it points to only two logical conclusions: either top police officials are grossly incompetent or they're consciously protecting gambling and prostitution operations in the city. The question must be asked: Are certain politicians and prominent businesspeople protecting Chief Jackson to hide their own questionable conduct?
Poker face
Jackson addressed the Columbus Metropolitan Club on June 25 and proclaimed: "I did nothing wrong." He also stated, "I am one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest official in city government." While Chief Jackson strains to portray himself as Mr. Clean, an overabundance of facts suggests that a couple of his favorite commanders, Curtis Marcum and Walter Burns, were stinking up police headquarters. And, if Jackson believes he did nothing wrong, it's equally true that he did very little right in his handling of their shenanigans.
What follows is a chronology of events and the facts related to them from the final report in an effort to explore Jackson's actions.
On March 19, 1995, Thomas "Big Tom" Harris Jr. shot and killed retired Columbus Police Sergeant Mt. Vernon Johnson at a gambling house Johnson ran with a partner, Jack Darway, at 768 Racine Avenue on Columbus' west side. Within 24 hours, Harris had surrendered to police and admitted that he'd killed Johnson for the four or five thousand dollars the retired cop carried in his pocket to keep the card games going.
A few hours after the murder, homicide detective Michael Millay interviewed Johnson's widow, Margaret Ann. She told Millay that Commander Marcum, in charge of Columbus' Police Intelligence Bureau, "played cards with Mount," and that "Mount kept a book of who owed him money."
Police quickly learned that Johnson's gambling operation began on June 4, 1993, and that it was a "first class" enterprise with two professional-style poker tables and a large exhaust fan to suck cigarette and cigar smoke out of the basement. Decked out with lounge chairs and two twin beds where tired gamblers could snooze over the long weekend, it was paradise for card players fond of games like "Hold 'em" and "Omaha."
Typically the game started at 6:30 on Friday night and lasted through Monday morning. Police estimated that the Racine address turned more than a quarter of a million dollars in profit a year. One source told investigators that she'd "seen people lose over thousand dollars in a night." When players went broke, Johnson took checks, according to the source, and deposited them in a bank account. He bragged about suing people in court who didn't pay their debts.
The next day, Commander Herbert Pennington met with Deputy Chief Gary Thatcher and informed him that Johnson's ledger was in police custody. Thatcher and Pennington then told Jackson, who, according to Pennington, agreed to the investigation of the names in the book, but offered no "specific instructions."
Three days later on March 23, Marcum was informed that his name had come up in relation to Johnson's gambling house. Marcum dashed off a "Letter of Information to Chief Jackson" that very day. Marcum denied ever playing cards at Johnson's place and noted, "nothing could be further from the truth." The Intelligence Commander did admit that he had "hearsay" evidence about Johnson's operation. After all, his mother "cooked food and pies for him [Johnson] from time to time."
Later, in a sympathetic piece in The Other Paper, Marcum reiterated how he was so busy gathering police intelligence information on illegal activities, that he didn't have time to check out the allegations against Johnson and the woman reportedly running the kitchen at the gambling house, Millie Marcum.
In the letter to Jackson, repeated in The Other Paper, Marcum claimed that, "I didn't know the address where they played." Some suspect that the commander of the Intelligence Bureau, whose responsibilities include gathering information concerning illegal gambling operations and initiating investigations of them, may not have been doing his job because his old friend Johnson and his family were involved. Marcum also admitted in his letter that his sister, Lois Johnson, gambled at Racine, and his brother Tommy dealt cards and gambled as well.
A Police Internal Affairs investigation found the name Mt. Vernon Johnson and the Racine address and phone number in Marcum's personal Rolodex in his office. As Marcum explained it, the information was probably in there as a result of his testifying as a character witness in Johnson's criminal trial for gross sexual imposition involving child molestation on January 23, 1995, less than three months prior to Johnson's murder.
The usual pattern in illegal gambling houses is to move the game every few months to avoid police detection. Johnson operated an unusually long 22 months straight, presumably without police detection, at Racine Avenue. The police did show up a few times to tell the 15-20 gamblers inside that their cars were parked illegally. Both gamblers and neighbors report that the constant presence of the Marcum family caused those in the know to believe they were "protected" by the police. As one gambler put it: "It was the perfect game in town, with Millie [Marcum], Tommy [Marcum], and Lois [Johnson] in the game, nothing was going to happen to anyone." Gamblers told police that Johnson routinely bragged about his "connections" downtown.
On March 24, 1995 the Internal Affairs Bureau began an investigation into whether or not police officers participated in Johnson's illegal gambling operation. That investigation took a new twist when agent-in-charge Dave Hanna of the local FBI office called Deputy Chief Anthony Lanata and informed him that they had gotten an anonymous caller stating: "Commander Curtis Marcum and Commander Walter Burns regularly frequented and played cards at Mt. Vernon Johnson's gambling establishment." The caller also claimed that Commander Burns, when he was the Vice Bureau commander, had a history of refusing to allow officers to investigate gambling complaints.
Lanata put the information in writing and forwarded it to Jackson. When asked why he put it in writing when testifying for the Civil Service Commission, Lanata stated: "Because it occurred to me that if I went back verbally to Chief Jackson, my past experience had been that he always defended Commander Burns no matter what and I could be pressured not to reduce it to writing."
The Internal Affairs investigation quickly turned away from possible police involvement in Johnson's gambling operation to new allegations surrounding Commander Burns' tenure in the Vice Bureau, his alleged mishandling of information and supposed impeding of vice investigations.
The shift in the investigation from Johnson's gambling operation to Burns' activities resulted, according to the mayor's investigation team, in "the allegations of police involvement in Johnson's gambling operation ... never fully" being investigated. Chief Jackson, the mayor's final investigation report notes, "took no steps to cause either of the allegations addressed in Lanata's letter to be investigated." Deputy Chief Thatcher "also failed to take action to have the matter properly investigated" and Commander Pennington "failed to communicated information on criminal activity to appropriate units within the Division of Police, even though inquiries were made by Vice Bureau Commander Tilton."
Tilton contacted Pennington on three occasions inquiring about Johnson's gambling book. He was informed that there was "nothing of substance" in it. The final report notes: "The only 'investigation' of this has been the phone calls made by homicide detectives to names that appeared in a ledger book." Essentially, the "investigation" concluded that there was no police officer involvement in the illegal gambling activities—despite the presence of Marcum family members. The final report also states that evidence suggests that the players involved in the Johnson game are still operating in the city. Homicide detectives allowed Johnson's wife to remove the gambling furniture and paraphernalia from the Racine Avenue house "within days" of the murder.
It was Sergeant Robert Mulcahy's job to investigate the charges against Commander Burns. On Wednesday, July 14, 1995, Mulcahy noticed several signs that someone had entered his Internal Affairs Bureau office, Room #319. Mulcahy's office contained records, investigative notes and other materials related to the investigation of Commander Burns, specifically his handling of the Vice Bureau investigation of Tony Menucci's escort service. Since access to his office was restricted and someone with access to the police master key #1 would be a likely suspect, key sign-out records were checked.
Commander Burns' wife and Jackson's secretary, Kathleen Wilcox-Burns, had signed out the master key on June 12 at 7:45 a.m. and didn't return it for four hours, more than enough time "to allow taking the key out of headquarters to be copied," the report stated.
From May 17 to July 31, 1995, records show that Burns and his wife popped up 27 times after their work hours in and around the Internal Affairs Bureau and the police mailroom, including Burns' presence at 11:53 p.m. on July 18 on the third floor, and his wife's at 11:39 p.m. in the mailroom.
In Jackson's account, he appointed Burns to the Vice Squad in 1991 because he was a "by the book" officer who could "shape that unit up." Burns inherited an on-going investigation concerning an escort service run by Anthony Menucci. The investigators would later find the following entry in Commander Marcum's daily log dated 6-26-91: "Told by Cmdr Burns that records concerning escort service were turned over to the Chief.... The feeling was that he may have had a friend involved somehow."
On January 27, 1993, the Columbus Vice Squad executed a search warrant at the home of Menucci, reported to be running a high-priced—$250 to $400-a-trick—escort service. Menucci was later convicted by federal authorities on tax evasion charges. Burns arrived unexpectedly at the raid scene, and according to officers present, took charge of the operation. So interested in the Menucci case, Burns helped gather up numerous bags of evidence which he later logged into the evidence room but failed to have inventoried. He also took the unusual step of requesting that the evidence be "secured" in his office for safekeeping where it remained several weeks. Most of the evidence later disappeared; particularly devastating to the case against Menucci was the loss of two client books—one black, one red—and an electronic Rolodex that Burns removed from Menucci's vehicle, although it was not listed in the search warrant.
A few months prior to the Menucci raid, an undercover female officer had applied to work for Menucci's escort service. Her application was taken and she was told to call back at 4 p.m. the same day to see if she was hired. While she was waiting to call back, some unknown individual used a Vice Bureau computer terminal to run her license plate through the Law Enforcement Automatic Data System (LEADS). She didn't get the job; however, the raid turned up her job application with a very emphatic, underlined "No."
Two completely separate Internal Affairs investigations substantiated that property was mishandled and that key evidentiary items in Burns' possession were missing. Detectives Howard Wingard and Amy Phillips both testified that Burns "ordered" them to give all their hand-written summaries on Menucci directly to him and to bypass their supervisor, Sergeant Roger Trigg. Wingard estimated that he turned over between 75 and 100 such summaries. Phillips claimed she turned over five. All of the summaries given to Burns are missing along with Polaroid photos of the search scene, videocassette tapes and the Rolodex.
As names of prominent politicians and judges began to pop up in the press as clients of Menucci, there's little doubt that the entire chain of evidence was being compromised by Burns' actions. Yet, Chief Jackson saw it differently: "There are a number of persons that had, or could have had contact with the evidence that was stored in the property room, or that failed to get back to the property room." The chief found "insufficient evidence to prove that Commander Burns concealed or destroyed evidence."
Moreover, when Deputy Chief Robert Kern asked that Wingard and Burns be given a polygraph examination to ascertain who was telling the truth on the missing evidence, Jackson ruled, "It is not the intent of the contract that I be permitted to use a polygraph as a fishing expedition. At this time I can only conclude that the property is lost and this investigation is closed."
This decision by Chief Jackson concerning Burns' conduct turned an Internal Affairs investigation into the mayor's investigation of his management of the Columbus Police Department. In the course of the mayoral investigation, one of the most shocking findings was that Jackson ordered Marcum to destroy a document entitled "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis." Marcum told investigators that the document detailed "the overall nature of organized crime in the city of Columbus."
Marcum deemed the study "worthwhile," yet destroyed it on Jackson's order. Initially, Jackson, under oath, could "not recall" telling Marcum "to destroy that document." He later recalled vividly, before the Civil Service Commission, that he destroyed the document in the best interests of the city of Columbus because it contained unsubstantiated allegations against prominent individuals. Although failing to comment on Jackson's initial memory loss, the Commission suspended Jackson for five days after sustaining charges that Jackson improperly destroyed a public document.
The investigation also turned up other interesting findings. Among them, allegations:
• that drug money was being laundered through the South of Main project.
• that Jackson's aide, Sergeant Charles Martin, earned over $46,000 in special duty income from the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority in 1995, and was paid while in his office on duty with the Columbus Police.
• that a death threat was called in to the Columbus police radio room on October 22, 1996 against a witness, Charlynn (Sawyer) English, after she met with investigators and gave information regarding sexual liaisons with Chief Jackson.
• that Commander Nick Panzera interfered with an active narcotics investigation in Hilliard, when, as the landlord, he evicted the suspected drug dealer a day prior to a police raid.
• that Commander Marcum compromised an investigation concerning allegations of illegal gambling at a Police VFW post by assigning an officer who was a member of that post to investigate.
07/16/1997
FEATURED ARTICLE
Prison stripes to pinstripes
In the case of the Lucasville riot, it's hard to tell who's done the most damage
by Bob Fitrakis
As the costs continue to mount from the Easter 1993 Lucasville riot, some are starting to complain that not all the bad guys were wearing prison stripes—a few may have been in pinstripe suits.
As a special prosecutor for the trials of George Skatzes and Jason Robb, both Lucasville inmates convicted of aggravated murder in the slaying of Corrections Officer Robert Vallandingham during the riot, Dan Hogan convinced two juries to sentence the men to death. These career-building cases paid off handsomely for Hogan. He earned nearly $100,000 in extra income while at the same time working full-time as an assistant Franklin County Prosecutor.
Hogan's success in holding down the two jobs no doubt aided his election a year later to the position of Franklin County Common Pleas judge. Now, he's having a harder time convincing his colleagues at the courthouse that he wasn't "double-dipping." Court insiders are questioning the system that allowed Hogan to keep his full-time job as county prosecutor while more than doubling his yearly salary in 1995 with his second high-profile job.
A Sunday April 6 Dispatch article itemized the "Costly prosecutions"—state expenses associated with the Lucasville riots—including the two death-penalty cases Hogan prosecuted. Conspicuously missing in the Dispatch itemization was the amount of Hogan's salary. In the Skatzes and Robb cases, the Dispatch provided the amounts paid to defense attorneys, jury members, expert witnesses, private investigators and judges, but not prosecutors. Hogan, endorsed by the Republican party, was also endorsed by the Dispatch in his 1996 non-partisan campaign against Beverly Farlow for judge.
Records from Lynn Alan Grimshaw, Scioto County prosecuting attorney, show that Hogan billed $99,240 in 13 non-consecutive monthly invoices between September 1994 and January 1996 for his work as a Lucasville special prosecutor. By subtracting the August 1995 invoice, when Hogan billed only 2.25 hours and was paid $135, a 12-month or the yearly equivalent of Hogan's salary was $99,105 for working 1,652 hours. A typical work year is 2,080 hours.
At the same time, Franklin County Auditor records indicate that Hogan earned $61,300 as a Franklin County Prosecutor in 1994 in addition to the $21,255 he made in four months off the Lucasville cases. In 1995, Hogan's salary dropped by a third to $41,777 while his Lucasville earnings increased by three-and-a-half times to $73,725. By working simultaneously for Franklin County and as a Lucasville special prosecutor, his yearly salary in '95 was $115,552.
Alive interviewed various judges, prosecutors and court officials about the practice—none who were critical of Judge Hogan would speak on the record—but they were very blunt when anonymity was assured. Court insiders complain that Hogan essentially held two jobs and was "double-dipping." As one put it, "Look, everybody knows that he should've taken a leave of absence and not worked at all [as a county prosecutor] during the trial. But nobody wanted to question the prosecutor trying to put the rioters on death row."
Another claims that Franklin County judges made inquiries to the prosecutor's office when Hogan and fellow prosecutor Doug Stead failed to appear when scheduled for local criminal cases. "We were told that Hogan was working 'off the record.' That means every time a state trooper or FBI investigator [in regards to the Lucasville trials] called him in his office, he had to log out as a Franklin County Prosecutor and log in as a Lucasville prosecutor. We all laughed," one said.
"There were times when they [Stead and Hogan] were supposed to be at the Lucasville trial when they were at the Franklin County Courthouse and times when they were supposed to be in Franklin County when they were working in Lucasville. It was a logistical nightmare, but I'm sure Dan kept detailed records," one prosecutor said.
One skeptical Hogan-watcher said, "Give me a break. He's got hundreds of calls from troopers and investigators. How in the hell is he going to check in and out and not double-dip? There's an easy way to answer this question. Ask the state police for their contact logs and discussions with Hogan concerning witnesses. Not what the witnesses said; they can list them A to Z, and see whether they match up with Hogan's daily logs."
Retired Assistant State Auditor Henry J. Schutte examined Hogan's payroll records at Alive's request. "There's some obvious red flags that I would have looked at when I was an auditor," Schutte noted. Schutte pointed out that in December of '94, during the holiday season, Hogan billed a combined total of 343 hours, or 11 hours a day for 31 straight days. Then, the next December he billed a combined 412 hours that averaged out to over 13.25 hours a day for 31 straight days nonstop.
"If he's claiming 412 hours in a month, he'd better be putting in 412 hours and documenting it, or it's possible theft in office because tax money's involved," Schutte said. "And he can't be doing Lucasville work on Franklin County time."
Doug Stead, a senior Franklin County Prosecutor and also a Lucasville special prosecutor, billed 327.5 hours in December '94, costing taxpayers $19,650. While Stead was included in the December 1994 payroll reports from Grimshaw, he was absent from the remaining 12 billings despite public accounts of payment. Thus, Alive was not able to track his monthly totals.
In February '95, as Hogan put in over 312 hours at a cost of $18,735 on the Robb case, he still managed to bill Franklin County for 19 hours, averaging 12-hour billable days. Many question the effectiveness of one person working so many hours on two jobs.
Hogan could not be reached for comment by presstime, although he and Alive exchanged several phone messages.
Riot negotiator Niki Schwartz, a Cleveland attorney, credited Robb with helping end the riots. Schwartz testified that, "Jason deserves a large portion of the credit for the peaceful resolution of the riot.... I have substantial doubts about his guilt." He was adamant in his testimony that Robb and Skatzes were not getting "fair trials." Robb steadfastly denied that he wanted guard Robert Vallandingham killed. "I knew Bobby Vallandingham. I liked Bobby, we had respect for each other," Robb said.
Schwartz pointed out that Hogan and other prosecutors were being paid more than defense attorneys and had an unfair advantage since they "had the use of the state highway patrol's computerized files," according to the Dispatch.
Another aspect of the riot usually ignored is the documented inhumane conditions at Lucasville in the five years prior to the prisoner uprising. In June 1988, Lucasville inmates filed a human rights complaint with Amnesty International providing detailed accounts of prisoner abuses. Prisoners were kept for up to 11 straight years in "J1 Supermax" cells, constantly monitored and deprived of fresh air and sunshine. Prisoners alleged that sadistic beatings occurred regularly, sometimes resulting in deaths. The use of firehoses were commonplace.
So deplorable were the conditions at Lucasville that human rights activists worldwide monitored the facility. Dennis Brown of the University of Edinburgh wrote a Lucasville inmate in November 1989: "I was shocked and saddened to read in the newspaper here of your situation and the conditions under which you are being contained. How can a country which claims to uphold life and liberty treat its citizens as you are being treated? ...Because of the dreadful way you have and are being treated, the world is learning about Ohio penal industries and the American penal system. The injustices inflicted on you are bringing international shame on your country..."
The conditions were so bad that the usually conservative Correctional Institution Inspection Committee (CIIC) called for a full-scale investigation in 1990. Then-Governor Richard Celeste ordered an investigation by the state Highway Patrol as well, after the CIIC and the FBI looked into allegations that two black prisoners were killed by white guards after touching a white nurse.
The Dispatch recently reported that the 11-day riot leaving 10 persons dead at Lucasville cost the state of Ohio nearly $70 million. Years of whitewashing and overlooking prisoner complaints at Lucasville inevitably led to the Easter riot, tragic loss of life and soaring financial costs to the taxpayers. It remains to be seen whether or not the behavior of those in pinstripes will be scrutinized as carefully as those in prison stripes.
07/16/1997
Be very afraid
Prognosis poor for Doctor's Hospital takeover
by Bob Fitrakis
The shadow of health care colossus Columbia/HCA looms large over the city of Columbus. "Be afraid, be very afraid," harken the health-care activists. Sunday, Dr. David Green spoke—fresh from his battle with the behemoth in Lansing, Michigan—at the Stonewall Community Center. The tale was all too familiar to the assorted Democratic Socialists and Coalition for Community Health Care members present. Columbia/HCA moved into Michigan's capital a year-and-a-half ago and immediately secured an "exclusive" negotiation contract with Michigan Capital Health Care's governing board that runs two non-profit hospitals in Lansing. Per usual, Dr. Green explained, "There was no notice to the public," and Columbia's negotiations were, or so they claimed, "secret" and "privileged."
Sound familiar? It should. Columbia's using the same tactics in Columbus to try to buy Doctor's Hospital. But activists and the Columbus Dispatch in a perceptive editorial on Monday, are both demanding the same thing: "Show us the deal!"
Doctor's Hospital, as a non-profit, benefits enormously from tax exemptions, community charitable contributions and donations. It's a community asset, and the public has the right under Ohio law to know the details of the sale and to have a say in the future direction of Doctor's Hospital.
Trust me. You won't like Columbia's way. Forget it. Don't trust me, just look at the facts. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted former Columbia hospital manager Mark Gardner as follows: "I committed felonies every day." Among Gardner's recent allegations as a manager of three Columbia hospitals are claims that Columbia uses a scorecard and rates each of their 343 hospitals on 12 measures each month, such as volume of surgeries and cutting the cost of supplies—quality is not one of them; that a Columbia hospital limited treatment of the indigent and uninsured and, in one case, discharged without running tests a homeless person who died an hour later on the hospital lawn; and that "Columbia hospitals exist to make money—period."
A study last year of 497 health-care workers at Columbia/Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas found that 73 percent felt the quality of supplies and equipment under Columbia/HCA ownership had "declined." Only 4 percent said it "improved." Moreover, 60 percent reported "potentially dangerous delays in nursing response" due to "understaffing" in the last three months. As Dr. Green pointed out on Sunday, Columbia/HCA is well-known for cutting services and staff: "What they're doing is 'de-skilling' health care. Laying off more-skilled workers for less-skilled. Work done by RNs is now being done by technicians, often with only a few weeks of training. Chores like catheterizations are divided up and often being done by people not trained to do the procedure." Ouch!
Last year, Columbia/HCA's Henrico Doctor's Hospital in Richmond, Virginia laid off 103 workers, mostly RNs, in a reorganization and replaced them with part-timers, nurse technicians and other unlicensed health care workers. In Dr. Green's estimate, "Secret negotiations, rigging the valuation of non-profit assets and cutting service and staff is simply standard business operation for Columbia."
Still, there's hope. In Michigan, an activist Attorney General, Frank Kelly, sued Columbia and stopped the deal. With the Dispatch and the power of the Wolfe family, long-time philanthropic supporters of non-profit hospitals, and community activists already well organized to force an open and fair hearing, Attorney General Betty Montgomery should side with the locals.
Most curious is the deafening silence of City Councilwoman Les Wright. Wright is in the dubious position of being both a Doctor's Hospital board trustee and chair of the City's Health Committee. Wright is wrong if she thinks she can serve two masters and should hasten to assure the public that the best interest of the community—not Columbia, Doctor's or her own pocketbook—will be served. Perhaps the most principled thing would be a resignation from the Doctor's board, especially since Columbia offered millions of dollars in bonuses to executives in their thwarted attempt to purchase Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio earlier this year.
You might want to give Les a call at 645-8580 and tell her what you think. This is what we call "democracy."
Non-profit hospitals have admirably served the Columbus community. They're a tradition worth preserving. The community needs to know, as Columbia casts its long shadow, what will it mean for health care in central Ohio if the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain acquires Doctor's North, Doctor's West and Doctor's Nelsonville? Will the uninsured and indigent still have access to those hospitals? Will the remaining non-profit hospitals be forced to cut back on vital services and free care in order to compete?
Trust that Columbia will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars selling the deal in a slick advertising campaign. Trudy Lieberman of the Consumer Union wrote in last week's issue of The Nation that Columbia's "No slouch when it comes to propaganda." They've spent over $400,000 in Providence, Rhode Island in a similar takeover, including a misleading ad in the Providence Journal-Bulletin that suggested that the merger had already happened. A "shrewd pairing of the two corporate logos in the ad telegraphed to readers that a decision had been made," Lieberman explained.
A full-page ad appeared in last week's Business First in Columbus. Expect more. Much more.
You see, you can afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in pursuit of profit when you pick up non-profit assets cheap, cut back on service to the poor, and lay off significant amounts of professional staff. After all, who needs so many doctors at Doctor's Hospital?
07/23/1997
News Briefs
Controversial minority contractor, Thomas G. Banks, arraigned earlier this month in Union County on a first-degree misdemeanor ethics charge, is also involved in two civil cases that may provide additional information on his business practices.
Banks is already under indictment for allegedly furnishing cut-rate remodeling as a political favor at the Marysville home of Dr. Katherine Bartunek, wife of Paul Mifsud, Governor George Voinovich's then-chief of staff. Mifsud faces eight felony and misdemeanor charges in connection with Banks' remodeling project and his alleged attempt to cover up the cost of the project.
Banks' attorney, Ritchey Hollenbaugh, recently characterized the Bartunek/Mifsud project with an "original scope" of "$25,000." Bartunek and Mifsud claimed they paid Banks $110,000 for the job, but could not produce proof of payment. Banks is now accused of providing some $100,000 in free construction and Banks will, no doubt, have to explain to the jury why he took out $210,000 in permits before the Bartunek job began.
During the same time, Banks received over $3 million in unbid state management contracts from the Voinovich administration.
Like Banks' criminal case, the following civil case involves some intriguing building figures. On May 26 of this year, Banks provided a sworn affidavit in the U. S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Ohio in the civil case of Ralph K. Frasier v. Dennis A. Greene. Banks swears that he worked on the Frasier residence at 2433 Brookwood Rd. in Columbus for over three years from August 1993 to December 1996. During this time, Frasier served as the chair of the Ohio Board of Regents, the body that oversees the state universities and public colleges. The time period also overlaps with the 1993-94 Banks project at the Bartunek residence.
Court records and other documents obtained by the Alive indicate that Frasier originally contracted with Greene for $246,000 in remodeling. Later construction changes brought the contract to $279,000. When Greene was removed by Frasier for supposedly "unsatisfactory" work, documents indicate that the project was 90 percent complete and the architectural firm of Moody/Nolan estimated around $25,000 in costs were needed to finish.
This is when Banks stepped in to complete the project. Banks swears "Frasier paid to T.G. Banks and Associates, Inc. a total of $284,848.74 in connection with the construction, remodeling and repair of the Frasier residence." Greene argues that neither Frasier nor Banks has yet produced receipts or checks to verify this number. Frasier, in turn, sued Greene for over half a million dollars to recover the costs and damages associated with Banks' "repair work." Frasier is also claiming in his civil case that Greene "defrauded" him to prevent Greene from discharging his debts under bankruptcy. The success of Frasier's case rests on the credibility of T.G. Banks' testimony, who is supporting Frasier's claim of fraud against Greene.
Greene, of course, feels that Banks' credibility will be determined by the outcome of the ethics charge and wants the civil trial delayed until Banks' criminal trial is concluded. Greene, who is representing himself, appears eager to put Banks on the stand and ask him why it took him three years and $284,000—more than 10 times the amount the architect's estimate—to finish the project. Curiously, no suit was found against the architects, Moody/Nolan, who oversaw Greene's work. Greene contends that Banks' numbers are grossly inflated, and that Banks operated at Frasier's personal discretion with no architectural plan on paper. Greene's legal strategy seems to center on putting Banks on the stand and showing that Frasier essentially got a "sweetheart deal" similar to Mifsud's.
Banks also swears he has been in the construction business for "16 years," a time period when most of his friends and associates remember him as serving as a city meter reader and a deputy sheriff and printer. Banks' brother, Billy Banks, told the Alive last year that he didn't know his brother was a builder until he built the "Fest Haus" at Ameriflora in 1992. Banks also has listed on his resume that he has a bachelor's and master's degree from The Ohio State University. When calls from the Alive to the university showed that no such degrees exist, Banks' attorney characterized the resume remarks as "typographical errors." Banks was awarded the minority construction management contract on both the Schottenstein Arena and the Max Fisher business school building at OSU.
Additionally, Banks is likely to be called as a witness in former South of Main Development Corporation Executive Director Shawn Thompson's civil suit against the City of Columbus scheduled for April 1998. The July issue of the Main Street Business Journal told its readers to: "Mark your calendars . . . the depositions are sure to make for fascinating reading."
"Over at the South of Main homes, T.G. Banks appears to believe that his status as a minority contractor coupled with the desperation of the city to finally get the houses completed qualifies him to use the public purse as his personal checkbook," reads the Journal article.
The Journal reports, "Banks recently stared down the Columbus Development Department in a dispute over an unauthorized $200,000 security bill for private duty Columbus Police hired to protect the project. One of the chief beneficiaries of Banks' political savvy was Jason Jackson, son of Police Chief James Jackson, who collected almost $10,000 for his work as a special duty cop on the project."
Tim Widman, the reporter, told the Alive that he's looking forward to the Thompson civil suit because it's "hard to get a handle on the numbers involved in the South of Main project, the numbers keep jumping." Widman suggests that the only way to get Thompson, Banks and the city to tell the truth is to "put them under oath."
—Bob Fitrakis
NO ARTICLE ON 07/29/2002
08/06/1997
Solid Gold tango
Was that Gene Watts working the room with a lobbyist?
Thomas S. Strussion, Emerald Health lobbyist, is at the center of two recent Ohio Statehouse scandals. In a copyrighted story in the August/September issue of the Political Reporter, Editor Eric J. Brewer reported that "Senator Eugene Watts lets Emerald Health lobbyist Thomas Strussion pick up a $1,400 tab at [an] upscale Columbus men's club, and then refused to leave," sometime in late May or June of this year.
Brewer wrote that: "Solid Gold owner Draden Nay said Senator Watts and his companions purchased drinks and then sat with three beautiful bikini-clad dancers in the club's Champagne Room at a cost of $100 a half-hour for conversation and performances from the dancers."
"Nay said Senator Watts began to throw his weight around and asked the club employee if he 'knew who he was'" at closing time, according to Brewer's account. He also noted that Watts had threatened to file a complaint with the Department of Liquor Control against the nightclub: "Assistant Agent-in-Charge Ronald Lewis confirmed that a complaint had been filed against Solid Gold, but offered no further information about the complaint or the source of the complaint."
Two other reporters from major daily Ohio newspapers told the Alive that Nay confirmed Brewer's story. "In the version he told me, Strussion was holding Watts back because the Senator was pissed that the bar was closing," one reporter said.
When reached for comment, Nay confirmed that an incident similar to the one described in the story happened at the Solid Gold Club, but changed his earlier account.
"Brewer's account suffers from two serious inaccuracies. It was not Eugene Watts doing the posturing, it was a short little dark-haired guy about 5'9". I believe it was Thomas Strussion," Nay explained, "And, I've been touch with Liquor Control. There is no complaint against us."
"To the best of my knowledge Watts wasn't there. Not that he wouldn't have a good time," Nay added. "Strussion, like everyone with a few drinks in them, got in my face and began throwing Watts' name around saying 'Do you know who that man is?' It happens all the time here. But I told him I've got to follow the laws," Nay said.
Another theory floating around the Statehouse is that it wasn't Watts, but a state representative from the Lorain area claiming to be Watts. The investigation into the matter is being conducted by the 12-member Joint Legislative Ethics Committee and the Legislative Inspector General Tom Charles. The committee, chaired by Representative William G. Batchelder, is well-known for down-playing legislative improprieties. While it's possible to get the Internal Affairs report of a police officer once the investigation is over, the state legislature has written a law requiring strict confidentiality and restricting access to the records when legislators are investigated.
The facts of the Solid Gold incident remain cloudy concerning Watts, who has denied he was there, yet everyone involved insists that Strussion was present. And, if Strussion, a lobbyist, did indeed pick up the tab for Watts or any other legislator—including reportedly handing $20 bills to a legislator to stuff down dancers' G-strings—this must be reported by law.
Statehouse sources in both parties readily admit to Watts' fondness for women and drink. More than one relayed the now-legendary story of a naked Watts at a state legislator's conference in New Orleans, beating on doors in a hotel hallway claiming to be celebrating his first divorce. Still, despite Watts' past antics, one Democratic source says, "I just can't believe he would do something this stupid."
This is not Strussion's and Watts' first brush with controversy. When Watts was involved with receiving illegal honorariums in the earlier "pancaking" scandal—taking multiple smaller checks from the same lobbyist so as not to violate ethics laws prohibiting a large amount from one donor—an amended filing by Watts indicated that he had taken a $500 cash gift from Strussion in exchange for a private lecture in his office on the legislative process.
Strussion's name also was linked to the legislature's June 26, 1997 "censure" of Representative Michael A. Fox and his required resignation from all committee leadership posts. In January 1996, according to the House Journal's account of the Fox censure, Rep. Fox flew to Las Vegas, Nevada for an electronics convention. When "weather conditions prohibited" Fox's return to Columbus, Strussion purchased a ticket for him to fly to Scottsdale, Arizona and then to Columbus. Fox stayed in Strussion's Scottsdale residence for two days before returning to Columbus and didn't repay Strussion for the ticket which cost $406 until May 15, 1997 when the legislature was looking into the matter.
Fox was cited for "knowingly" accepting travel and lodging from a lobbyist, a violation of Section 5 of Legislative Code of Ethics. A source involved in the investigation told the Alive that the FBI is investigating whether or not a woman also stayed at Strussion's Scottsdale home. Reportedly, Fox told the investigators that it was an old girlfriend, but local law-enforcement officials report that the FBI wants to know whether the woman in question was an escort supplied by Strussion. "Look, you don't resign your chairmanship over an old girlfriend," the source said.
—Bob Fitrakis
08/13/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Following the indictments of three Columbia/HCA executives on July 30, and the forced resignation of Columbia's CEO Richard Scott and President David Vandewater just prior to the indictments, Columbus' Coalition for Community Health Care is calling on the Board of Trustees of Doctor's Hospital to postpone further negotiations with Columbia/HCA until the criminal charges are resolved.
"Columbia stands accused of fraudulently billing Medicare, a taxpayer-funded program designed to provide health care to elderly and disabled Americans," said Coalition spokesperson Cathy Levine. She added: "If these charges are true, do we want Columbia/HCA as a partner in our community?"
In June, Columbia, the nation's largest hospital chain, offered to buy Doctor's Hospitals in Columbus and Nelsonville, Ohio for $115 million. A for-profit corporation, Columbia has a reputation for buying non-profit hospitals that serve the uninsured, poor and indigent and dramatically cutting back on those services.
On July 22, Coalition members met with Doctor's Hospital trustees and Columbia executives and asked for enforceable guarantees that in the event of a sale, the current level of uncompensated care would continue. Levine called Columbia's assurances on the matter "vague." "We are very concerned about the impact the sale would have on the health care of the Columbus community. Assurances can be discussed, but we must be able to trust that those assurances will become legally enforceable promises to provide safe, quality, and accessible health care to all who need the services," stated Coalition member Angela Savino of the Ohio Nurses Association. Coalition member Alvin Hadley of the National Association of Social Workers of Ohio stated, "We wonder if we can trust Columbia/HCA, even if they give us guarantees, in light of these federal charges."
With an estimated 42 million Americans lacking health insurance, the Coalition argues that any sale of a non-profit hospital, which has received public benefits in the form of tax exemptions, charitable donations and other valuable community contributions, must include the public in the decision-making process. "As stakeholders in the hospital, we must have a say in determining whether this sale is good for the community," said Levine.
The same day the Coalition met with Doctor's Trustees, City Councilwoman Les Wright resigned from the Doctor's Hospital board. A Columbus Alive column on July 16 had called for her resignation citing a conflict of interest since she also chairs the City Council's committee dealing with health issues. In past purchases, Columbia has paid substantial bonuses to non-profit board members who generally serve for free.
Wright's resignation was made public in a story in this Saturday's Dispatch, over two weeks after the event. When reached for comment, Levine said she first heard of the resignation in the Dispatch story. Levine pointed out that while the Dispatch editorial board has called for a postponement of the sale of Doctor's to Columbia, there's been virtually no previous local news reporting on the deal in the Dispatch. Columbia's criminal indictments and proposed purchase of Doctor's were covered in the national and business sections only. "I don't understand it. The Columbia story's front page news in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. It's a national story. What our local politicians do is important," Levine commented.
A letter Levine wrote two weeks earlier appeared in Sunday's Dispatch in slightly altered form to reflect Wright's resignation. The original letter read: "When we asked Council President Michael Coleman to address this public health issue, his staff referred us to the Human Services Committee. But Wright's staff has repeatedly referred us to Doctor's Hospital declining either to meet with us or to put this issue on City Council's agenda."
On Monday, Levine sent Wright, who is reportedly out of town, another letter that reads: "In light of your resignation from the Doctor's Hospital Board, I hope that you would consider meeting with representatives of our Coalition to discuss City Council's potential role in creating a public forum for evaluating the sale."
The Coalition—comprised of civic, health care, religious, consumer and labor organizations—wants Doctor's trustees to release details of the proposed sale and hold public hearings before they vote on the sale scheduled for sometime in September.
While City Council has failed to act to ensure public input, the Health Coalition of Central Ohio has scheduled a public forum on the proposed sale at 8:30 a.m. August 27 at the Holiday Inn East. Representatives from Columbia/HCA, The Ohio State University, the Attorney General's office, along with Levine, will speak.
—Bob Fitrakis
08/13/1997
Those crazy Kehoes
Brothers now claim they're not supremacists
by Bob Fitrakis
Those cagey Kehoe brothers, Cheyne and Chevie, are at it again. A recent Dispatch news headline had the boys insisting they weren't "white supremacists." The Big D pretty much took this at face value. What else is new?
The Kehoe Bros. are awaiting trial following their February shoot-out with Ohio state troopers in Wilmington. A nationwide manhunt ended on June 16 when Cheyne turned himself in and squealed that his brother was hiding at a Utah farm. Cheyne faces numerous criminal charges including a 16-count indictment in Ohio stemming from the shoot-out. I suspect his anticipation of sharing the next few years in close quarters with a prison population that is disproportionately black, due to our racist justice system, has Cheyne denying his faith.
Cheyne can run, but he cannot hide from the statement he read when he turned himself in, that clearly confirms his allegiance to white supremacy. "The reason I acted in the manner I did was due to the actions of men like Randy Weaver, Gordon Kahl and Bob Matthews.... The government and law enforcement agencies abused the individual rights of these men," Cheyne stated. Let's examine his unholy trinity one by one.
Weaver, a virulent anti-Semite, believes that the U.S. government is under the control of an international Jewish conspiracy. He frequently visited the Hayden Lake, Idaho compound of the Aryan Nations. There he could discuss his racist conspiracy theories that ZOG—the Zionist Occupational Government—runs the United States.
Weaver became a far-right icon after he was injured and wife and son were killed in a shoot-out with federal agents in August 1992 at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. During the siege, neo-Nazi "boneheads" and Aryan Nations members rallied to support Weaver. Aryan Nations Ambassador at Large Louis Beam co-founded a Weaver support group, Citizens United for Justice.
In 1994, under the slogan, "No More Wacos, No More Weavers," the militia movement exploded nationwide. Its organizational roots are linked to 150 ultra-right-wing leaders who met in Estes Park, Colorado on October 23, 1992 and gave birth to the militia strategy. The event was hosted by Christian Identity Pastor Pete Peters, a white supremacist theologian and hate-monger. Without reporting his racist views, the Dispatch noted that Peters spoke at the memorial of Ohio Unorganized Militia chaplain Michael Hill. Hill was shot in June 1995 by a Frazeyburg police sergeant who claimed the "chaplain" was pointing a gun at him. The Kehoes claim Christian Identity as their religion. The religion preaches that Jews are the spawn of Satan and black are "mudpeople" without souls. No racists here, Cheyne?
In 1983, Gordon Kahl was an active member of the Posse Comitatus, a loosely organized band of Christian Identity anti-government activists. Kahl murdered two federal marshals in North Dakota, and like the Kehoe brothers, became a fugitive. Rather than surrender, Kahl died in a shoot-out with Arkansas law enforcement officers where a local sheriff was also killed. Kahl is considered a martyr by the Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations and other white supremacists like the Kehoes.
Finally, we come to Matthews, perhaps America's slimiest pond scum. Matthews founded The Order in 1983, a terrorist organization that robbed banks and armored trucks to fund neo-Nazi activities. The Order murdered Jewish talk radio host Alan Berg in June '94. Matthews died in December of that year after a 36-hour fire-fight with law enforcement officers.
I suppose Cheyne's heroes weren't "white supremacists" either, just misunderstood.
High-tech hate
Last week, Columbus Alive reader James Goldberg, the director of Ohio Parents Against Racism, suggested we check out the World Church of the Creator Ohio web site. We did, and it appears they're back, in high-tech form.
In the late '80s, 15 or so Church of the Creator skinheads terrorized the Ohio State campus area until their leader, Joey Hagar, was packed off to prison for killing a black female. Also, "the Reverend" Matt Hayhow was convicted with another Church member on bank robbery charges. The new high-tech haters warn on their web site: "If you are a Jew, nigger or other non-white and came here just to bother me, you can leave ..."
Again, be sure not to bother these white supremacists at: www.anarchy-online.com/mindslay/wcotc.html. They generously offer their warning in "ebonics" as well.
And since you're already surfing the 'net, please don't harass the Westerville Skinheads, who have their own page at www.geocites.com/Capitol Hill/Lobby/4254/localgroups.html. Once there, you can chat with Mike, Aaron, Dave, Chris and others "who help in the fight against the filthy 'nigger' scum."
And justice
for all
Moving from the destructive to the constructive, retired Police Sergeant James Moss and the Police Officers for Equal Rights are urging all citizens who are victims of police harassment or brutality to contact their office at 253-4005. They'd like to put you in touch with the Justice Department, which is currently investigating the Columbus Police Department. Tip of the week from Sergeant Moss— if the police have stopped you for a traffic violation and they demand to look into your trunk, say as loudly as possible, "I do not waive my Fourth Amendment rights." Then, give them the key to avoid a resisting-arrest charge and tell them that they don't have your permission to open the trunk. Remember, officers swear an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to violate your rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
08/20/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
School board race heats up
10 candidates take out petitions
The scramble for Columbus Public School Board seats may be mostly sorted out by next Saturday.
As of Friday afternoon, 10 candidates had taken out petitions at the Franklin County Board of Elections: Bill Moss, thrice-elected to the board; Kathy Espy, wife of state Senator Ben Espy; Mark Hatch, present school board president; Dave Dobos, current board member; Al Warner, who runs ADW Financial Services; Bill Buckel, frequent board candidate; Reggie Anglen, administrator at Ohio State University; along with Brian McCann, Jana Lee-Harris, and Glen Elder. Loretta Heard, current school board member, has also announced her candidacy and is circulating petitions she obtained, not from the Franklin County Board of Elections, but either from the Secretary of State’s office or any store that sells legal forms. Franklin County Democratic Party Chair Denny White said that local businessman Mark Pfeifer is also circulating petitions.
Moss filed 777 signatures last Tuesday, and is the only candidate so far to file, according to Marlene Wirth at the board of elections. The deadline for filing, Wirth emphasized, is Thursday, August 21, at 4 p.m.
An hour after the filing deadline, the Democratic Party will screen all willing registered Democrat and Independent candidates for the Party’s endorsement. "Thirty days ago, I had no candidates," commented White. "Hatch hadn’t got ahold of me, Heard hadn’t got ahold of me, I hadn’t heard from Moss since the mayoral race and he’d resigned from the Central Committee. So, I encouraged Brian McCann and Mark Pfeifer to take out petitions." Pfeifer is a local businessman with a good political name; McCann ran against Ohio House Speaker JoAnn Davidson last November, but has subsequently moved into the Columbus school district. White even contacted the Chamber of Commerce about putting together a joint slate of candidates but said they weren’t interested.
White’s admission that he encouraged McCann and Pfeifer to circulate petitions does not bode well for incumbent board members Hatch and Heard, who received the Democratic endorsement four years ago. Party insiders report that White was livid over Hatch and Heard’s vote to replace the late Sharlene Morgan, a progressive Democrat, with a well-known Republican, the Reverend Leon Troy. Most board observers interpreted Troy’s selection as an attempt to curry favor with the Columbus Dispatch, which was promoting his candidacy, prior to last year’s successful school levy campaign. White is willing to concede that there were "some concerns in the party" over Troy’s selection.
Heard, who announced her re-election plan just two weeks ago, is considered by many political observers as "damaged goods." Heard’s widely publicized battle to keep her designation as "mentally disabled" and the worker’s compensation checks dependent on that status has not played well publicly. Some Democratic insiders are wondering if Heard will seek the Republican Party endorsement if the Dems turn her down. Heard, in the past, had been jointly endorsed by both parties.
In the 1995 school board election, all four winning candidates and the top six vote-getters had only one thing in common—an endorsement by the two major political parties. The only person in the last three election cycles to win a school board election without a Party endorsement is Bill Moss.
The 71-year-old Reverend Troy, as a board appointee, would have been required by law to run for the two-year term left vacant by Morgan’s death. However, he recently announced his decision not to run. Moss has filed for this two-year term. McCann is circulating petitions for both the two-year term and a usual four-year school board term. He must file for one or the other. The top three vote-getters will win the four-year seats.
Espy is also considering both seats. When reached for comment, she stated that she was "still undecided" whether she was going to file for any seat. "I was approached after the death of Sharlene and I declined then because of my daughters. That’s still a consideration," Espy said.
Many Democratic Party regulars see an endorsed Espy as a lock in the three-person general field, and as the only candidate with a viable shot against Moss for the unexpired term. "I don’t care who the boys in the big house run against me, I’m going to win," declared Moss. "The people in my community have not been heard since I left the board, and there’s been a ground swell of support that put me back into this race. Everyone knows that I’m the only one with the courage to speak truth to power."
Dobos, the only incumbent Republican up for re-election, has political problems like Heard. As the chair of the board’s Finance Committee, he will have to explain to voters why the computer company he owned and operated went bankrupt. Hatch, if he fails to secure the Democratic endorsement, runs the risk of going from school board president to unelected.
—Bob Fitrakis
08/27/1997
Colorblind
School board may end up all- Caucasian
by Bob Fitrakis
Why didn't former Democratic mayoral candidate Bill Moss get the party's endorsement for Columbus school board—a seat that he has won three times in the past?
Moss is presently running for a seat vacated by the Reverend Leon Troy, who is black, that was held initially by the late Sharlene Morgan, who was also black. The Columbus Public School district is a majority "minority" school district with more students of color than white kids. However, only two of the seven current Columbus school board members are non-white and one of them, Troy, is stepping down. Ideally, the board's composition would better reflect the demographics of the mostly inner-city district.
Take Columbus City Council, for example. The city is approximately 28 percent black, and three of the seven Council members are black, including the president, Michael Coleman. So, why did the Franklin County Dems endorse a white suburbanite, Brian McCann, to Troy's seat, instead of Moss?
Up until July 21, 1997, McCann was registered in suburban Jefferson Township. Interestingly, July 21 was also the last date McCann could have switched his registration to Columbus to be legally eligible to run for Columbus School Board.
When asked what he thought of McCann's endorsement, Moss responded: "Who? What's his name? Who's ever heard of him?"
Franklin County Democratic Party Chair Denny White calls McCann a "well-qualified" candidate who is also "a party activist." He admits that he encouraged McCann to run, but it was before he know Moss was a candidate.
Moss has his own explanation for McCann's selection: "He's a suburban carpetbagger brought in by the party chair to please the boys downtown in the Big House. He's nothing but ambition in search of a position. Last year, he was out in the suburbs running for state rep."
The Dems' endorsement sets up the potential scenario of an all-white Columbus school board. If McCann beats Moss—and the party's endorsement is his only chance—you've eliminated a black seat. In the election for the other three open seats, the Dems endorsed board President Mark Hatch, who is white; and Loretta Heard and Reggie Anglen, who are both black. Anglen, a first-time candidate, will be battling against the endorsed Republican and incumbent, David Dobos, in an uphill fight. Heard has been weakened by her fight to have herself declared mentally ill so she can keep receiving her disability checks. Thus, it's not inconceivable, particularly if the Republicans endorse another candidate, that the board could end up lily white.
If Moss was good enough to endorse for mayor in 1995, why is he damaged goods to the Franklin County Dems now? One Democratic Central Committee member put it something like this at Saturday's endorsement meeting: "Well, it wasn't likely that anyone was going to beat Lashutka, anyway." An honest confession that Moss was marked as a "sacrificial lamb" who might bring out a large black vote for the Dems.
Moss has a different version. Sure they had him marked as a sacrificial lamb, but one they also wanted to fleece. After Moss' endorsement for mayor, Democratic Council candidates began showing up in photo ops with the Republican incumbent, Greg Lashutka. And, Moss says, the party's then-Executive Director Rob Lidle "took $3,000 out of my treasury in a eight-day period without authorization."
Moss supplied Columbus Alive with a copy of his statement of expenditures that includes two entries, one dated 3/8/95 and one 3/16/95. Both are checks made out to Robert Lidle for "consulting." Lidle, who served briefly as Moss' campaign manager, says Moss owed him the money. Moss says he "fired Lidle within days of the discovery." Both Lidle and Moss agree that only the campaign treasurer, Bob O'Shaughnessy, had the authority to write checks and Moss insists that only he could authorize expenditures.
Lidle, now a political consultant, claims Moss is just "smearing" him because he lost the party endorsement. Lidle served on the school board screening committee and was one of the four votes in favor of McCann's endorsement.
Moss says he's not afraid of the "White-ocrats." O'Shaughnessy concurs: "I don't think Bill has anything to worry about. He's going to win anyway. People like the way he stirred the pot when he was on school board."
Bob Fitrakis has volunteered on Bill Moss' campaigns in the past and has run on the Democratic Party ticket for elected offices.
09/03/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Anglen nearly blindsided
Central Ohio politics can be cruel to the visually impaired. First, there was former U.S. Congressman Chalmers P. Wylie making national news when he had the Braille version of Playboy removed from the Library of Congress. Wylie held fast, even when his critics pointed out the pictures weren't in Braille.
Now, we've got the visually impaired Reggie Anglen, an endorsed Democrat for Columbus school board, who had planned to sue the Franklin County Board of Elections. Anglen, who only reads and writes in Braille, was initially tossed off the ballot by the board. The board disqualified Anglen's petition, despite having more than enough valid signatures, because his signature on his voter card did not match that on his petition.
Anglen did not dispute this. "I've got two people who legally sign my name for me. They pay my bills, and sign other legal documents. What shocks me is that when I went in to have my name put on the ballot, they asked me how I wanted it listed. I told them Reggie Anglen. So, they had somebody guide my hands and held me fill out the form listing my name. I'm sure that signature doesn't look like my other signature," he explained.
At an appeal hearing held Tuesday morning, the board reversed its initial ruling and put Anglen's name on the ballot.
A source says that Democratic Party Chair Denny White, initially went to bat for Anglen before the board. White reportedly argued, "What are we going to do when someone comes in here with no hands?"
Prior to the appeal hearing, Anglen said he had been contacted by CNN and various disabilities advocacy groups. Anglen was represented by Ohio Legal Aid and was prepared to file motions in federal court to have his name placed on the ballot.
Anglen holds that local, state and federal law are on his side: "The Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as other federal handicapped acts call for reasonable accommodations. They're being absolutely unreasonable at the board and they're denying my basic civil rights," he said. "It's hard enough to vote when you're visually impaired, now they're making it impossible to run," Anglen commented.
When reached for comment, White pointed out that the election laws were written prior to passage of the ADA, and that election officials tend to be "bureaucratic and tend to follow the letter of the law and not its spirit."
Anglen pointed out that despite his disability, he has a successful career as an administrator at Ohio State University and that he has served on several community boards. He stated, "The only reason I'm running is for the kids. I'm not interested in higher office or being a career politician. I've never been afraid to speak my mind. I've overcome my disability, and I'd like to help others succeed as well."
—Bob Fitrakis
09/10/2002
Raking muck
Time to clean up the filth... again
by Bob Fitrakis
We live in a time of rampant political corruption: from the White House to the Columbus school board. It's similar to the turn of the last century when the U.S. Congress was known as the best politicians' money could buy. The greed and avarice of that era spawned the outraged public to build both the Populist and Progressive movements to clean up the filth. It was also the Golden Age of newspaper "muckrakers." It's the dawn of a new century again, and there's plenty of muck to rake again.
A few people ask me how it feels to know that Paul Mifsud, former chief of staff to Governor George Voinovich, will spend only three days in jail, far less time than I and my cohorts at the Alive spent spell-checking the numerous articles we wrote on him and his partner in crime, T.G. Banks. Of course I feel Mifsud got off much too easy by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor counts, but what else is new? He's powerful, joined at the hip with the governor of Ohio, and has high-priced attorneys. Banks' lawyer's calls to the Alive alone were no doubt costly.
But it ain't over yet. The dirty little secret of Ohio politics is that under the Voinovich administration, contracts seem to be systematically steered to the Guv's friends, family and donors. Now, some will quickly point out that Celeste had similar problems. They miss the bigger picture. Celeste political consultant Dick Austin and the Dem gang's old game of "I can be your friend for a $10,000 consulting fee" can't compare to the businesslike approach of the Voinovich administration.
Where'd Mifsud come from? He was a vice president at the Voinovich Company, the governor's family business run by his brother Paul. In 1991, the first year of the Voinovich reign, Joe Gilyard, director of the Governor's Office of Criminal Justice Services, charged that Voinovich Company executive Frank Fela wanted him to steer jail contracts. Fela, now a vice president at the V Group, is busy explaining away a Jefferson County bribery conviction against a company associate in relation to a jail contract. Oooh.
Good movie title: "Where the V Group goes, corruption follows." With the recent release of State Auditor Jim Petro's report on the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District, detailing $2.7 million in illegal or improperly spent public funds, we don't even have to ask who was involved. As the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported, and per usual the Columbus Dispatch failed to report, "The audit also stated that the V Group was paid $2.6 million by Gilbane as a consultant on the first phase of the project, and, after expenses had a gross profit margin of 80 percent."
Well, nothing wrong, I suppose, with nursing on brother George's huge public breasts. That's what family is for. As we speak, the Voy vonders of the V Group are consulting the hell out of our Franklin County jail. And we should be consulting a special prosecutor.
Turning to homegrown scandals, Bill Moss is back at it. At last Tuesday's Columbus school board meeting, before he was given the hook by President Mark Hatch, Mr. Bill got to ask some interesting questions. Here's the summary: Why wasn't the new school superintendent at her desk for the start of school? "Is it true that the reason Dr. Smith is not in place in the superintendent's office is that she must stay this month in Beloit [Wisconsin] to retire from there?" How the hell did Dr. Smith hire Gregory Brown as her executive assistant, who chauffeured her around town when he acted as a member of the search committee, for a salary reported at $72,000 when she's not yet the superintendent? All good questions.
And here's another one we all should be asking: What are the attorney fees incurred by the board in its bizarre and pathetic contract negotiations with the Columbus Educational Association (CEA)? I heard $200,000 a few weeks back. Now the union's throwing around the $400,000 figure. Let's see, a lame and lackluster board more concerned with charity jobs for outgoing Superintendent Larry Mixon than reining in their attorney who's getting rich because he has no incentive to negotiate a contract. And there's no superintendent in place to look out for the interests of the children. Sick and sad.
Yet, there is a bit of good news on the corruption front. As a result of the eye-opening mayoral investigation of the Columbus Police Department, HUD inspector Heath Wolfe is looking into Sergeant Charles Martin's "special assignment" salary from the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA). Martin, an aide to Chief James Jackson, took in a reported $46,000 a year in addition to his regular police salary in a "special arrangement." James Moss, the head of Police Officers for Equal Rights, pointed out that the previous officer earned only $10,000 for the same duty and that Martin allegedly worked for CMHA while on duty.
How do public officials get away with this? Where is the outraged public, the rise of a new Progressive movement? People read about it, and say to me, "Oh well. That's the way it is. What can we do? They've always been corrupt. They always will be." Public apathy and helplessness replaces outrage and action. People fear to speak out, exercise their rights. They forget the real lesson of history. Sure, there's always been corruption, but it's up to the people to root it out. As Jefferson said, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
09/17/2002 BAD URLS
9/24/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
The stench of corruption continues to seep from the Franklin County Municipal Court, despite Clerk of Court Paul Herbert's frantic efforts to keep things airtight until after the November election. Herbert is up for re-election and wants you to look at all his political propa...ads. The usual "I'm a great guy and humble public servant" b.s.
But here's what you need to ask Herbert when he's out pressing the flesh with his increasingly sweaty palm during the last six weeks of the campaign. Why did one of his service bailiffs have to serve Debra Beckwith aka Debra A. Allen, one of Herbert's deputy clerks, with a court summons on August 14, 1997? Granted, Herbert could cite increased court efficiency, since the bailiff merely had to ride the elevator down to Beckwith's office to serve her. But Herbert will have a harder time explaining away the substance of the civil suit and the accompanying documents. This is so embarrassing, maybe we should keep it quiet in an election year, like the Dispatch would.
Nah.
So, just between you, me and 100,000 readers, Beckwith—who serves at the pleasure of Herbert—is a first shift deputy clerk in the Criminal Traffic Division. She deals with the Municipal Court's criminal cases. Beckwith holds a key position in the court with highly secured computer passwords, since her job is to terminate cases when justice has been served. You know, she makes things go bye-bye, puts them to bed, sets aside court orders and bond forfeitures as directed.
Obviously, someone with such a sensitive and important job should not suffer even the "appearance of impropriety." Wrong! Bail bondsman Marvin Napier claims, in a civil suit, that Beckwith aka Allen borrowed $1,800 on January 22, 1996 from him. Now, we've got an ethical dilemma.
First lesson of Ethics 101: no court employee who oversees bond forfeitures shall borrow money from bail bondsmen who do business with the court. Now repeat, class: "conflict of interest."
Napier's suit provides a copy of a signed note wherein Beckwith promised to pay "$100 a month" to him "starting February 1, 1996." A source familiar with the transaction said the loan was reportedly "to get Beckwith's house out of foreclosure." Huh, I never thought of that. I usually get my loans from a bank.
Bondsman Napier's suit seeks $1,740 from Clerk Beckwith claiming she only paid him $60.
But it gets more interesting. After falling behind $400 in payments, Beckwith goes back to Napier on May 21 of '96 and borrows $1,800 at 10 percent interest to bail out one Dean A. Lewis. Why, you ask, would this man lend money to someone who appears to be a deadbeat on a previous loan? Let's theorize. Could it have something to do with the fact that this person is a court employee, who, with an accidental stroke of the keyboard, could save Napier thousands in bond forfeitures is heavily in debt to him? It gets worse.
Napier claimed that Beckwith agreed to pay 10 percent, or $200 of Dean's $2,000 bond cost up-front, and that she intentionally wrote him a rubber check. For our convenience—and Beckwith and Herbert's embarrassment—Napier provides copy of Beckwith's check number 413 dated June 20 (yes, that's nearly a full month postdated) for $200 and stamped "Returned for Non-sufficient Funds." But hey, what's a little alleged check-kiting among allegedly criminal court employees and bondsmen?
Second lesson of Ethics 101: don't bounce checks during unethical transactions (see lesson #1).
I can only wonder why Beckwith was willing to go further in hock to Napier and kite a check for Dean A. Lewis. Lewis was charged on May 18 with a second-degree felony charge of attempted rape. On June 7, Lewis' felony was dismissed in Municipal Court pending possible future indictment by a Franklin County grand jury.
What the hell does that mean? Well, for one, it means that Napier was never really at risk to lose the money he loaned Beckwith. This is a very popular game played by bondsmen in the Franklin County Municipal Court. Memo attached: To all court clerks who are leaking like sieves, give us a call at the Alive and let us know what happened to Mr. Lewis.
But the most interesting question is why is Napier filing the suit in the middle of Herbert's re-election campaign? And, what does Herbert intend to do when he's confronted on the campaign trail by concerned citizens and inquiring minds who want to know why he would tolerate such inappropriate behavior by Beckwith? Is it because Beckwith donated $70 to the Herbert campaign last year—$10 more than she paid Napier back—and quite a sum for someone so financially strapped?
I know, how does this affect me? Who cares? Think of it this way: If a court employee is compromised and controlled by a bondsman, then all sorts of stuff can and does happen. Criminals can post bond knowing full well that they will skip and no one is going to hunt them down. Why? Because bondsmen have no motivation to track down the criminals that flee if the judges and clerks do not force them to pay up when criminals don't show for trial.
Consequently, not only do dangerous criminals go free, but elected officials like judges and clerks of court develop a cozy and corrupt little relationship. We call it the "iron triangle." Bondsmen make money off criminals, they then give some of the profit to the campaigns of judges and clerk of courts, who in turn make it easy for bondsmen to make even more money.
Ethics lesson #3: The beginning of court politics is the end of ethics and death of justice. But hey, did you see that really great Herbert for Clerk of Courts commercial?
09/24/1997
FEATURED ARTICLE
Bounty booty
Taking the law into their own hands—on our behalf
by Bob Fitrakis
The recent murder of an Arizona couple by so-called "bounty hunters" has caused many central Ohio citizens to ask: "Can it happen here?" A Columbus Alive investigation strongly suggests that the answer is "yes."
Last month, as many as seven bounty hunters wearing ski masks broke down the door of a Phoenix home, held young children at gunpoint and killed the couple in a commando-style raid supposedly looking for a bail jumper. The couple's bedroom was riddled with at least 29 bullet holes. It was the wrong house, and police now suspect it may have been a disguised robbery attempt.
If robbery was the motive, the raid was illegal; if they were looking for a bail jumper, the raid was probably legal. Earlier this year in Powell, Ohio, Cleveland bounty hunters from a private company called U.S. Fugitive Recovery Team. Inc. entered a Delaware County house with guns drawn and searched the premises without permission. The men wore dark jackets with "Agent" on the back, refused to identify themselves and to leave when the owner asked them to. They were looking for a $500 skip. The fugitive had never lived in, or been to the residence under siege. The bounty hunters stood to make $100 from the raid.
In the early '80s, the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote a series of crusading articles with headlines like "Bondsmen surpass police in power" and "Bounty hunters an unsavory lot" that depicted bounty hunter horror stories and pointed out the need for regulating the occupation. During this period, states like Kentucky outlawed bounty hunting and California required out-of-state bondsmen and bounty hunters to secure an arrest warrant from local police. At the time, one of Cleveland's most notorious bounty hunters, James D. Shields, was being sought by federal agents on firearms charges. Shields had spent four years in prison for check forgery before going into the rewarding field of bounty hunting.
In a front page story in 1981, the Plain Dealer told the story of a woman whose door was kicked in by bondsman/bounty hunter Charles C. (Chuck) Brown who wielded a pearl-handled revolver and two sidekicks "touting shotguns." The bounty hunters threatened the woman, her cousin, a niece and three of her children. They were searching for the woman's friend, a female bail jumper wanted on a misdemeanor charge of slapping a store clerk. Waving the revolver, Brown grabbed a babysitter by mistake and dragged her out of the apartment. "I want my money or that bitch," he was reported saying. No charges were filed in the incident because Brown was acting within his legal rights as a bail bondsman/bounty hunter. Brown remains a leading bondsman in Cleveland and also operates an office in Columbus.
Cleveland attorney Terry Gilbert stated at the time that bondsmen "have thugs that go out at night and grab people." Little has changed in Cleveland, although bounty hunters now must register with the county sheriff. And even less has changed in Columbus. Bill Neill, an ex-Franklin County deputy sheriff and former bail bondsman—and by necessity, bounty hunter—claims he brought in 147 fugitives in 1996. "You don't have to bust in someone's door with a gun drawn, but some of them just like doing it that way. Instead of a manhunt, I looked at it like a fishing expedition. You've got to bait them. You can pose as a pizza delivery guy, or arrest them in the morning when they're going to their car. I once told a woman that I was with a taxi company, wanted to deliver a Valentine's gift to her and asked for her address. It worked," Neill noted.
As in Arizona, there is practically no regulation of bounty hunters in Ohio. Amidst the clamor to lock up all criminals, bounty hunters—some ex-felons themselves—are given free rein to hunt down bail jumpers who fail to appear for their court date. Bounty hunters cite an 1873 U.S. Supreme Court ruling they say gives them the right to break into a fugitive's house to make an arrest. Glorified in TV programs like Bounty Hunters that airs locally on Channel 6, aspiring bounty hunters are on the rise. A quick perusal of the Web attests to the free-wheeling and unprofessional nature of the occupation.
At the Bounty Hunters On-Line site, one can learn that, "...a bounty hunter can use any means necessary—including breaking and entering—and they don't need a warrant." At another site for budding bounty hunters, a seven-lesson course can be purchased for $89.95, with "free certification" guaranteed. Despite the fact that bounty hunters abound in Ohio, there were "no registered agents" for Ohio at the Bail Enforcement/Fugitive Recovery Information Center's Agent Directory Web site.
Neill is a member of the National Association of Bail Enforcement Agents. He pointed out that of the dozens of self-proclaimed bounty hunters in central Ohio, he knew of only two others who were members of the Association, and he said that there's probably fewer than 10 members in the state of Ohio.
A private investigator in Ohio must carry $400,000 worth of liability insurance per incident; a bounty hunter can only get $15,000 per, with $1,000 deductible, and that's part of the problem. Many carry no insurance. The police don't have time to follow up on all the warrants issued against fugitives so some bondsmen hire low-lifes to take care of their problems so they don't have to forfeit their bonds.
Ohio law only requires that a bounty hunter have a letter from an authorized bail bondsman to apprehend a specific fugitive. "When I was writing bonds and someone skipped, I'd write a letter authorizing a bounty hunter, I'd give them a photo of the fugitive, a copy of the warrant and the forfeiture letter. I'd put it all in a one-gallon Ziplock Baggie to protect myself from liability," Neill recalled.
In Neill's analysis, many bondsmen simply informally authorize bounty hunters to bring in fugitives. When something outrageous happens like the wrong door kicked in or an innocent person roughed up, the bondsman can claim that the bounty hunter was working as an independent agent.
In Ohio, bail bondsmen are licensed by the state Department of Insurance and their activities monitored by the local elected Clerk of Courts. But bounty hunters are unlicensed and unmonitored. Neill said that almost all bondsmen, out of desperation, end up acting as bounty hunters if they want to stay in business; yet, not all bounty hunters are bondsmen. This makes it easy for former criminals and other unsavory sorts to find employment hunting fugitives. Neill asserts that this is why he left the business.
Neill pointed to the case of Ralph Monroe Munk, a local bounty hunter, who worked with Neill for Marvin Napier's Columbus Bail Bonds. "Marv told me he couldn't find perfect people to be bounty hunters," Neill said. And Munk was far from perfect. Munk had a felony forgery conviction and was also arrested in 1996 for domestic violence. Neill recalled that he and another bondsman, Dougie Alexander, drove to a residence to nab a fugitive. Munk and another man showed up for the same purpose. After apprehending the skip suspect, a Mexican national, Neill and Alexander took him to jail. Munk and his partner also left, but a police report filed on July 26, 1996 indicates that "a bail bondsman" returned to an apartment at 116 N. Waverly "to serve a warrant." The bondsmen encountered the fugitive's brother, who spoke no English, and "took [the] victim's wallet" with $800 in it. When Neill and Alexander were brought in as suspects, the victim indicated that it wasn't them, but the "other" bondsman.
Following the Arizona incident, NBC4 interviewed local bounty hunter Torino E. Hawkins. Napier used Hawkins as a bounty hunter because of his experience as a security guard with City Security. Yet, on November 4, 1995, Phyllis Hogg filed a complaint against Hawkins in Franklin County Municipal Court. Hogg claimed that Hawkins pushed her, hit her, sprayed Mace in her face, and restrained her while working for City Security. He was charged with a first-degree misdemeanor assault. "Hawkins came in crying that he's got warrants out on him, so I put him in touch with my lawyer since it would look really bad for a bounty hunter to be wanted himself," Neill said. Hawkins pleaded guilty to a reduced disorderly conduct charge in June 1996. Hawkins' bounty hunting reportedly got him charged with illegal gun possession in Indiana. Hawkins allegedly borrowed money from Napier to help defend the charges, but, failed to pay the money back, according to civil suit #96-24155 filed by Napier and still pending.
Duane Scott Dobbins is both a local bondsman and bounty hunter under investigation since July by the state Department of Insurance for allegedly falsifying his license application. His local activities are technically monitored by Municipal Clerk of Courts Paul Herbert and Franklin County Common Pleas Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi. Dobbins was convicted of a felony drug abuse charge in 1985 and was charged with indecent exposure in '86. On the latter charge, he pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct. He also had four domestic violence charges filed against him but was never convicted.
Herbert, up for election this year, is in the middle of the Dobbins controversy. Falsifying state records can be a felony under Ohio law. Dobbins, a former deputy clerk in Franklin County Municipal Court and a former Republican Central Committee member, called in various political favors to pressure Herbert into certifying him to write bonds, according to Neill and others.
On Dobbins' bonding agent application form filed in May 1994, he checked "No" to the question asking, "Have you ever been convicted of, or are you currently charged with, a felony or misdemeanor other than a traffic violation." On the court's application checklist form, question #5 pertaining to Dobbins' criminal record is blacked out. A handwritten note appears at the top of the checklist stating "Not approved" with Herbert's initials and the date "10-1-96." Another note stated "Probationary period 90 days, 2-12-97."
In a notarized statement, Neill said after he learned that Dobbins had a felony conviction, he notified Napier the next day. Within a week, he claimed he notified Herbert's Chief Deputy Mike Pirik and the Ohio Department of Insurance's licensing section. A letter dated July 24, 1997 with the case #ENF2981 from the Department of Insurance substantiates Neill's notification of that agency. The investigation of Dobbins is still underway as is an investigation by the Columbus Police Department into the relationship between Herbert's office and bail bondsmen.
In July, Herbert's opponent, JoAnne St. Clair, in a letter to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien, called for a "special prosecutor" to investigate "possible felonious acts" involving bond forfeitures.
If the Clerk of Courts or court employees tend to favor one bonding firm over another, it puts increased pressure on the other bondsmen to turn to more aggressive bounty hunting methods. The cozy relationship between bail bondsmen and court employees has been documented in past Alive articles and columns. If the courts and their employees aren't squeaky clean, it becomes even more difficult to rein in the bondsmen and bounty hunters.
In a confidential letter obtained by Alive that was attached to an audit by KPMG of the Clerk of Courts office, dated June 5, 1997, the auditors pointed out that the courts are not in compliance with standard accounting practices. This "causes difficulties in assessing amounts outstanding on cases.... The court needs to adopt a formalized system for all cases," the letter continues.
KPMG noted that money owed to the court by third parties, such as bondsmen, were "informal and not in writing" and they recommended that "in the future, the court formalized any future payment arrangement in writing to help ensure in the collection of such amounts."
Napier is currently suing Deputy Clerk Debra Beckwith for non-repayment of loans totaling nearly $4,000. The actions of three other Herbert-appointed deputy clerks have caused Herbert political embarrassment. On August 22, 1996, former Deputy Clerk Joseph Bahgat was charged with three felonies: burglary, possessing criminal tools, and tampering with evidence after allegedly using his key to break into the Clerk's office and removing a traffic ticket issued against him. Bahgat pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was given a year's probation.
Raphael Harris is another former deputy clerk in Municipal Court who recently ran afoul of the law. A volunteer at Republican Party headquarters during the 1995 election, Herbert rewarded Harris with a deputy clerk position midway through 1996. Harris didn't last long. By October he was gone under cloudy circumstances. Harris was charged with assault in August 1996 and entered a no-contest plea on October 7, 1996.
What is certain is that prior to his hire, Harris had pleaded guilty to both disorderly conduct and obstruction of official business charges stemming from an October 12, 1994 incident with Columbus Police. According to police, Harris was in a fight with three other men and women and when he was told to stop by Officer Jeff Sagan, he "persisted" and then "would not answer questions." Harris' path from obstructing official business to conducting official court business is not uncommon.
Michael Dove, another clerk, worked in the Criminal and Traffic Division with Harris and Bahgat. He left the Clerk's office at approximately the same time as Harris last fall. On October 26, 1996, Dove was charged with driving with a suspended license, speeding and a felony drug abuse count. Released on his own recognizance, he failed to show for trial and as we go to press, a warrant is out for his arrest.
"Bad ass" bounty hunters; desperate money-driven bondsmen; questionable court employees, some with criminal records; and corrupt elected court officials with a vested interest in the existing system. This is a formula for disaster. It can happen here, but it doesn't have to, if elected officials acknowledge the problem and reform the system.
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10/08/1997 by Bob Fitrakis
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10/15/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
There's a certain irony in Chief Jackson's lawsuit against the city of Columbus, Mayor Greg Lashutka and Public Safety Director Thomas Rice, according to retired Police Sergeant and President of Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER) James Moss. "Virtually everything in his complaint, all the things he says Rice and the mayor did to him, is how he's been treating black officers for years," Moss claims.
Chief Jackson's suit, filed last week in federal court, screams racism. He repeatedly charges Mayor Lashutka and Rice with violating both his civil rights and his civil liberties during last year's mayoral investigation of him because of his status as the city's first African-American chief of police. Moss has a federal lawsuit against Chief Jackson, who he claims violated his civil rights in a similar fashion. Moss points out that Jackson—who accuses Rice of issuing an unconstitutional "gag order" against him—issued such an order against the POER president after he spoke on a local radio program.
"The POER has said all along that the mayor's investigation has nothing to do with race," insists Moss, "it's all about corruption."
On Tuesday, one week after Jackson filed suit, the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division came to town to begin its formal investigation into allegations of misconduct against the Columbus Division of Police. The POER initiated and pushed for the investigation. The relationship between Jackson and the POER—the only African-American police officers' association of any prominence—provides an interesting backdrop to the chief's suit.
The POER was created in 1978 "as an alternative response to the historical inability, or refusal of established police fraternal organizations and the Columbus Police Department's poor record of responding to civil rights and other legal mandates regarding minorities, African-American officers and the community."
Initially, the POER was Jackson's biggest booster. It lobbied hard for his successful appointment as chief in 1990 and gave Jackson a recognition and appreciation dinner after he became chief. It stood by the chief when he was accused of soliciting a prostitute early on in his tenure. The POER marched on City Hall and demonstrated at a City Council meeting after the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) attacked Jackson on the matter.
But within a few years, the POER's attitude changed dramatically. At a May 22, 1995 City Council meeting, both Moss and Luther Hunter, regional vice president of the National Black Police Association, accused Jackson of racial discrimination on disciplinary matters. Moss and Hunter complained bitterly about the chief's refusal to allow officers to attend national black police officer's events, while granting that right to FOP officers.
In August 1995, the POER issued a specific list of incidents documenting the disparate treatment of black officers by the chief. In a letter to Rice, Moss complained of "unfair treatment of African-American police officers by Chief Jackson." The FOP disagreed, charging instead that Jackson is "....unfair to everybody regardless of ethnicity." At the time, Rice issued a 143-page report that found "most" of POER's discrimination claims against Jackson "without factual foundations." Jackson explained that Rice's report could come to no other conclusion given his nearly 40 years of fighting for equity for all officers. Jackson claimed that the POER should have checked their facts first.
On March 27, 1996, the POER issued a statement pointing out that Jackson wouldn't release all the records needed to prove their allegations and that the Ohio Supreme Court had recently ordered the police to release the records requested. A July 31, 1996 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint filed by black officer Clyde Haynie raised the specter of cronyism among Jackson's top commanders after his sergeant, also an African-American, was removed in his investigation. "If the Columbus Division of Police is concerned with ethics involving investigations...why has the Columbus Police Department allowed brothers investigate[ing] brothers. Sgt. Massy investigated a complaint involving his brother and Commander Perigee has investigated a complaint involving his brother. Commander Macramé admitted in the Commander Burns investigation that he went out of state with Commander Burns. The Columbus Police Department was not concerned about their friendship," Haynie wrote.
Burns was under investigation for his interceding in the bust of a high-priced escort service run by Anthony Menucci. Burns personally logged the evidence from the raid, but failed to have it inventoried before it was placed in his office and subsequently vanished. Rumors of Menucci being "protected" by Burns ran rampant through the police department.
Jackson, the admitted "old school disciplinarian," overruled a call for demoting Burns after an Internal Affairs investigation and such a recommendation by a fellow commander. Instead Jackson slapped Burns on the wrist by placing a 30-day letter of reprimand in his personnel file.
On October 10, 1996, Mayor Lashutka at Rice's insistence, began an unprecedented mayoral investigation with subpoena power into Jackson's handling of the Burns/Menucci affair. Rice's popularity amongst POER members began to rise and Jackson's plummeted. On October 25, 1996, Rice dismissed Jackson's charge against black female officer Cjarrault Everhart for allegedly failing to be "truthful" in a dispute with a white sergeant. Rice noted that there were no "third-party witnesses."
In a December letter in the Columbus Post, Moss escalated his attack on Jackson, just as Jackson was attempting to rally Columbus' black community to his side, appearing alongside the Reverend Jesse Jackson at a local demonstration against racism. "Prior to this investigation, have you ever seen Chief Jackson at a Reverend Jesse Jackson rally? Have you seen him at any Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast or at any NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet?"
Jackson was found guilty on two of the five charges against him, specifically, failing to render impartial discipline in the Burns matter and destroying a homicide investigation file. The Civil Service Commission gave Jackson a brief suspension. Yet, the battle between Jackson and the POER grew worse. On March 3, 1997, Moss wrote Federal Judge James L. Graham that under Jackson, "acts of racism and retaliation" had gone from "bad to worse." Moss concluded: "The current Chief of Police, in his quest for ever-widening power, thinks racism and discrimination do not exist in the department unless it affects him."
Later that month, Moss termed Jackson's assertion that "there's no one in the City that can claim that they have done as much for minorities as I," as "arrogant, pompous and completely inaccurate...."
On May 29, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission determined that there was probable cause that black Officer Charlie Gordon was unlawfully discriminated against in his removal from the helicopter patrol. In discussing Jackson's suit, Moss points out that "Jackson, despite this order, has yet to reinstate him."
In a July 16 statement, Moss revealed that the "POER is currently working with the United States Department of Justice on the issues of unfair treatment by Chief Jackson against African-Americans." In a letter to Rice dated July 28, Moss spelled out his reasons for going to the Justice Department: "Chief Jackson, with his deeply rooted retaliatory mindset, has not hesitated to punish our members with false accusations and charges without substance.... Jackson has a history of issuing unfair punishment for African-American police officers. There has been no other place to lodge a complaint about the department's 'Kangaroo Justice.'"
This is the history that culminates in Jackson's filing a racial discrimination suit against the city of Columbus while at the same time, the African-American police officer's association finds his claims disingenuous and calls in the Justice Department to investigate the chief.
—Bob Fitrakis
10/15/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Jail sentencing not a problem
Banks' construction management projects move forward without him
Despite the recent conviction and sentencing of Columbus contractor Thomas G. Banks, at least one of the local projects that includes Banks as part of the construction team is moving ahead, unfazed by the contractor's looming jail term.
An Ohio State official said Monday that the university will make no changes to the construction team it hired for the $93 million Schottenstein Center as well as the $52.3 million Max Fisher College of Business; even though Banks, one of that team's main players, will spend three months in jail for an ethics violation.
Banks, who was sentenced last week alongside Governor Voinovich's former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, must also pay a $1,000 fine and do 500 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation relating to work his company did on Mifsud's home.
Nevertheless, OSU has no intentions of taking Banks' company off the job. "We hired a construction team, and that construction team is performing without any problems," said OSU Architect Jill Morelli. In fact, Morelli said she wasn't aware that Banks had even been sentenced until contacted by Columbus Alive.
Last year, Alive reported that two construction management proposals submitted to OSU for the Schottenstein project included resumes for Banks that stated he holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from the university. Another form included in one of the proposals said Banks holds an advanced degree in engineering from OSU as well. Neither the alumni affairs office nor the verification department at the OSU Registrar's office has a record of a Thomas Gleason Banks, with Banks' social security number, having been awarded any degrees from the university.
But Morelli said Banks hasn't had a major, hands-on presence at the projects, and she said the university has no qualms about the work being done by the construction team.
"Thomas Banks isn't the specific representative on either of those projects," Morelli said. "You hire the whole team. We didn't hire Thomas Banks the individual, we hired the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team, and they're performing up to par. So the quick, easy answer is no, we're not anticipating any changes on either of those projects."
Morelli added that OSU's contract with Banks-Carbone stipulates that the university makes payments at the same rate at which the projects progress, meaning that OSU won't be done paying the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team until the projects are completed.
Construction companies run by Banks were also involved with two other major projects in Columbus: management of construction of the new, $125 million COSI center; and the city's controversial South of Main housing project, costing more than $4.2 million. Officials with COSI, as well as KeyBank, the construction lender that selected T.G. Banks Special Projects Division, Inc. to finish the South of Main project, could not comment on the status of Banks' involvement in light of his sentence by press time.
—Bob Fitrakis
10/15/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Northwest Area Commission: Gone but not forgotten?
Is there a task force, or isn't there?
That's the elusive question from the front of the civic war that erupted last year between the Northwest Civic Association (NWCA) and the Northwest Area Task Force, over which group would best serve residents on Columbus' northwest side. NWCA members contend the task force is dead—that its membership has all but disappeared, and that it was never able to garner the 500 signatures needed to bump the NWCA from power. Those involved with the task force aren't saying anything, but could be in more hot water, as NWCA officials are now alleging that city taxes may have been used to fund the task force and its activities.
The duel began in August of last year at an open forum where the task force announced its plan to establish an area commission that would have effectively replaced the 27-year-old NWCA as the northwest community's governing board. That forum was heated, to say the least, with droves of NWCA members and others in attendance attacking the task force's motives and questioning the need for an area commission.
The forum was billed as the task force's first meeting, since the city code requires all such meetings to be open to the public and all community organizations. But the following January, a Columbus Alive cover story revealed that NWCA officials had obtained a city file containing minutes from five task force meetings held in May, June and July which were apparently secret gatherings organized by task force chair Eric Ladd. Included in the article was the revelation that Cynthia Rickman, community relations representative for the city Department of Trade and Development, had attended some of those meetings; as well as the admission by former task force co-Chair Carl Fielding that the city had no intention of notifying the NWCA of the task force in order to gain control over zoning for the possible development of the OSU airport. While representatives from the city denied any wrongdoing, the NWCA threatened to sue if and when the task force filed the 500-signature petition that is the first step toward establishing an area commission.
Now, 10 months later, all is quiet.
"No petition has been filed with the city as of yet," said Dick Ritchie, planning manager for the Department of Trade and Development, who the NWCA claims knew of the secret meetings and would be named in the lawsuit. "It's been pretty quiet for a while. Last I heard the task force was still gathering signatures."
Peggy McElroy, president of the NWCA, said the task force's membership has crumbled since the accusations of secret meetings and collusion were made public. Regardless of whether the task force is still working on the petition, the NWCA considers the group defunct. "As far as we're concerned, the task force is dead," McElroy said. "And if they do file, we'll sue."
Dead, but not forgotten. The NWCA is now focusing its attention on a city-funded grant Ladd received last year to start a consumer watchdog agency that McElroy said may have instead been used to fund the task force's activities. In April of last year, Ladd was approved for a $16,410 grant by the Alliance for Cooperative Justice, which was to be used to get Ladd's Consumer Watchdog Organization off the ground. The watchdog organization was aimed at protecting consumers and helping them recover financial losses from telemarketing scams. But McElroy raised several questions about links between the Consumer Watchdog Organization and the Northwest Area Task Force.
Both organizations, according to their respective files with the city, started operating within one month of each other—the watchdog organization in April 1996, and the task force in May of 1996. McElroy also said she found a letter regarding the Consumer Watchdog Organization in the task force's file, even though the two files are kept at different offices, at different locations in the city. That letter was from the Far Northwest Coalition to the Alliance for Cooperative Justice withdrawing its support of the watchdog agency. It was faxed to the city from the Alliance for Cooperative Justice and somehow ended up in the task force's file. "That letter was never found in the [watchdog agency] grant file," McElroy said.
Another question mark for the NWCA, she said, is the fact that the mailing address for the Consumer Watchdog Organization—4900 Reed Road Suite 202—was where the task force held at least one of its clandestine meetings. And the watchdog agency later switched its address to 4856 Sawmill Road Suite 108, the same mailing address found on numerous task force documents. That address was registered under the name of Sheila Forsythe, a member of the task force.
Before receiving the grant, Ladd received a required letter of support from a citizen—Robert Molt—in which Molt introduced himself to Ladd as someone who would benefit from the watchdog agency. But the letter failed to mention that Molt and Ladd had been in business together since 1992, and Molt later took a part-time job with the watchdog agency. Molt, too, was a member of the task force.
If there is a link between the two organizations, McElroy said it could imply that the grant money awarded to Ladd's Consumer Watchdog Organization may also have been linked to the task force. And since that grant was "funded totally by the City of Columbus," according to a letter McElroy received from Franklin County Commissioner Dewey Stokes, NWCA taxpayers could have been funding the very group that was working to oust the organization from power.
When contacted by Alive, Ladd would not comment on the status of the petition, the task force or the grant. McElroy said the NWCA will lodge a formal complaint with Columbus City Council sometime this week that will ask for an investigation into the grant and the task force.
"How do we know what that money went to?" asked McElroy. "The whole thing smells. How could they not be linked? It raises very serious questions as to what that grant money was used for."
—Bob Fitrakis
10/22/1997
Is The Dispatch taking off the gloves?
Coverage of V Group raises important questions
by Bob Fitrakis
Look out, Guv! The Dispatch has taken off its kid gloves.
The first sign of a possible rumble between the Republican-friendly Big D and the Guv popped up in Lee Leonard's October 13 column on the six-month sentence given to Voinovich's former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud. The normally cautious and thoughtful Leonard zinged the governor with the obvious: "When Inspector General David D. Sturtz began to get too close to possible mischief with Mifsud in the middle, he was replaced by Voinovich." Leonard's column made it clear that he wasn't buying the Guv's two-step spinabout boogie on how the Mifsud thing was a "aberration instead of a symptom."
Yo, Guv. Homie-shepherd dude. Quit frontin'. Here's Straight-Up 101: Mifsud was the executive vice president of the Voinovich Cos., the second-in-command behind your brother, Pauly, at your family business. You hired him to be the second most powerful man in the state, your chief of staff. He did your bidding; he was a crook and got caught. Deal with it.
Next, a perceptive Dispatch editorial ran, suggesting some of the above. Finally, page one of Sunday's Metro section pointed out how State Auditor James Petro's probe of Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen M. Stern might be "seen as political payback." Indeed. It was.
The Dispatch knows that Stern's investigation of the Voinovich companies, now called The V Group, revealed a similar pattern of questionable business practices at our own incredibly over-budget Franklin County jail. By deposing Pauly, Stern got on the record the trail of political contributions from The V Group into Republican County Commissioners' coffers as well as the more damning fact that The V Group of Ohio incorporated in Florida late last year.
Most V Group watchers are well aware that Florida's bankruptcy laws are more liberal, allowing one to keep more loot. So, many suspect that the plan was for Pauly to transfer assets gained in Ohio from public prison and jail projects to Florida. Then, as George headed off to Washington next year (God forbid), Pauly could leave the busted shell of The V Group in Ohio and spend his remaining days with well-connected friends in the sun.
What the Dispatch revealed on Sunday is the same old game George, Paul and Pauly played on Joe Gilyard, former director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services in 1991. Recall that an anonymous hand-written letter to the office of the governor—later revealed to have been written by Pauly Voinovich—triggered an investigation of Gilyard after he made allegations of contract steering against the Voinovich Cos. Now, as reported in Sunday's Dispatch, another anonymous letter has been sent to Petro—and there have been others making allegations against critics of The V Group. Auditor Petro, aka the Guv's Errand Boy, ought to be ashamed for going after Stern and suppressing his report on possible wrongdoing by The V Group. But I like it. If he wants to be the governor's attack dog against the forces of good, he's slitting his own political throat. With next year's election, he may be committing political suicide.
Readers of this column who can't stand the stench of The V Group should write anonymous letters to Auditor Petro—particularly those who call me regularly from the building industry and have intimate knowledge of alleged wrongdoing by Paul and Pauly—and demand an investigation of all V Group finances. You can reach Petro at 88 E. Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio, 43215. CC me a copy of your anonymous letters and we'll see whether Petro is a gutless lapdog or not. I'll run the best verifiable excerpts.
Most know Paul Mifsud got six months for accepting a $100,000 gift from minority contractor Tommy Banks, who was awarded some $3.7 million in unbid state contracts. Almost unnoticed was the three-month sentence given Banks. But, Banks still has friends in high places, especially in the law-enforcement community. Jackson's order sheet, dated October 9, 1997—after Tommy's sentencing—reads "ATTENTION ALL PERSONNEL: The following individuals will receive awards at a Special Commendation Ceremony ... in the first floor auditorium of police headquarters." Included on the list: Citizen Thomas Banks. Perhaps the chief should read his own directive to all police officers not to associate with criminal or unsavory types. Or maybe that just applies to the rank-and-file officers. Maybe Tommy can call the chief on his "cell" phone and thank him.
We understand Tommy dined with Sheriff Jim Karnes right after his sentencing, and was seen with deputy sheriffs tailgating in his car at the Penn State-OSU game. But, reportedly, Big Jim has promised to pull Tommy's special commission which allows him to wear the sheriff's uniform and carry his .45 in funeral processions. Obviously, Big Jim is showing better judgment than Chief Jackson, if he follows through.
And Mayor Lashutka once again showed great courage and wisdom in telling the chief to stuff his lawsuit that claims the city's leader is a racist. Lashutka is many things. But mostly, he's fiscally conservative and socially, dare I say it, liberal. To accuse the mayor and safety director of racism as motive for minor procedural violations is absurd. Their motivation was clear: corruption in the top ranks of the police department that the chief openly tolerated.
10/29/1997
The apathy vote
How we can kick Botswana’s butt
by Bob Fitrakis
Last time I looked, the U.S. was rated 49th out of 50 democratic countries in voter turnout. We were kickin’ butt over Botswana. The sheer boredom of this year’s local elections give the Botswanians hope.
But, there are real issues at stake; and electoral politics still matters, sorta, even in Columbus. So here’s a quick election guide to inspire you to hit the polls this Tuesday.
Okay, it’s a little difficult here, since none had the courage to come out against the key fat cats vs. the people issue—the stadium/arena referendum. But here goes. Council President Michael Coleman, who should win handily, has done a commendable job pushing central city development. A cautious consensus-builder—he’ll even talk to me in public—he has a keen awareness of the need for better-trained workers. Mike also rates three cheers for standing with the south side community following the Georgia-Pacific explosion. Mike’s all right.
Incumbent Richard Sensenbrenner—with a family name like that, he’ll be an incumbent as long as he wishes. But, the dude’s not coasting on his name. He’s good on the environment, nearly great, and the Rails to Trails thing he pushes is way groovy. It makes sense for progressives to vote for the most progressive member of the Sensenbrenner family. And that doesn’t make him a "liberal."
Newcomer Mary Ellen O’Shaughnessy—From A Family That Gives A Dam. And she’s darned good on most issues from the environment to education to central city revitalization. Also, she’s the only non-incumbent with a good chance to win. New blood, old family, good mix.
Incumbent Peggy Fisher—hobbled with health problems and a lack of Republican big money, may very well lose her seat. I’ve always liked Peggy, particularly after she suggested turning the trash plant into a recycling center. Maybe that’s why the Republicans aren’t giving her better backing.
Linda Reidelbach—ideologically the only true conservative in the race, emerged politically in 1992 as an independent right-to-life Congressional candidate with a respectable vote count as such. Gracious, thoughtful and a tad bit populist, but on the other side of the political spectrum from most Alive readers.
Republican-endorsed Ruth McNeil, a woman of irony, served as my campaign manager when I ran for Columbus School Board with the Coalition of Concerned Black Citizens slate. The tragedy of politics is that she couldn’t get her message out to a larger audience. Even when she’s backing the status quo, she’s interesting and provocative.
Janet Jackson, what have you done for me lately? Actually, she’s done a lot, including pushing for the prosecution of Anthony Menucci, the town’s most notorious pimp, on domestic violence charges. She’s firm, she’s fair. And I’ve never heard any dirt on her, and that’s saying a lot in Columbus politics. Plus, the Republicans control the county prosecutor, and Ron O’Brien’s never heard of a white-collar political crime. Jackson knows corruption when she sees it.
Bruce Johnson—a conservative senator who is qualified, capable, with a few good ideas like his zero-tolerance for deadbeat dads and drunk drivers. Of course, if elected, this would put him in the awkward position of sending Republican County leader Mike Colley to jail.
If you are a shady bail bondsman, an ex-felon seeking to be a bounty hunter or a Republican political hack with a few misdemeanor convictions, Paul Herbert’s your man. If you want to clean things up at the Clerk of Court’s office, vote for Jo Ann Saint (compared to Herbert) Clair.
SCHOOL BOARD
For the unexpired term of the Reverend Leon Troy, Bill Moss is the man. Why? The Dispatch says he "has built a reputation for needless agitation and disruption." Translated: "he’s unbought, unbossed and doesn’t kiss Wolfe butt." Power to the people! [Editor’s note: In the interest of full disclosure, we might add that Bob managed Moss’ campaign for state representative in 1994.]
His opponent, Brian McCann, is Democratic Party Chair Denny White’s favorite lap dog. The Dispatch correctly questioned his "fitness for elective office." A likable rogue.
President Mark Hatch is Columbus’ version of Bill Clinton with occasional flashes of courage on the tax abatement issue and gay rights.
Incumbent Loretta Heard should lose on principle after apparently ripping off Worker’s Comp for years. I’m surprised they didn’t use her in the Vote for Issue Two commercials. Although she’s become quite feisty and interesting since they cut off her check.
Dave Dobos—not to be confused with Los Lobos. He spends so time on school board issues that his business went bankrupt while he was chair of the School Finance Board. A Republican who should be commended for refusing to be a Dispatch sycophant. The Dispatch behind is ample and insatiable when it comes to kissing. Dobos knows this.
Reggie Anglen—OSU Administrator. He’s black, he’s blind, he’s independent and refreshingly honest. A vote for Anglen really shakes things up. I served on the Friends of the Homeless Board with him and he’s a good man.
Bill Buckel, a former Free Press distributor and Battelle librarian, has got the best single idea in the race: each school would have its own elected council. He’s also got perhaps the worst idea: cut senior teacher’s salaries. Whatever his positions, Bill is incorruptible, indefatigable and won’t buckle to special interests.
Nicholas Cipiti, conservative insurance exec—a quick two strikes against him in my book—is a good two-strike hitter. His thoughtful analysis and defense of a lower teacher-to-pupil ratio, and the fact that he’s not an incumbent, gives me pause.
Special note: Omar Ganoom, former state treasury official is running for Grandview School Board. Omar is one of those rare Democrats who belongs to both the ACLU and the NRA for the same reasons. If your tastes run in that direction, he’s your man. And in the Westerville race, reformers fed up with fiscal irresponsibility are urging a vote for Jim Harrison.
Issue One: Black male predators are running amok. Let’s deny them bail. A yes vote is a vote to void the Constitution. Should be real popular with police state advocates and frightened suburbanites. Vote no on principle.
Issue Two: Let’s see, our Republican Governor, Republican Senate and House, with the generous help of large multi-national corporations are going to "reform" Worker’s Compensation. Right. A yes vote guarantees more hostage-taking at Spring and High. If you receive an hourly wage or salary—that is, you’re a worker—you have to vote no. Don’t let them fool you by attacking your lawyer. The company has a lawyer, he doesn’t work for you. The boss’s lawyer makes sure you get as few benefits as possible.
11/05/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
That's the elusive question from the front of the civic war that erupted last year between the Northwest Civic Association (NWCA) and the Northwest Area Task Force, over which group would best serve residents on Columbus' northwest side. NWCA members contend the task force is dead—that its membership has all but disappeared, and that it was never able to garner the 500 signatures needed to bump the NWCA from power. Those involved with the task force aren't saying anything, but could be in more hot water, as NWCA officials are now alleging that city taxes may have been used to fund the task force and its activities.
The duel began in August of last year at an open forum where the task force announced its plan to establish an area commission that would have effectively replaced the 27-year-old NWCA as the northwest community's governing board. That forum was heated, to say the least, with droves of NWCA members and others in attendance attacking the task force's motives and questioning the need for an area commission.
The forum was billed as the task force's first meeting, since the city code requires all such meetings to be open to the public and all community organizations. But the following January, a Columbus Alive cover story revealed that NWCA officials had obtained a city file containing minutes from five task force meetings held in May, June and July which were apparently secret gatherings organized by task force chair Eric Ladd. Included in the article was the revelation that Cynthia Rickman, community relations representative for the city Department of Trade and Development, had attended some of those meetings; as well as the admission by former task force co-Chair Carl Fielding that the city had no intention of notifying the NWCA of the task force in order to gain control over zoning for the possible development of the OSU airport. While representatives from the city denied any wrongdoing, the NWCA threatened to sue if and when the task force filed the 500-signature petition that is the first step toward establishing an area commission.
Now, 10 months later, all is quiet.
"No petition has been filed with the city as of yet," said Dick Ritchie, planning manager for the Department of Trade and Development, who the NWCA claims knew of the secret meetings and would be named in the lawsuit. "It's been pretty quiet for a while. Last I heard the task force was still gathering signatures."
Peggy McElroy, president of the NWCA, said the task force's membership has crumbled since the accusations of secret meetings and collusion were made public. Regardless of whether the task force is still working on the petition, the NWCA considers the group defunct. "As far as we're concerned, the task force is dead," McElroy said. "And if they do file, we'll sue."
Dead, but not forgotten. The NWCA is now focusing its attention on a city-funded grant Ladd received last year to start a consumer watchdog agency that McElroy said may have instead been used to fund the task force's activities. In April of last year, Ladd was approved for a $16,410 grant by the Alliance for Cooperative Justice, which was to be used to get Ladd's Consumer Watchdog Organization off the ground. The watchdog organization was aimed at protecting consumers and helping them recover financial losses from telemarketing scams. But McElroy raised several questions about links between the Consumer Watchdog Organization and the Northwest Area Task Force.
Both organizations, according to their respective files with the city, started operating within one month of each other—the watchdog organization in April 1996, and the task force in May of 1996. McElroy also said she found a letter regarding the Consumer Watchdog Organization in the task force's file, even though the two files are kept at different offices, at different locations in the city. That letter was from the Far Northwest Coalition to the Alliance for Cooperative Justice withdrawing its support of the watchdog agency. It was faxed to the city from the Alliance for Cooperative Justice and somehow ended up in the task force's file. "That letter was never found in the [watchdog agency] grant file," McElroy said.
Another question mark for the NWCA, she said, is the fact that the mailing address for the Consumer Watchdog Organization—4900 Reed Road Suite 202—was where the task force held at least one of its clandestine meetings. And the watchdog agency later switched its address to 4856 Sawmill Road Suite 108, the same mailing address found on numerous task force documents. That address was registered under the name of Sheila Forsythe, a member of the task force.
Before receiving the grant, Ladd received a required letter of support from a citizen—Robert Molt—in which Molt introduced himself to Ladd as someone who would benefit from the watchdog agency. But the letter failed to mention that Molt and Ladd had been in business together since 1992, and Molt later took a part-time job with the watchdog agency. Molt, too, was a member of the task force.
If there is a link between the two organizations, McElroy said it could imply that the grant money awarded to Ladd's Consumer Watchdog Organization may also have been linked to the task force. And since that grant was "funded totally by the City of Columbus," according to a letter McElroy received from Franklin County Commissioner Dewey Stokes, NWCA taxpayers could have been funding the very group that was working to oust the organization from power.
When contacted by Alive, Ladd would not comment on the status of the petition, the task force or the grant. McElroy said the NWCA will lodge a formal complaint with Columbus City Council sometime this week that will ask for an investigation into the grant and the task force.
"How do we know what that money went to?" asked McElroy. "The whole thing smells. How could they not be linked? It raises very serious questions as to what that grant money was used for."
—Bob Fitrakis
11/05/1997
Dewey's decimals
Jailhouse price tag nothing to crow about
by Bob Fitrakis
Let's see: Franklin County Commissioner Dewey Stokes babbling almost incoherently about how lucky we are to have a Franklin County jail that's gone from $5 million to over $12 million; while County Administrator Jeff Cabot, responsible for the jail, quietly resigns to get more legal experience so he can run for a judgeship later; and George Voinovich, according to the Dispatch, is "one of the nation's most prolific fund-raisers"—ranking fourth of 58 Senatorial candidates. What can we make of these three seemingly separate stories?
Lots. Insiders report that Stokes helped force Cabot out because of the growing Franklin County jail scandal that pre-dated his arrival as County Commissioner. Stokes is no doubt aware of Paul Voinovich's deposition in the legal battle between the V (Voinovich) Companies and Jefferson County Commissioners. Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen Stern clearly sees a pattern between what he believes is the V Group's rip-off of his county during its jail construction project and our Franklin County jail renovation. Both projects are plagued by alleged contract-steering, massive cost overruns and reports of shoddy construction.
Another part of the pattern is for the governor's brother's firm to pass money into local Republican candidates coffers. Take the following exchange between Stern, Paul Voinovich and V Group attorney Thomas Rosenberg:
Question: "Do you know whether or not on April 22, 1996, Clark Miller [executive VP of the V Group] gave $900 to the [Arlene] Shoemaker campaign."
Mr. Rosenberg: "Objection. We're not answering that."
Question: "Do you know whether or not Franklin County Commission Dewey Stokes—soaks or Stokes—got a one hundred dollar campaign contribution from Clark Miller on August 26, 1996?"
Mr. Rosenberg: "Objection. We're not answering it."
Question: "Do you know whether or not your wife, Christine Voinovich, gave an amount of $300 on February 5, 1996, and $400 on October 9, 1996 to Franklin County Commissioner Dorothy Teater?"
Mr. Rosenberg: "Objection..."
Well, you get the drift. That's why Dorothy's guy, Cabot, had to go. The Commissioners are worried that some law-enforcement agent might start asking how the original $2.2 million proposed Voinovich renovation estimate turned into a $12 million-plus unbid V Group boondoggle. Or, what Cabot and V Group employee Frank Fela discussed at their initial meeting. V Group "bagman" Vince Zumpano was convicted of bribery in connection to the Jefferson County project.
So, Dewey's got to go around claiming that we got a really great deal here in Franklin County. Hell, it could have cost us "$20 thousand a cell," he says. Sure. Or, if the project had been bid and the Ruscilli Company did it, it would have probably cost the budgeted $5 million and been done on time, just like the three jail projects they built on Jackson Pike. But hey, in order to raise big bucks in the political game, you've got to be able to steer contracts and enrich your major donors. And that's where the governor comes in.
Paul Voinovich couldn't "recall" in his deposition that Phil Hamilton, the V Group's lobbyist, was also in charge Governor Voinovich's transition team. But, Criminal Justice Administrator Joe Gilyard, fired on July 22, 1991 by the governor after claiming that Hamilton and Paul Voinovich were pressuring him for illegal contracts, clearly remembers. He remembers Hamilton "bugging me and bugging me to come over ... I walk in the damn door over at Hamilton's place and over the door in gold leaf it says, 'Hamilton and Associates, the Voinovich Company.'"
And that's the way it's been since the beginning of the Voinovich administration.
And that's why the governor's recently jailed former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud—former executive VP of the V Group—ended up with a sweetheart deal from minority contractor Tommy Banks. Early on, someone in the Voinovich administration must have figured out that the minority set-aside programs were the honeypot for contract steering. Sources say, although Inspector General Richard Ward conveniently avoided the question in his whitewashing of Mifsud's and Banks' corruption, that it was Phil Hamilton who brought Tommy Banks together with the Carbone brothers to set up Banks-Carbone, one of the state's leading minority contractors.
Banks told Ward that he and "one of the Carbones visited Mifsud's office" and complained about how "difficult" it was to get state work, according to the inspector general's report. That soon changed as Banks-Carbone received $3.6 million in minority contracts. And Mifsud got a $200,000 addition on his soon-to-be-wife's house for $100,000.
Now, the governor has been amazingly successful in controlling this contract steering, cost overrun, campaign donations scandal. But what if the feds moved in and began to squeeze Mifsud? Maybe he'd talk. What could they squeeze him with? Let's start with tax fraud. Mifsud has admitted and is serving time for accepting an illegal $100,000 gift. The IRS wants its tax money whether it's legal or illegal. And what about possible mail fraud—that's what they went after DeSantis on. Did Mifsud or Banks exchange any documents or contracts through the mail?
Also of note is the fact that five Banks family members donated $1,000 each in 1993 to the governor's re-election campaign. That included one who wasn't registered to vote and one with no record of voting.
Dewey's decimals don't make sense. And that's why we need the feds to investigate Mifsud's taxes. Remember, as Deep Throat said in Watergate, "follow the money trail." I believe it'll eventually lead to Voinovich's campaign coffers.
At 6:30 p.m. Friday night, November 7, there will be a demonstration protesting the V Group's rip-off renovation at the Franklin County jail, 370 S. Front Street. Be there.
11/12/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Voinovich jail fiasco grows
The case of the battling audits
The battle between Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Stephen M. Stern and the Voinovich administration continues unabated. Stern’s crusade to unravel the financial irregularities and cost overruns at the Jefferson County Jail complex, which like the Franklin County Jail renovation is being built by the Governor’s brother, Paul Voinovich, and his family business, the V Group, (formerly the Voinovich Company) has also put him into conflict with Voinovich’s Republican allies, Attorney General Betty Montgomery and State Auditor James Petro.
In the most recent development, the Jefferson County Auditor is demanding to know why Petro’s office has not issued the results of an audit of the jail project, though the state auditor’s office entered into a contract a year ago to conduct the special audit. Meanwhile, the state Attorney General’s office is demanding to know why the Jefferson County Prosecutor isn’t taking action against North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA). An earlier Petro audit had indicated possible wrongdoing at NOVAA, forcing the shutdown of the multi-county Authority thought to be a Democratic political patronage stronghold.
Jefferson County officials requested in March of 1996 that Petro audit Voinovich’s jail project due to financial irregularities. On November 6, 1996, the state Auditor’s office entered into an agreed-upon procedures audit contract with the Jefferson County Auditor’s Office to conduct a "special audit" of the Jefferson County Jail Construction Project. A November 7, 1997 letter from the county auditor’s office to the state auditor’s office demands to know why field work was conducted on that audit, but no finding or request for further information has been made. "If you do not feel that the Auditor of State’s Office can complete this particular audit without compromising its independence, or for any other reason, please let me know as soon as possible. This will allow the County to retain the services of an independent public accounting firm to conduct this audit. However, if this is required, I would expect that any costs incurred to date by Jefferson County would be refunded, as I do not believe that the Auditor of State’s Office has performed this agreed upon procedures audit in a reasonable manner as outlined in the agreed upon procedures contract," wrote Patrick Marshall, Jefferson County Auditor.
Among other state audits involving Jefferson County are one of NOVAA, begun in July of 1996, and an audit of Stern’s office, undertaken early this year. In an October 17, 1997 letter, Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth A. Scott wrote Stern demanding to know why he wasn’t seeking "recovery" against the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA). The state’s failure to renew NOVAA’s contract with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency was widely thought to be political retaliation against Stern and other Jefferson County officials who had questioned the V Group’s cost overruns.
After reviewing the documents without the assistance of a state investigator, Stern concluded that Petro’s investigation and audit of NOVAA and the V Group’s involvement, was: "...incomplete, non-conclusive and, in some instances, tainted by political undertones and sophomoric inter-office antics."
Montgomery and Petro’s recent concern for "recovery" of any misused funds at the defunct NOVAA may be disingenuous, and some suggest they may be acting to discredit Stern and cover up the V Group’s conduct involving both NOVAA and the Jefferson County Jail.
During Petro’s NOVAA audit, issues concerning Voinovich’s Jefferson County jail construction project surfaced anew. A state auditor came across an October 10, 1996 news article mentioning 473 telephone calls made from the office of Vince Zumpano, a NOVAA employee to the V Group, and 64 telephone calls to the firm’s Columbus lobbyist Phil Hamilton. Zumpano is a long-time friend of Paul Voinovich, and has admitted to passing Voinovich campaign contributions to local politicians—including some in Franklin County—to help secure construction contracts for the Voinovich Group. Zumpano was convicted of attempted bribery of a Jefferson County Commissioner to secure the jail contract for the V Group. He has also admitted under oath that he asked Paul Voinovich to have his brother George’s administration appoint at least three people to important state positions. All three individuals were appointed.
At the time of the NOVAA audit, Zumpano was already under indictment for attempted bribery. On October 22, 1996, a state auditor wrote to his supervisor asking "Should we act on this?" referring to the discovery of Zumpano’s phone calls to the V Group. Stern could find no record of any response by Petro’s office in the audit file. Despite Petro’s documented lack of zeal in probing the NOVAA-V Group connection, Stern later convicted Zumpano.
Still, Petro’s NOVAA audit had unearthed a fresh batch of V Group worms. A February 4, 1997 internal memo outlines a state auditor’s search for language that will allow him to "dump" the NOVAA investigation back in Stern’s hands. State auditors were looking at NOVAA Director Patsy Deluca, who co-owned the Tri-State Athletic complex. Allegations against Deluca included his use of NOVAA’s public employees at the privately owned complex. "Since the people interviewed could not quantify or document the number of hours they worked at the Tri-State complex while being paid by NOVAA, we were unable to quantify this Finding for Recovery, and will refer the matter to the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney for appropriate legal action," the internal memo reads.
Why Petro’s state auditors would refer matters that they couldn’t "quantify"—which is their expertise—to the county prosecutor, who technically doesn’t have jurisdiction over a multi-county authority, is a curious question. But, the February 4 memo may also contain the answer. An auditor appears quite proud of his bureaucratic language in referring the matter back to Stern when he brags: "Thought you might want to put this in your ‘great language’ file since Dan approved my first draft and also because it’s so goooooooooooood!"
Even odder, Deluca’s co-owner, recently retired FBI agent Bob Lockert, was never asked to help "quantify" the use of public employees at Tri-State. When Zumpano attempted to bribe Jefferson County Commissioner Scott Krupinski, Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla taped the conversation and later sent that tape to the FBI office in Columbus. Although the tape’s existence was supposedly known only to the sheriff and the FBI, within days Krupinski was receiving death threats before the tape’s existence became public knowledge. Some speculation pointed to the FBI leaking the information.
In January—several months after Jefferson County’s request for Petro’s assistance in auditing the V Group’s Jefferson County jail construction project—the state auditor’s director of investigations, the investigative supervisor and other Petro employees discussed auditing another target instead, based on "an anonymous complaint." Rather than investigate the documented bribery attempt, cost overruns and financial irregularities of the V Group at the Jefferson County Jail, Petro’s office chose to audit the office of Prosecutor Stern—who had originally requested a state audit of the V Group. Moreover, state auditors fail to provide Stern with a copy of the NOVAA audit containing important information on Zumpano’s relationship with the V Group.
Assistant Attorney General Scott’s October 17th letter informed Stern that, "As you know, R.C. 117.28 allows a county prosecutor to seek recovery based upon findings contained in an audit report and requires that officer to notify the attorney general of any action taken. Where action has not been taken, section 117.28 requires that officer to notify the attorney general as to ‘the reason why legal action has not been taken..." Stern quickly replied that his office was not seeking "recovery" due to the "non-cooperation of State Auditor office."
According to Stern’s account, "At the time the audit report was issued, this office was not provided a certified copy of the audit report." He noted, "Indeed, the only information we had concerning the audit’s findings was from newspaper articles we had read." Stern claimed Greg Clinton, an agent with the U.S. Inspector General’s office, "was the first person to advise us of any of the particulars concerning the NOVAA audit."
Stern said that after reviewing the audit, he requested a meeting with investigators from the State Auditor’s office and was "rebuffed." Petro’s office informed him that he would have to travel from Steubenville to Niles to see the files and that no investigators were available to meet with Jefferson County prosecutors. Stern received three boxes of Petro’s NOVAA investigation material for review—only after securing a grand jury subpoena.
When asked to comment on whether or not Petro was playing politics and protecting the Voinovich brothers, Stern said: ‘’The whole crew is either incompetent or corrupt, or incompetently corrupt.’’ He also pointed out that Petro has yet to issue findings of the audit of the Jefferson County Jail project.
Kate Buchy, speaking on behalf of Petro, said Monday that the office declined comment since they hadn’t seen Stern’s letter.
—Bob Fitrakis
11/12/1997
by Bob Fitrakis
The battle between Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Stephen M. Stern and the Voinovich administration continues unabated. Stern’s crusade to unravel the financial irregularities and cost overruns at the Jefferson County Jail complex, built by the Governor’s brother, Paul Voinovich, and his family business, the V Group, (formerly the Voinovich Company) has also put him into conflict with Voinovich’s Republican allies, Attorney General Betty Montgomery and State Auditor James Petro.
In the most recent development, the Jefferson County Auditor is demanding to know why Petro’s office has not issued the results of an audit of the jail project, though the state auditor’s office entered into a contract a year ago to conduct the special audit. Meanwhile, the state Attorney General’s office is demanding to know why the Jefferson County Prosecutor isn’t taking action against North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA). An earlier Petro audit had indicated possible wrongdoing at NOVAA, forcing the shutdown of the multi-county Authority thought to be a Democratic political patronage stronghold.
Jefferson County officials requested in March of 1996 that Petro audit Voinovich’s jail project due to financial irregularities. On November 6, 1996, the state Auditor’s office entered into an agreed-upon procedures audit contract with the Jefferson County Auditor’s Office to conduct a "special audit" of the Jefferson County Jail Construction Project. A November 7, 1997 letter from the county auditor’s office to the state auditor’s office demands to know why field work was conducted on that audit, but no finding or request for further information has been made. "If you do not feel that the Auditor of State’s Office can complete this particular audit without compromising its independence, or for any other reason, please let me know as soon as possible. This will allow the County to retain the services of an independent public accounting firm to conduct this audit. However, if this is required, I would expect that any costs incurred to date by Jefferson County would be refunded, as I do not believe that the Auditor of State’s Office has performed this agreed upon procedures audit in a reasonable manner as outlined in the agreed upon procedures contract," wrote Patrick Marshall, Jefferson County Auditor.
Among other state audits involving Jefferson County are one of NOVAA, begun in July of 1996 and an audit of Stern’s office, undertaken early this year. In an October 17, 1997 letter, Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth A. Scott wrote Stern demanding to know why he wasn’t seeking "recovery" against the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA). The state’s failure to renew NOVAA’s contract with the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency was widely thought to be political retaliation against Stern and other Jefferson County officials who had questioned the V Group’s cost overruns.
After reviewing the documents without the assistance of a state investigator, Stern concluded that Petro’s investigation and audit of NOVAA and the V Group’s involvement, was: "...incomplete, non-conclusive and, in some instances, tainted by political undertones and sophomoric inter-office antics."
Montgomery and Petro’s recent concern for "recovery" of any misused funds at the defunct NOVAA may be disingenuous, and some suggest they may be acting to discredit Stern and cover up the V Group’s conduct involving both NOVAA and the Jefferson County Jail.
During Petro’s NOVAA audit, issues concerning Voinovich’s Jefferson County jail construction project surfaced anew. A state auditor came across an October 10, 1996 news article mentioning 473 telephone calls made from the office of Vince Zumpano, a NOVAA employee to the V Group, and 64 telephone calls to the firm’s Columbus lobbyist Phil Hamilton. Zumpano is a long-time friend of Paul Voinovich, and has admitted to passing Voinovich campaign contributions to local politicians—including some in Franklin County—to help secure construction contracts for the Voinovich Group. Zumpano was convicted of attempted bribery of a Jefferson County Commissioner to secure the jail contract for the V Group. He has also admitted under oath that he asked Paul Voinovich to have his brother George’s administration appoint at least three people to important state positions. All three individuals were appointed.
At the time of the NOVAA audit, Zumpano was already under indictment for attempted bribery. On October 22, 1996, a state auditor wrote to his supervisor asking "Should we act on this?" referring to the discovery of Zumpano’s phone calls to the V Group. Stern could find no record of any response by Petro’s office in the audit file. Despite Petro’s documented lack of zeal in probing the NOVAA-V Group connection, Stern later convicted Zumpano.
Still, Petro’s NOVAA audit had unearthed a fresh batch of V Group worms. A February 4, 1997 internal memo outlines a state auditor’s search for language that will allow him to "dump" the NOVAA investigation back in Stern’s hands. State auditors were looking at NOVAA Director Patsy Deluca, who co-owned the Tri-State Athletic complex. Allegations against Deluca included his use of NOVAA’s public employees at the privately owned complex. "Since the people interviewed could not quantify or document the number of hours they worked at the Tri-State complex while being paid by NOVAA, we were unable to quantify this Finding for Recovery, and will refer the matter to the Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney for appropriate legal action," the internal memo reads.
Why Petro’s state auditors would refer matters that they couldn’t "quantify"—which is their expertise—to the county prosecutor, who technically doesn’t have jurisdiction over a multi-county authority, is a curious question. But, the February 4 memo may also contain the answer. An auditor appears quite proud of his bureaucratic language in referring the matter back to Stern when he brags: "Thought you might want to put this in your ‘great language’ file since Dan approved my first draft and also because it’s so goooooooooooood!"
Even odder, Deluca’s co-owner, recently retired FBI agent Bob Lockert, was never asked to help "quantify" the use of public employees at Tri-State. When Zumpano attempted to bribe Jefferson County Commissioner Scott Krupinski, Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla taped the conversation and later sent that tape to the FBI office in Columbus. Although the tape’s existence was supposedly known only to the sheriff and the FBI, within days Krupinski was receiving death threats before the tape’s existence became public knowledge. Some speculation pointed to the FBI leaking the information.
Had a serious Petro investigation ensued, it may have uncovered additional information on this and other matters.
In January—several months after Jefferson County’s request for Petro’s assistance in auditing the V Group’s Jefferson County jail construction project—the state auditor’s director of investigations, the investigative supervisor and other Petro employees discussed auditing another target instead, based on "an anonymous complaint." Rather than investigate the documented bribery attempt, cost overruns and financial irregularities of the V Group at the Jefferson County Jail, Petro’s office chose instead to audit the office of Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen Stern—who had originally requested a state audit of the V Group. Moreover, state auditors fail to provide Stern with a copy of the NOVAA audit containing important information on Zumpano’s relationship with the V Group.
Assistant Attorney General Scott’s October 17th letter informed Stern that, "As you know, R.C. 117.28 allows a county prosecutor to seek recovery based upon findings contained in an audit report and requires that officer to notify the attorney general of any action taken. Where action has not been taken, section 117.28 requires that officer to notify the attorney general as to ‘the reason why legal action has not been taken..." Stern quickly replied that his office was not seeking "recovery" due to the "non-cooperation of State Auditor office."
According to Stern’s account, "At the time the audit report was issued, this office was not provided a certified copy of the audit report." He noted, "Indeed, the only information we had concerning the audit’s findings was from newspaper articles we had read." Stern claimed Greg Clinton, an agent with the U.S. Inspector General’s office, "was the first person to advise us of any of the particulars concerning the NOVAA audit."
Stern said that after reviewing the audit, he requested a meeting with investigators from the State Auditor’s office and was "rebuffed." Petro’s office informed him that he would have to travel from Steubenville to Niles to see the files and that no investigators were available to meet with Jefferson County prosecutors.
Stern received—only after securing a grand jury subpoena—three boxes of Petro’s NOVAA investigation material for review.
When asked to comment on whether or not Petro was playing politics and protecting the Voinovich brothers, Stern said: ‘’The whole crew is either incompetent or corrupt, or incompetently corrupt.’’ He also pointed out that Petro has yet to issue findings of the audit of the Jefferson County Jail project.
Kate Buchy, speaking on behalf of Petro, said Monday that the office declined comment since they hadn’t seen Stern’s letter.
11/19/1997
Stumping
The Taft campaign, the Voinovich jail, and Betty’s boop
by Bob Fitrakis
Political updates: Local elections ended two weeks ago, let the state and national campaigns begin! Secretary of State Bob Taft kicked off a two-day, 800-mile tour of Ohio only to end up outside the office of current guv, George Voinovich. Never has a candidate traveled so far to say so little. Following a carefully calculated script of pseudo events—even the Dispatch reported a "‘scheduled impromptu stop’ at a Bob Evans restaurant..." to provide that "down-home touch"—Taft returned to Columbus without answering the tough questions such as what to do about a K-12 school system declared unconstitutional and the affirmative action controversy.
Taft’s campaign style, long on symbols and short on solutions, contrasts markedly with that of state Treasurer Kenneth Blackwell. Taking a cue from Clarence Thomas, Blackwell appears to have taken a solemn vow to out-right-wing Mr. Conservative, Bob Taft. Blackwell is bidding to become the governor from the Buckeye Institute, an ultra-conservative Dayton-based "think tank." Blackwell’s solution to the school crisis? Yawn, vouchers. The wet dream of the Christian Coalition. Fantasies of freshly scrubbed rural white Christian schoolkids a la Norman Rockwell dance in their heads. First Amendment prohibitions against the government establishing religion seem to elude Blackwell. Imagine his shock when the first schools opening with his voucher plan are the Aryan Nation Academy in New Vienna, Ohio; the Nation of Islam Institute in Columbus; and Pagan U. in the Short North. Then, of course, they’ll demand Big Government move in to stifle actual school choice in the marketplace because it doesn’t fit their fantasy of 1950s America.
To be sure, there’s the surreal pleasure of listening to Blackwell explain how affirmative action oppressed him as he went from being a progressive Democrat to an Independent to a far-right Republican. Opportunism is a terrible thing to waste. The best thing Taft has going for him—besides the fact that his great-grandfather William Howard Taft was the country’s fattest president and had the good sense to install a bathtub in the White House—is his reputation for being squeaky-clean. The family’s had money so long they don’t have to go on a publicly financed prison and jail-building spree.
Speaking of the Voinovich family, I toured the newly renovated Franklin County Jail on Saturday. I think I blew my cover ’cause I didn’t have any kids with me. Let’s see, some rewiring, new plumbing, and a really sloppy pink—excuse me, salmon—paint job, with virtually no structural changes. Sure doesn’t look like over $12 million in renovation to me.
Plus, Public Facilities Management employees aided in the painting. I did learn that the highly touted electronic jail cell closing system fails during power surges, thus causing all the doors to open at once. I guess the neighborliness of this Andy of Mayberry scenario where all the prisoners voluntarily re-lock themselves in is well worth the money.
The guv had the good sense to come out against the proposed constitutional amendment by our own state Senator Eugene Watts and Representative Michael Wise to end all preference on the basis of race, sex and national origin in public employment, government contracts and admission to public universities. We hope the guv is motivated by the fact that there’s been an 11 percent drop in minority applications to medical schools nationally, and a 27 percent drop in California, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana—states where affirmative action is unconstitutional. Or he could be thinking about the loss of those campaign checks from his favorite minority contractor, Tommy Banks.
Whatever the case, the key to the debate is wording, anyway. The vast majority are opposed to quotas, but support affirmative action—active attempts by the government to create more opportunity for minorities and women who have been historically excluded. Under Governor Voinovich, Ohio has dropped from 37th to 44th in state support for higher education. If there was decent job training in the state and proper support for higher education, there would be far less worry about "scholarships for blacks" or "grants to women-owned businesses." A point missed by Messrs. Blackwell, Watts and Voinovich.
Speaking of missing points, is there anyone better at it than Attorney General Betty Montgomery? Y’all remember her highly publicized press conference where she said we didn’t need to sue them there tobacco companies? So, now Ohio is the 40th state in line to collect damages from the tobacco companies. Montgomery let states like Mississippi, a hotbed of progressive thinking, lead the way in suing the tobacco companies for health-care claims. It turns out Ohio’s number three in percentage of smokers in the nation. Billions of tobacco dollars lost or delayed because of Betty’s boop.
The Attorney General and the guv are apparently refusing to enforce Ohio’s prevailing wage law, originally a Republican idea from the 1920s. Betty has pretty much made it clear that she’s not going to enforce Chapter 4115 of the Ohio Revised Code.
She’s letting the J.A. Croson Company off the hook for underpaying construction workers on two projects over $100,000. It’s all documented in two July 2, 1997 letters from Abbe T. Allen, then-director of the Wage and Hour Division of the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services, to the Croson Company. Perhaps Betty has confused the role of the Attorney General: the job of the A.G. is to enforce the law, not the let companies break it because they’re potential major donors. Allen has since been demoted. That’s why they call it politics.
11/26/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Jail sentencing not a problem
Banks' construction management projects move forward without him
despite the recent conviction and sentencing of Columbus contractor Thomas G. Banks, at least one of the local projects that includes Banks as part of the construction team is moving ahead, unfazed by the contractor's looming jail term.
An Ohio State official said Monday that the university will make no changes to the construction team it hired for the $93 million Schottenstein Center as well as the $52.3 million Max Fisher College of Business; even though Banks, one of that team's main players, will spend three months in jail for an ethics violation.
Banks, who was sentenced last week alongside Governor Voinovich's former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, must also pay a $1,000 fine and do 500 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation relating to work his company did on Mifsud's home.
Nevertheless, OSU has no intentions of taking Banks' company off the job. "We hired a construction team, and that construction team is performing without any problems," said OSU Architect Jill Morelli. In fact, Morelli said she wasn't aware that Banks had even been sentenced until contacted by Columbus Alive.
Last year, Alive reported that two construction management proposals submitted to OSU for the Schottenstein project included resumes for Banks that stated he holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from the university. Another form included in one of the proposals said Banks holds an advanced degree in engineering from OSU as well. Neither the alumni affairs office nor the verification department at the OSU Registrar's office has a record of a Thomas Gleason Banks, with Banks' social security number, having been awarded any degrees from the university.
But Morelli said Banks hasn't had a major, hands-on presence at the projects, and she said the university has no qualms about the work being done by the construction team.
"Thomas Banks isn't the specific representative on either of those projects," Morelli said. "You hire the whole team. We didn't hire Thomas Banks the individual, we hired the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team, and they're performing up to par. So the quick, easy answer is no, we're not anticipating any changes on either of those projects."
Morelli added that OSU's contract with Banks-Carbone stipulates that the university makes payments at the same rate at which the projects progress, meaning that OSU won't be done paying the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team until the projects are completed.
Construction companies run by Banks were also involved with two other major projects in Columbus: management of construction of the new, $125 million COSI center; and the city's controversial South of Main housing project, costing more than $4.2 million. Officials with COSI, as well as KeyBank, the construction lender that selected T.G. Banks Special Projects Division, Inc. to finish the South of Main project, could not comment on the status of Banks' involvement in light of his sentence by press time.
—Bob Fitrakis
11/26/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
The "three" man
Judge lets Banks off, but investigation raises questions
The recent release of Columbus contractor Thomas G. Banks—who pleaded "no contest" to an ethics violation and was found guilty on September 3—from the Union County Discipline and Rehabilitation Center, raises new questions concerning Banks’ relationship to Paul Mifsud, Governor George Voinovich’s former chief of staff.
Union County Common Pleas Judge Richard Parrott reduced Banks’ sentence after citing additional facts and a report by Ohio’s Inspector General Richard Ward. Judge Parrott told the Cincinnati Enquirer, "Those reports pretty much cleared him of any wrongdoing."
A former state investigator, who reviewed the report at the request of the Alive, came to a another conclusion. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the former investigator called Ward’s report, "incomplete, and less than a thorough job."
Banks was found guilty after prosecutors convinced the judge that Banks had provided $210,000 worth of home remodeling in 1993 and ’94 for Mifsud’s then-fiancee Kathleen Bartunek’s home, as remodeling permits indicated, but charged only $100,000 for the construction job. Sources close to Banks say that the sudden emergence of a pre-nuptial agreement between Mifsud and Bartunek, coupled with the Inspector General’s report, led the judge last week to conclude that Banks couldn’t have given Mifsud a gift since Bartunek would have been the sole beneficiary of the sweetheart construction deal.
Since their marriage, both Bartunek and Mifsud reside in the home where Mifsud runs his consulting business out of an office built by Banks. Banks-Carbone Construction Company went on to receive some $3.7 million in unbid state minority contracts from the Voinovich administration. Mifsud, who pleaded guilty on September 3 to two misdemeanor charges involving altering public records to cover up Banks’ home remodeling job, remains incarcerated in a Marysville work release center.
The former state investigator says that Inspector General Ward’s investigation "actually raises more questions than it answers concerning Banks and Mifsud." The report states that Banks told Ward that Mifsud was a "friend," and that he admitted he visited Mifsud both at his office and at his previous home in Gahanna, and that they lunched together as well.
"These were visits to talk about wine, antiques and other social interests," Banks claimed. Banks conceded that on at least one occasion he and one of the Carbone brothers visited Mifsud’s office on the 30th floor of the Riffe Center and complained that they were "having a difficult time getting state work and that they were unable to get short listed," the report noted. Nevertheless, Banks insisted that his frequent visits to Mifsud’s office were "of a social nature."
Conspicuous in Ward’s report is the Inspector General’s failure to ask Banks how he came to form a minority contracting firm with the Carbone family of Cleveland, long-time supporters of former Cleveland mayor, now-Governor George Voinovich. Sources have repeatedly told the Alive that former Voinovich Transition Director Phil Hamilton helped bring Banks together with the Carbone brothers.
Banks told Ward that his meteoric rise from city meter reader to the state’s largest minority contractor during the Voinovich administration is the result of, "hard work, hustle, and doing the best job you can." He admitted that along with his "hustle" were numerous political contributions to both Democrats and Republicans, including $5,000 in donations from Banks family members in one day to Governor Voinovich’s re-election campaign.
Banks, a former deputy sheriff who was fired by then-Sheriff Earl Smith and settled for the right to ride in funeral processions, was a highly visible figure in Democratic Party circles circa 1990. From that low point, the report lists Banks as now having ownership interests in at least eight companies: Banks Carbone Construction; T.G. Banks and Associates, Inc.; T.G. Banks Special Projects Division, Inc.; Bur-Bank Landscape Corp.; Franklin Title Agency, Inc.; Sistom Property Development Corp.; Glen Oak Park Development, Ltd., which does business in Columbus and Dayton; and City Hair, described as a beauty and hair salon in Worthington.
Banks is also in public records as having incorporated Interstate Steel, a company located at Columbus Police Chief James Jackson’s Bryden Road address in Columbus.
In the Inspector General’s report, Banks recalled that the original Bartunek project was to be "capped at $25,000," and he was to receive "two percent payment for labor and overhead." The permits Banks took out for the project indicated $210,000. Banks assigned project manager Vance Thornton to the Bartunek job. Banks blamed the project’s $185,000 overrun on Thornton. Oddly, Inspector General Ward didn’t question Thornton about Banks’ claim.
Moreover, Banks, the report states, "was unable to identify the subcontractors or the amounts they were paid" for the Bartunek project. He estimated that Bartunek paid him "seventy something" thousand, substantially less than the $100,000 Mifsud and Bartunek claimed.
Linda Davis, Mifsud’s executive secretary from January 1991 until June 1993, told Ward that Banks, who she described as "a little strange" but always "nice and friendly enough," frequently hung around Mifsud’s office. Davis also told Ward that "she didn’t like him hanging around Mifsud ... that he was a bit of ‘a pain in the neck’ because he would just hang around." She described Banks as a ‘name-dropper’" and reported that she told Mifsud that "Banks is dropping your name all over town and trying to make people think that you are his best friend and if they deal with him da da da."
Davis said she told Banks "you better stop doing that stuff." She also noted that Banks "would not call for an appointment. He would just drop in, wander around and then leave." Banks was such a familiar sight on the 30th floor that the receptionist would simply buzz him in to see the governor’s busy chief of staff. Davis claimed that she complained about this.
Ward noted in the report that state Architect Randall Fisher, formerly personal assistant to Governor Voinovich, indicated that, "While in office, Fisher has not observed anything that did not appear right or pass his own ‘smell test’ other than the frequency of the appearance of the same sub-consultants such as Thomas Banks." Fisher also recalled Banks "hanging around."
Christian Fuellgraf, Mifsud’s executive assistant and self-described "traffic cop," vividly recalled Banks, noting that Banks is "boisterous and likes to show off." Fuellgraf nicknamed Banks, "the Three Man," explaining to Ward that if you mention to Banks that you liked anything, like his car, he would respond that he "had three of them." Banks, prone to "puffing" or bragging in Fuellgraf’s opinion, would show up without an appointment "several times a month."
Fuellgraf admitted to Ward that Mifsud kept a list that "identified levels of contributions" to the Voinovich campaign in his office.
The former state investigator wonders why Ward did not question Bartunek and Thornton under oath, nor probe further as to why "Banks was on the 30th floor of the Riffe Center with Mifsud more often than the governor." Ward failed to question Mifsud because the governor’s former chief of staff "claimed the protections of the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination."
—Bob Fitrakis
12/03/1997
Tip a canoe
Governor’s bureau-shifting claims Dysart Woods as a victim
by Bob Fitrakis
With Columbus’ trash plant shut down for now, the multi-state radioactive waste dump dumped as a project, and Laidlaw finally agreeing to clean up its wastewater facility in Hilliard, the single most important environmental struggle for central Ohio should be—must be—saving Dysart Woods.
Sure, that 50-acre tract of primeval oak forest two hours east of Columbus in Belmont County stretches central Ohioans’ environmental activism, still it’s the largest known remnant of the original forest of southeastern Ohio. It’s the last legacy of a pre-European Native American ecosystem.
The reason it’s currently being threatened is reflective of an insidious and poisonous mindset that puts profit and political "donations" over people and community needs. When Governor George Voinovich was first elected he promised many things—posing in a canoe as the "environmental governor"; swearing to be the "education governor"; and promising not to let his family’s prison and jail building company do business with the state. The fact that he’s failed to live up to these promises has not hurt his popularity. With Voinovich, every promise is a hedge, not a pledge.
Always hedging his political bets, Governor Canoe appointed his so-called Task Force on Government Efficiency when he took office. A favorite trick of Republicans, these efficiency task forces are usually scams that allow the Guv’s major donors, like Bob Murray, owner of the Ohio Valley Coal Company, and others to destroy state regulatory agencies that protect small communities and old forests. Murray and other money men, in their infinite wisdom, recommended to the Guv that the Department of Industrial Relations be shut down and that its Division of Mines be transferred to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR). Their wishes, accompanied by campaign checks, were the governor’s command.
Presto! Like magic the new Division of Mines and Reclamation appeared under the ODNR in September, 1995. Lisa Morris, the chief of the Reclamation Division, with little experience in mining regulation, serves as the perfect political flunky to carry out the wishes from the Court of King Coal. Since Morris lacked the prior qualifications for the old Division of Mines director’s position, the Guv had the laws weakened so that she could approve the mining permits now under the control of the ODNR.
On the surface Morris was tough, with employees required to fill out a form stating they had no conflict of interest with any mining company representatives in Ohio. Naturally, this didn’t apply to Governor V, a good friend of Bob Murray. Murray and the governor have a common goal: "longwall mine" as much of southeastern Ohio as they can before the end of the Voinovich regime. Then send the governor off to Washington so he can screw—I mean do—the nation the same way he did our state. The longwall mining process is particularly destructive since, to borrow a phrase from an Ohio Valley Coal Company executive, it "rubblizes" a lot of the area above the coal seam removed. It destroys the bedrock, generally depletes the water table, and springs and ponds disappear. So, of course, do the trees. Now you know where the term "undermine" came from. No matter if those trees are spectacular after hundreds of years of growth, reaching heights of 140 feet; no matter that the last Appalachian virgin woods offers a rare and irreplaceable opportunity to study and view a complex and virtually extinct ecosystem. Murray and Voinovich are undermining the last ancient Appalachian virgin forest in all of Ohio. One motivated by greed, the other by political ambition. For what shall it profit the citizens of Ohio to allow our governor to gain a seat in the Senate, but destroy the soul of our state? Time to tip his canoe and Murray’s too.
Ran into Big Jim Karnes, who insisted he hasn’t had dinner with controversial contractor Tommy Banks in more than a year and that Banks picked up the tab last time. Of course, that doesn’t rule out Big Jim and T.G. lunching at Columbus Brewing Company on November 26.
Also, I promised Jim I’d correct my column calling the jail "pink" or "salmon." The color, Jim informs me, is Crayola’s own "coral canyon." It happens to look a lot like pink, or salmon.
*****
Dead men tell no tales. Ask Georgia-Pacific, which blamed the recent explosion on the south side on the worker unfortunately killed in the mishap. That darn dead worker screwed things up; too bad we can’t question him.
I talked to a man claiming to be a former Georgia-Pacific employee who worked there during one of its late ’70s blow-ups. He was a tad bit upset, reporting that when the plant blew up back then, putting him in a coma, Georgia-Pacific informed his mother that he had tried to commit suicide. A pattern emerges. It’s never Georgia-Pacific’s fault when things blow up over and over and over again. We’re safe until the next worker attempts to commit suicide or blow up the plant again. That’s Georgia-Pacific’s "good neighbor" policy.
12/03/1997
NEWS BRIEFS
Jail sentencing not a problem
Banks' construction management projects move forward without him
Despite the recent conviction and sentencing of Columbus contractor Thomas G. Banks, at least one of the local projects that includes Banks as part of the construction team is moving ahead, unfazed by the contractor's looming jail term.
An Ohio State official said Monday that the university will make no changes to the construction team it hired for the $93 million Schottenstein Center as well as the $52.3 million Max Fisher College of Business; even though Banks, one of that team's main players, will spend three months in jail for an ethics violation.
Banks, who was sentenced last week alongside Governor Voinovich's former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, must also pay a $1,000 fine and do 500 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation relating to work his company did on Mifsud's home.
Nevertheless, OSU has no intentions of taking Banks' company off the job. "We hired a construction team, and that construction team is performing without any problems," said OSU Architect Jill Morelli. In fact, Morelli said she wasn't aware that Banks had even been sentenced until contacted by Columbus Alive.
Last year, Alive reported that two construction management proposals submitted to OSU for the Schottenstein project included resumes for Banks that stated he holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from the university. Another form included in one of the proposals said Banks holds an advanced degree in engineering from OSU as well. Neither the alumni affairs office nor the verification department at the OSU Registrar's office has a record of a Thomas Gleason Banks, with Banks' social security number, having been awarded any degrees from the university.
But Morelli said Banks hasn't had a major, hands-on presence at the projects, and she said the university has no qualms about the work being done by the construction team.
"Thomas Banks isn't the specific representative on either of those projects," Morelli said. "You hire the whole team. We didn't hire Thomas Banks the individual, we hired the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team, and they're performing up to par. So the quick, easy answer is no, we're not anticipating any changes on either of those projects."
Morelli added that OSU's contract with Banks-Carbone stipulates that the university makes payments at the same rate at which the projects progress, meaning that OSU won't be done paying the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team until the projects are completed.
Construction companies run by Banks were also involved with two other major projects in Columbus: management of construction of the new, $125 million COSI center; and the city's controversial South of Main housing project, costing more than $4.2 million. Officials with COSI, as well as KeyBank, the construction lender that selected T.G. Banks Special Projects Division, Inc. to finish the South of Main project, could not comment on the status of Banks' involvement in light of his sentence by press time.
—Bob Fitrakis
12/10/1997
FEATURED ARTICLE
Into the Woods
Will mining destroy Ohio’s virgin forest?
by Bob Fitrakis
It's the day after Thanksgiving, and three "Friends of Dysart Woods" gather together near the now-bare, but still imposing trees—some standing 140 feet high—to try and explain why this last 50-acre remnant of primeval oak forest two hours east of Columbus is so important, so controversial.
Marion Corbett, whose farm borders Dysart Woods in Belmont County, looks like he came out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He hopped off his tractor to tell his tale:
"The reason I'm more interested in it than some people is because my great-great grandfather, Miles Hart, originally settled and owned this land to begin with. And I'm interested in saving the woods because my cousins, the Dysart girls, they were interested in preserving it. I'll carry on and do what I can in my lifetime. This was the wishes of the family...."
The family’s desire to preserve Dysart Woods seemed unchallenged a year ago. But things changed dramatically this past year when the Ohio Valley Coal Company applied to the Ohio Division of Mines and Reclamation to "longwall" mine seven square miles of land upstream of Dysart Woods. Permit applications D-360-6 and D-360-7 would allow the encroachment with Permit 7, if approved, coming within four-tenths of a mile of the beloved woods.
Ohio Valley Coal Company has also indicated that it plans to submit another permit—the dreaded D-360-8—that would allow even closer mining, possibly underneath the ancient forest itself.
Floyd Simpson, whose Country Mile Farm sits one-half mile north of the woods, fears Permit 8 more than most. If Permit 8 is approved, the longwall mining would occur directly under the house and farm he’s owned for 40 years. Built in 1863, Floyd’s two-story brick house will soon be nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.
"I’m quite fearful of what it might do. This house was built from brick that was kilned right here on the farm. The house has no internal foundation and it’s a 13-room house with the original slate roof. When the coal company people came to see me they were trying to tell me how they would try to save it and some of the things they were talking about were they could dig a 20-foot deep trench between where the longwall was going to go with the first cut—a 20-foot hole in my front yard next to my 150-year-old pine trees! And they said there would be damage to my house and I’m disturbed about that," Simpson explained.
He pointed out that the "broad-term deeds for coal were signed many, many years ago." Most around the turn of the century, when there was no such thing as the highly efficient mechanized longwall mining machines. He played a tape of a coal company executive describing the longwalling process. He stopped it on the term "rubbleize."
"They remove all the coal and let the roof and all the overburden fall down, causing cracks going clear to the surface," Simpson noted, while showing pictures of a nearby farm with fault lines looking much like post-earthquake photos.
"It’s a relatively new technique that definitely wouldn’t have been known by Mr. Dysart or the people that own the farm that I have.... I knew Mr. Orion Dysart. I knew him as a very gentle, honest person and a very conservative person. The last thing he would have wished in this world would have been to see this virgin forest in danger," Simpson said.
Lisa Helms, local activist with the Buckeye Forest Council, attempted to put it in historical perspective: "In the late ’80s, we were led to believe as taxpayers and homeowners that these woods were protected by the Lands Unsuitable for Mining petition. That was repeated by the Nature Conservancy in 1991. However, under the Voinovich Regime, as we call it, the mining laws have been wiped out for all intents and purposes. We used to have a Division of Mines. Now we have a Division of Mines and Reclamation...."
Helms wonders why, when the nations of the world are meeting to try and reduce "greenhouse gases" from polluting fossil fuel like the highly sulfuric Ohio coal, Governor Voinovich wants to promote "pollution-based prosperity" in Belmont County, where Dysart Woods is located.
"It’s a false prosperity anyway. Destroy these woods and you destroy the community and what brings people here from all over Ohio."
The only reason Dysart Woods exists today as a virgin primeval forest is because several generations of the Dysart family insisted it be kept in its natural state. The scenic forest, previously enjoyed by the Dysarts and their friends, has been owned and managed by Ohio University since 1966, by agreement with the Nature Conservancy. The 50-acre tract of woods is officially known as the Dysart Woods Laboratory. Ohio University officials believe that the forest offers a rare opportunity for study. They are required " to preserve the woods in their natural state in perpetuity." No trees are allowed to be cut and fallen logs are left to decompose. The university’s botany department studies the woods and surrounding fields to gather data about the dynamics in a mature ecosystem.
Sympathetic mainstream news coverage surrounding the Woods’ plight, from the local Times Leader to the Columbus Dispatch, appears to have put the Ohio Valley Coal Company on the defensive. In a certified letter dated July 17, 1997, Ohio Valley Coal Company Vice President John R. Forrelli took offense to a Times Leader article written by Charlotte Grant. "Charlotte, in years past, Ohio Valley was very tolerant of your inaccurate and misleading statements in the media and to public officials. Ohio Valley can no longer accept such damage to our company, employees and owner. Please be advised that any future inaccurate and misleading statements by you about Ohio Valley in the media or to government officials will not be accepted.... We are henceforth going to hold you accountable for any statements that you make regarding Ohio Valley," Forrelli wrote.
On the same day, Forrelli also sent a certified letter to Helms demanding that she "cease and desist from making any comments about Ohio Valley, as you are not informed about our business as evidenced by your statements. Please be advised that you will be held accountable for any further statements about or resultant damages to Ohio Valley."
Such letters are often precursors to SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participants) suits, that frequently occur in controversial land-use cases. University of Denver Law Professor George W. Pring recently noted that SLAPP suits "lose about 80-90 percent" of the time, yet "succeed in the real world because victims are chilled" or afraid to speak out.
Ohio University, in order to fight Permit 7, retained the services of one of Ohio’s most well-known environmental law firms, Samuels & Northrop. In a July 9 letter to Lisa Morris, chief of the Division of Mines and Reclamation, Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), David Northrop called the Woods "an irreplaceable and enormously valuable natural area," and insisted that "their loss would represent an environmental tragedy of great proportion."
Northrop emphasized that the most crucial issue in the Dysart Woods debate is that of the water table: "The old-growth trees in Dysart Woods, because of their great size and age, require a stable and abundant supply of water. Coal mining, due to its effects on the hydrologic balance of the area to be mined in nearby lands, presents a very real threat to the well-being of the trees." He forwarded a report to Morris prepared by OU Assistant Professor Mary Stoertz in the department of geological science. The Stoertz Report analyzed the water situation from information supplied by the Ohio Valley Coal Company in its Permit 7 application and other published studies.
The Ohio Valley Coal Company based its Permit 7 application, claiming minimal damage to Dysart Woods, on a "preliminary study" by the National Groundwater Association that concluded "the hydraulic impacts of longwall mining extended no more than about 500 feet from the mining and that soil moisture immediately above the longwall is not impacted." The Stoertz Report found this conclusion "highly doubtful" suggesting instead, as Northrop characterized it, "that the effect of subsidence upon groundwater resources may extend as far as 1,200 feet horizontally outward from the area directly above the mine workings. The groundwater table drops due to the opening of fractures in the overburden. This frequently causes the loss of springs, which, in turn, causes a diminution in the volume of flow in surface streams."
The state’s own paper trail on Permit 6 seems to bear out Northrop’s analysis. A mid-summer letter to Ohio Valley Coal Company official David Bartsch from ODNR’s John C. Sprouse noted that the company’s underground mining operations had caused the "dewatering of the stream on the Robert Phillips and James Baker property in Section 16 Smith Twp., Belmont County. Additional damage on the Phillips property includes the dewatering of the spring in which I have discussed with you."
Some four months later, Corbett and Simpson sadly explained the same concept in lay terms. "The place will become more or less like a desert and it won’t be swampy and wet, and mud on my boots like I got now, because there probably won’t be any mud here. You have to have water in order for the trees to continue to live the way they are," Corbett said.
"We have water in springs and wells. In fact one well was dug in 1818 when the first settlers came in. It’s still functioning and supplying the water for the main homestead." Simpson elaborated, "We have springs that are very bountiful and very productive. I understand that about 90 percent of those will be lost if the longwall goes under. I would really question how we would water livestock, in fact, how our crop fields will survive without enough water."
Other local activists like Dianne Burnham wrote Morris as well, hoping to pressure the bureau chief into invoking Section 1513.02,B of Ohio’s Revised Code to designate the Dysart Woods area as "unsuitable for coal mining." That section of the law reads, in part: "The Chief may, by rule, designate as unsuitable for coal mining natural areas ... of unique and irreplaceable natural beauty or condition...."
On August 3, Helms wrote Morris also, noting that "restoring a virgin forest once it is affected is not possible."
In an August 10,1997 front page Dispatch article, Robert E. Murray, the owner of Ohio Valley Coal, pledged that his company would not mine the area if research showed it threatened the trees. The Dispatch reported that "the coal company believes the trees won’t be harmed."
Helms and other Friends of Dysart Woods sought political allies. In a September 5 letter, Governor Voinovich thanked Helms for a letter and referred her letter to ODNR "for review and response." State Representative Charles A. Wilson Jr. declined to attend a September 15 meeting on Dysart Woods, declaring that "some officeholders are too quick to take sides, and may take a side for the wrong reason. Others are willing to listen to both sides of the issue gathering facts and input from their constituents in order to work on a formidable solution."
The region’s state Senator James E. Carnes appeared more sympathetic in declining Helms’ invitation: "Dysart Woods is a national treasure and I do not support anything that would remotely destroy the value of this forest. However, I believe that the Ohio Department of Natural Resources will act within the laws of the state of Ohio in reviewing the Permit and will not allow any mining that would hurt Dysart Woods."
Eighteenth District Congressman Bob Ney concurred that "Dysart Woods is a national treasure," but insisted that the matter "is a state-regulated issue."
On September 9, ODNR regulators expressed their view in a memo to Morris. Reversing 30 years of public commitment to preserve Dysart Woods as Ohio’s only significant ancient forest land in Appalachia, ODNR called the Woods "not of statewide significance" despite its status as a National Natural Landmark. OU Plant Ecology Professor Brian McCartney called the memo "ludicrous in at least half a dozen ways."
The day the memo was written, Ohio State University Professor Ralph E. J. Boerner, chair of the department of plant biology, wrote the Division of Mines and Reclamation urging a "go slow" approach and pointing out that his university had the academic expertise to answer the key questions: "If the Division of Mining and Reclamation is serious in its quest to determine how longwall mining near Dysart Woods would affect ‘vegetative stress’ of the forest at that site, it must accept the fact that this answer cannot be generated in 30 or 60 days with any reasonable level of scientific certainty." Boerner recommended holding the Ohio Valley Coal Company "permit application in abeyance until such time as sufficient, credible scientific data are generated ..." He called the Woods "one of a very limited number of pieces of our historical heritage."
Meanwhile, national news organizations like U.S. News and World Report and Inside Edition expressed interest in the story. By September 25, Guy L. Denny of ODNR was busy backpedaling in an interoffice memo to Morris. Denny noted that the Woods "supports a number of exceedingly large and tall trees and thus was the 47th site in the nation to be registered as a National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior." And, while it doesn’t "qualify for dedication as a state nature preserve ... [this] does not mean it is not of statewide biological significance."
In another memo, Denny wrote: "In 1984 a representative of the Ohio Natural Heritage Program reported that the plant community [within Dysart Woods] was ‘of high statewide significance.’"
The Friends of Dysart Woods were then joined by environmental activists and OU students. On October 1, Athens environmental activist Chad Kister and the OU Student Senate delivered more than 5,000 signatures to the Division of Mines and Reclamation requesting that Ohio Valley’s permits 6 and 7 be denied. Kister demanded that Dysart Woods’ watershed be protected by a minimum two-mile buffer zone. This exceeded even the ODNR’s policy under the more environmentally friendly Celeste administration that had established a half-mile buffer downstream and a mile buffer upstream prior to 1991.
The intense opposition to the Ohio Valley Coal Company permits caught the attention of company officials. Dianne Burnham, who had studied physical therapy at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, had submitted a lengthy rebuttal to the coal company’s claim that the longwall mining would have minimum impact on the water table. On October 6, Forrelli contacted Burnham’s supervisors at Barnesville Hospital to "make you aware that we have hard evidence that Miss Dianne Burnham is using the telephone lines and facsimile machine, including long distance communications, of the Barnesville Hospital Association to wage a campaign which will eliminate the five hundred (500) jobs at the Ohio Valley Coal Company’s... Powhatan No. 6 mine."
Kister helped organize simultaneous rallies in Athens and Columbus on October 12 to protest the passage of Permit 6 and demand that Permit 7 be denied. He noted, "Nobody has written a letter in favor of either permit, according to Bill Stirling of the ODNR."
Ohio Valley Coal Company found itself reeling when the nearby Barnesville’s Village Council unanimously passed a resolution on October 20 attacking mining activity in the area and supporting "a greenbelt area one mile around the corporate limits." On October 27, the OU Faculty Senate overwhelmingly passed a motion to protect Dysart Woods. Ohio University President Robert Glidden announced, "We do intend to save Dysart Woods."
On October 21, Ohio Valley’s President and CEO Murray issued a two-page press statement claiming that his family business "has one of the most distinguished records in the coal industry...." In his view, the coal and mining industry, which provides low-cost fuel for electricity, was under assault in Ohio. "I share concern for the preservation of Dysart Woods with Ohio University officials and the public in general. I have voluntarily committed not to conduct mining beneath Dysart Woods if the ongoing, independent research by scientists, and not ‘would-be’ experts, show that there may be substantial damage to the Woods," the statement read.
Murray concluded that, "Mining cannot be conducted in the vicinity of or beneath Dysart Woods before the year 2003... [and] no decision has been made by Ohio Valley or by me relative to mining beneath or in the vicinity of Dysart Woods."
With Murray’s pronouncement, OU administrators began to reconsider their fight against Permit 7 causing Burnham to challenge President Glidden in a letter: "Your response or lack of response will either dispel or support the public’s current belief that Ohio University voices the politically correct line but actually behaves in a fashion that would actually benefit the coal company."
Dysart Woods’ Friends became even more distressed when the Jeff Knopp, director of Land Protection of the Ohio Chapter of the Nature Conservancy, suggested that the Conservancy was "not overly concerned about Permit numbers 6 and 7." Knopp wanted to broker a political deal between Ohio University and Ohio Valley Coal to halt Permit 8. Knopp pointed out that "certain political representatives believe that the Woods is being used as ‘scapegoat’ to prevent mining throughout the region."
In November, the Athens News reported that: "Earlier this month, the ODNR announced that it believes Ohio Valley’s mine expansion will provide an excellent opportunity to study the effect of longwall mining on old growth forest."
On November 8, 100 or so demonstrators from both OU and the Barnesville area protested against Permit 7 outside the Division of Mines and Reclamation building in Columbus.
Simpson, Corbett and Helms were shocked by the state’s position. "I’ve got a small grove of virgin trees myself, that I love dearly. I’d rather they’d experiment on them than Dysart Woods," Simpson insisted.
When Helms was asked on November 28 about her newfound Ohio University student allies, she replied, "We need all the help we can get. Chad kind of does his own thing."
On December 2, Kister delivered hundreds of letters to Voinovich’s office in the Riffe Tower and issued a press release appealing for "monetary donations." "Checks can be written to ‘Dysart Defenders,’" the release read. On December 6, Kister was arrested and charged with a felony count of extortion after he allegedly accepted $1,750 from Don Nunley, president of United Mine Workers Local #1340, in exchange for a promise to keep environmental activists away from public hearings on a proposed coal mine in Athens County. Kister has called the allegation "absolutely insane" and local supporters speak anonymously of a "set-up."
At press time, Kister was in jail unavailable for comment, but Forrelli pointed out Kister’s connection to Dysart Woods activists two hours to the north. Helms believes that if the people of Belmont County lose the Woods and remain tied solely to the coal industry, they’ll be the losers in the long run. She argued that the jobs produced are temporary, but the environmental devastation is long-lasting. "It ultimately destroys the property values and the tax base," she concluded. "Why is it happening? I think there is just a heck of a lot of money that somebody’s going to make out of this whole thing. And it’s not going to be me and it’s not going to be Mr. Corbett and it’s not going to be Ohio University," Simpson said, "and I feel that the general public, the people that come to see a forest like this or come to see my house or any of this community, I feel they’re going to be the losers in this whole thing."
12/10/1997
NEWS BRIEF
Diversifying
Lynch’s new venture
Amos H. Lynch isn’t the most recognizable figure in Columbus. He’s not a developer. He didn’t just buy an NHL team. He’s not a politician.
What he is, though, is one of the most important and influential figures in minority journalism and the African-American news scene central Ohio has ever known. Last week, Lynch announced that he is now embarking on a new project—a nationally marketed magazine and online service designed to promote and increase diversity in the workforce.
American Diversity Magazine, a guide to the multicultural workforce, will make its debut at the 13th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Breakfast on January 19. The new magazine will be a full-color, glossy tabloid monthly and will initially be featured as an insert in The Columbus Post Newspaper, as well as in other minority publications across the country.
"I am proud to present a new publication dedicated to promoting the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.," Lynch said of his new project.
A longtime journalist, Lynch began his relationship with Columbus when he joined the staff of the Columbus Call and Post in 1961, six months after it began publishing. Lynch made a name for himself through his work at the newspaper—which is dedicated to covering the often neglected news that matters to central Ohio’s African-American population. He eventually became editor.
In 1995, concerned with the troubled financial situation the Call and Post was caught in, Lynch resigned from his position and led a mass exodus out of its offices to begin a new publication with virtually the same mission. Later that same year, along with a slew of former Call and Post staffers, Lynch started up The Columbus Post Newspaper.
Now the chairman of Lynch Communications Limited, as well as publisher of The Columbus Post, Lynch recently received the Columbus Association of Black Journalists Media Legends Award for his decades of work in the field of minority journalism. He’s also received awards from the Columbus Urban League, had a plaza named in his honor at the King Arts Complex in 1990, and last May he received the Jackie Robinson Civil Rights Award.
Aside from its presence in Columbus, the magazine will also be found in other publications in the top 20 minority markets throughout the country. It will also be distributed at more than 200 historically black colleges and universities nationwide.
The magazine will appear in an online version beginning in February, in commemoration of Black History Month. It will feature an employment database search engine, as well as an online employment classified service that will electronically link job seekers with corporate recruiters.
"Corporate America must be prepared to understand the dramatic demographic and cultural changes occurring in America’s labor pool," Lynch said. "American Diversity Magazine is dedicated to the logic of promoting diversity in the American workforce as a key to long-term success for business."
—Bob Fitrakis
12/17/1997
Chief confuses ‘best qualified’ and ‘least qualified’
by Bob Fitrakis
Action Jackson’s at it again. You recall the Civil Service Commission busted our illustrious police chief last year on charges of favoritism involving his light discipline of Commander Walter G. Burns who mishandled the Menucci prostitution investigation. So, what’s our humble chief do? A year later, despite his own policy that acting deputy chiefs, commanders and top cop officials should be selected on a "best qualified" basis, Jackson defied it to do another favor for Burns. The chief gave his old buddy Burns—there is sworn testimony that they used to visit women friends in the same building complex some years back—a Christmas present of "back pay" for not being made an acting deputy chief. Perhaps Jackson got "best qualified" and "least qualified" confused.
Burns, instead of using the FOP grievance officers, had to hire his own lawyer to help get him out of the Menucci mess. Sure looks like that back pay, which he never worked for, will come in handy in paying his legal fees. As Yogi Berra would say, it’s favoritism deja vu all over again. This is Jackson’s way of flipping off the citizens of Columbus. It’s the "arrogance of power" usually only seen in Third World dictatorships.
By the way, recall Jackson, an infamous hard ass when it comes to your average police officer, also ordered the Shapiro homicide file destroyed. When a top cop was asked what would happen to the average officer who did such a thing, he replied, "He’d be indicted, of course."
Gordo’s gone. As expected, we got the usual E. Gordon Gee, OSU president "greatest guy in the history of Earth" blah blah blah! I’d be the first to concede that he cut a quirky but dashing figure in his bow tie, kind of like the academic version of former Senator Paul Simon. The mainstream press reported that he did a lot of great things at Ohio State, but none sticks out in my mind. So just to balance the equation, I pulled my Gee file and came up with my own legacy:
Recall it was a gushing letter from Gee touting the abilities of T.G. Banks as a master builder that helped start the career of the controversial, recently released from jail, minority construction manager. Banks’ attorneys claimed it was a "typo" when Tommy "accidentally" included bachelor’s and master’s degrees that he never earned from Ohio State on his resume. His buddy Gee didn’t have a problem, despite this false information, with letting him work on the Schottenstein Arena and Max Fisher business school building. Sure will miss the sight of Tommy in the president’s box during football games.
How can we forget Gee’s commitment to due process? He disregarded college policy and U.S. law when he suspended OSU students without a hearing or trial for alleged off-campus conduct after a football game. OSU quietly forked over settlement cash later. He also allowed Campus Partners to pressure private businesses with seizure of their property under eminent domain. Perhaps he’ll have more time at Brown to brush up on basic constitutional law.
And he sold off the Firestone estate, a perfect environmental laboratory containing a majority of the last remaining bogs in Ohio, to developers hell-bent on milking every cent of profit out of the pristine woodlands and wetlands.
On every important issue, he bowed to the wishes of his Big Business Board. As a result, they realized Gee was a genius and he deserved a big old raise a few years back.
Don’t take much to be "one of the greats," eh, Gord?
O.K., we’re going to have an NHL hockey team named the Blue Jackets, even though the vast majority of people in Columbus HATE sports teams with blue colors, like Michigan. Like Wolverines. I mean HATE them like the Bloods hate the Crips. But it’s O.K. ‘cause the Blue Jackets got to do with the Civil War, see? And right on the new arena/old state pen site, you’ve got a Civil War fortress facade and a place where Confederate generals and officers were locked up. So the City Council uses an obscure technicality in the city charter to stifle debate and dissent, and without a written contract, irresponsibly allowing Nationwide to do something even more foolish than naming the team the Blue Jackets. That is, the destruction of a historic monument to be replaced with bright and shiny banality, or better yet, more blacktop for parking.
Why? Everyone’s got an explanation. Here’s mine: You destroy the Pen, you destroy the physical birthplace of the Wolfe family financial and media empire. According to John Gunther’s Inside U.S.A., Robert Wolfe, of the Wolfe family, was put in the old Pen after killing somebody in a bar fight who had reportedly insulted a Wolfe family sister. Just as O. Henry perfected his craft in the Big House, the Wolfe ancestor learned to make a damn good shoe. The rest—Wolfe’s Banks News and Shoes (WBNS)—is history.
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MISSING
01/14/1998
NEWS BRIEFS
Conspiracy or plan?
Moss, Heard say board is plotting
Last week's press coverage of a letter from school board member Bill Moss to over 900 political sympathizers either revealed another Bill Moss "conspiracy theory" or an embryonic plan to put a dozen Columbus Public Schools under the control of Ohio State University.
On Tuesday, January 6, the Columbus Dispatch reported on Moss' letter, that charged that a plan was underway to "resegregate" city schools. Dispatch reporter Mary Edwards noted that Moss neither offered any proof of such a plan nor would reveal his sources. Last Wednesday's Columbus Alive contained a column reporting the existence of what appeared to be a Columbus Public Schools pamphlet supplied by Moss.
The 16-page glossy pamphlet, entitled, "Columbus Public Schools in the University District" is not an "official" Columbus Public Schools document, according to the district's communications specialist, Judith Rogers. "To my knowledge, no one in the central office of the Columbus Public Schools worked on the pamphlet, nor did we pay for its printing costs," said Rogers.
"We received a copy of the pamphlet from Campus Partners," Rogers explained. "It's my understanding that 2,000 of them were published." The pamphlet's last page notes that "A Campus Collaborative seed grant" to two Ohio State University assistant professors "provided the basis for producing this brochure." The pamphlet also cites additional support and research assistance from OSU's School of Educational Policy and Leadership and the Educational Administration and High Education Section. Campus Collaborative's publication of the pamphlet raises a whole new set of questions concerning the plans of its parent organization, the controversial Campus Partners.
Nancy Zimpher, dean of OSU's College of Education, serves as chair of Campus Collaborative, Campus Partners' group responsible for reshaping academics in the targeted campus-area "revitalization" zone.
The non-profit Campus Partners, founded by Ohio State ostensibly to clean up the crime-ridden south campus bar area, has been called by its critics a tool of large real estate developers eager to use public money and eminent domain to redevelop the off-campus High Street corridor. Moss charged in his letter that Zimpher is the architect for the plan that would put 11 schools in the "Short North-University District-Clintonville corridor…" under the university's control and set the stage for race and class "regentrification." Moss pointed out that Zimpher was instrumental in the selection of new Columbus School Superintendent Rosa Smith and that Smith's newly hired executive assistant is Greg Brown, who "came directly from Zimpher's office."
Fellow school board member Loretta Heard, who served on the superintendent search committee, said, "Bill is absolutely correct, it was a Nancy Zimpher show. She even allowed her aide and the MacKenzie Group [the private superintendent search company] to vote in meetings." Heard claimed that newly elected Columbus School Board President Karen Schwarzwalder, appointed by then-Board President Mark Hatch as liaison to the search committee, turned the meetings over to Zimpher to run. "I was extremely disappointed that Karen allowed Dr. Nancy Zimpher to take charge of the whole process," Heard said.
Both Moss and Heard, the board's only black members in a district where minorities make up a majority of the student population, voted against Schwarzwalder's presidency. By Thursday, The Other Paper had Zimpher admitting that plans had been possibly discussed in public brainstorming sessions, but "exclusive operation" was not discussed in "great detail." Moss responded, "I want to know what they discussed in secret, in private. I know what their plan was and is. They just got caught."
Hatch publicly and heatedly attacked Moss' letter, denying that the school board under his presidency would have anything to do with such a plan. "Well, I'm glad he's denying it, although I would point out that Mr. Hatch is on the board of Campus Partners and makes his living as the executive director of the campus-based Community Crime Patrol," said Moss.
Both Moss and Heard pointed out that Zimpher won a YWCA Women of Achievement award last year. Schwarzwalder is the YWCA director. Heard further charged that Schwarzwalder was made board president because of her openness in allowing "chartered schools"—schools run with public money but not under the auspices of their local school board. It's these types of schools that Zimpher admits discussing. Saturday's Dispatch offered a bizarre twist to the controversy by printing Moss' entire letter as a letter to the editor. When asked if he had sent the Dispatch a letter to the editor, Moss laughed. "The only local newspaper I sent a letter to directly was the Columbus Alive. Somehow, Mary Edwards got a hold of it by Monday and called me, leading to the Tuesday Dispatch article. Then Greg Davies called me on Tuesday and asked for a fax, which I sent him. I have no idea how it ended up being a letter to the editor," explained Moss.
Despite Hatch's categorical denial and Zimpher's distancing herself from any plan, the Dispatch's lead editorial on the facing page, entitled, "Urban education: Failure is not an option for big city schools," seemed to back the very conspiracy/plan Moss attacked in his letter. "Also, districts that try innovative approaches, such as charter schools, can show that they understand the importance of improving results, even if this requires doing things differently from in the past," opines the editorial. It further argues: "The legislature in August granted the state's 'big eight' districts the right to create separate charter schools, with their own rules and governing boards. Given a chance, these experiments could revolutionize urban education. But some districts are already ahead of Columbus in planning such experiments."
Both Moss and Heard insist that they're not opposed to an open and democratic discussion of Columbus Public School alternatives. What they are opposed to is a secretive, closed-door process where the schools' agenda is being directed by non-elected public officials.
—Bob Fitrakis
01/14/1998
NEWS BRIEFS
Banks' construction management projects move forward without him
Despite the recent conviction and sentencing of Columbus contractor Thomas G. Banks, at least one of the local projects that includes Banks as part of the construction team is moving ahead, unfazed by the contractor's looming jail term.
An Ohio State official said Monday that the university will make no changes to the construction team it hired for the $93 million Schottenstein Center as well as the $52.3 million Max Fisher College of Business; even though Banks, one of that team's main players, will spend three months in jail for an ethics violation.
Banks, who was sentenced last week alongside Governor Voinovich's former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, must also pay a $1,000 fine and do 500 hours of community service after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor ethics violation relating to work his company did on Mifsud's home.
Nevertheless, OSU has no intentions of taking Banks' company off the job. "We hired a construction team, and that construction team is performing without any problems," said OSU Architect Jill Morelli. In fact, Morelli said she wasn't aware that Banks had even been sentenced until contacted by Columbus Alive.
Last year, Alive reported that two construction management proposals submitted to OSU for the Schottenstein project included resumes for Banks that stated he holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from the university. Another form included in one of the proposals said Banks holds an advanced degree in engineering from OSU as well. Neither the alumni affairs office nor the verification department at the OSU Registrar's office has a record of a Thomas Gleason Banks, with Banks' social security number, having been awarded any degrees from the university.
But Morelli said Banks hasn't had a major, hands-on presence at the projects, and she said the university has no qualms about the work being done by the construction team.
"Thomas Banks isn't the specific representative on either of those projects," Morelli said. "You hire the whole team. We didn't hire Thomas Banks the individual, we hired the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team, and they're performing up to par. So the quick, easy answer is no, we're not anticipating any changes on either of those projects."
Morelli added that OSU's contract with Banks-Carbone stipulates that the university makes payments at the same rate at which the projects progress, meaning that OSU won't be done paying the Gilbane/Banks-Carbone team until the projects are completed.
Construction companies run by Banks were also involved with two other major projects in Columbus: management of construction of the new, $125 million COSI center; and the city's controversial South of Main housing project, costing more than $4.2 million. Officials with COSI, as well as KeyBank, the construction lender that selected T.G. Banks Special Projects Division, Inc. to finish the South of Main project, could not comment on the status of Banks' involvement in light of his sentence by press time.
—Bob Fitrakis
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01/14/1998
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01/21/1998
Double standards
Is the chief defending criminal behavior?
by Bob Fitrakis
How many times have you heard law-and-order types whine about criminals getting off on some technicality? Well, it seems to have upset our own Chief of Police James G. Jackson so much that it looks like he had to adopt the tactic himself.
The chief, once again, changed his story when confronted with blatant cronyism. The chief recently upheld the grievance of Sergeant Jeffrey Blackwell. The sarge—who's now suing the city and mayor's investigation team that courageously probed police corruption—was disciplined as a result of a tape found in his desk that reportedly contained a conversation between him and a female. It sounded like he was coaching the woman on how to answer a police probe into embezzlement charges against her. Also, she just happened to work at a dry cleaner where prostitution was being run upstairs. The police disciplined Blackwell for not reporting it to, well, the police. Hey, what's a little unreported vice among friends?
When Blackwell's desk was searched, the tape turned up, he was disciplined and justice served. End of the story. Not exactly. Chief Jackson, with a newfound passion for technicalities, cited an alleged opinion from the police legal division, which overturned the disciplinary actions against Blackwell. Thus, it upheld the sergeant's right to hide tapes in his desk dealing with possible criminal matters that he's involved with. A victory for the fourth amendment and privacy? Hardly. Now the chief admits there was no opinion from the current legal division. It was an older "oral"—that is, undocumented—opinion.
And, what the chief really doesn't want the citizens to know is that Blackwell signed a consent-to-search order and it's on file, according to the legal division. A great victory for technicalities and the inalienable rights of friends of the chief to hide their wrongdoings in their desk, paid for by the public.
Jim Petro's long-awaited audit of the controversial Jefferson County Jail project, built by The V (formerly Voinovich) Company is finally in. Boy does it reek. The Republican auditor, looking into the Republican governor's brother's work, found that the August 8, 1996 contract between the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners and The V Company was not in fact legally obtained.
Petro found that "the 1996 contract would likely be ruled void as a matter of law" since the county's prosecuting attorney Stephen M. Stern had neither approved nor certified the V contract. Our illustrious auditor, after noting the illegality of the Voinovich contract, bizarrely concluded that Pauly Voinovich and The V Company should be paid anyway, under the principle of "quantum meruit." That's legalese for they did the work, pay them the fair market value for their services.
Prosecutor Stern did not take Petro's opinion well. In a January 5, 1998 letter, he responds: "Surely you are joking!!!" before citing a slew of cases showing that "quantum meruit" cannot apply against government entities when the law mandates a legal contract. Asked for a quote, Stern replied: "Every first year law student learns this. Somehow it eluded the auditor."
Think of the implications of this. Auditor Petro, in a formal opinion, is directing and encouraging Ohio public officials to make payments on illegal contracts. It makes a mockery of state law and any attempt to oversee public spending. Or maybe the law doesn't apply when the Governor's family business is involved. Stern is refusing to accept the decision and has a memorandum from the law firm of Bricker and Eckler that supports his stance.
While Petro continues to use his office to run interference for the Voinovich family, the Columbus Dispatch maintains a black-out on coverage of possible V Company corruption. A lengthy December 1997 Sunday article in the Akron Beacon Journal documented various strange relationships between Paul Voinovich and two former employees of the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVA). A federal grand jury in Cincinnati continues, although you'd never know it by reading the Dispatch, to look into the tangled web of relationships that suggests influence-peddling by Vince Zumpano and Pasquale "Patsy" DeLuca. Both worked at NOVA when that quasi-public agency received a contract to do air testing at the notorious Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) incinerator in East Liverpool. Ain't nuttin' like hirin' state environmental regulators to get the results you need. "No dirty air here. Show me the money!"
Zumpano, you may recall, was the then-toilet paper salesman who just happened to be at a meeting with Pauly Voinovich when he was negotiating prison and jail contracts. Last April, Zumpano was found guilty of attempted bribery when trying to secure yet another contract for the V Company from the Jefferson County Commissioners. Zumpano claimed that he was drunk at the time and not working for The V Company. The jury didn't buy it. Now that Zumpano has sobered up, reports are that he may want to cut a deal with authorities.
Interesting defense, nonetheless. Maybe the Dispatch could use it when they try to explain why they ignore the growing Voinovich family scandals. Or maybe they can claim they were too busy preparing another Paula Jones expose or going through old Whitewater files for a front page article on a Clinton scandal. Crooked penises are much more interesting than crooked prison contracts.
1/28/1998
Starr must go!
Lewinsky scandal smells of en-Trippment
by Bob Fitrakis
As we used to say in the '60s, "What's her trip?" I mean, Linda R. Tripp. We know she worked for the Army in Brunssum, Belgium, at Ft. Meade, Maryland and Ft. Bragg, North Carolina before coming to the Bush White House in 1991. Just in time to help spread rumors about President's Bush's liaisons with young staffers. Or, was she placed there by someone? Like, say, any intelligence agency connected to the U.S. government or right-wing political organization.
If not, Tripp is the Forrest Gump of modern scandal. She just happened to bring Vince Foster his last lunch order before he left the White House to commit suicide. Foster was under pressure from the same "inquiring" mainstream media minds and rabid right-wing gossip-mongers who were then spreading rumors of an affair between him and Hillary Clinton. According to the mythology of the Rush Limbaugh crowd, Hillary has horizontally recruited virtually every liberal in Washington, male and female.
Thank God that Tripp just happened to be there watching when Foster's torn-up suicide note was found nine days later. Tripp was there to testify before Congress on the "Travelgate" scandal and was there to see the White House staffer's disheveled blouse and smeared lipstick. With Gladys Kravitz of Bewitched fame now departed, we as taxpayers can be thankful that the one-woman volunteer sex-Gestapo is eternally vigilant.
She was there for us, to falsely befriend Monica Lewinsky and tape record the young woman without her knowledge. Of course, she had the foresight to give those tapes to Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent for a right-wing publishing firm. Goldberg is most remembered for spying on George McGovern for the Nixon campaign in '72 and for pitching a novel on Vince Foster's death to be written by white supremacist cop Mark Fuhrman.
Fortunately, Tripp just happened to be transferred to the same office in the Pentagon as Lewinsky when both left the White House. All the better to spend more time with Miss Lewinsky and lead her into lewd discussions about sex with the president.
Finally, after secretly taping her "friend," Tripp invites her out to dinner on Friday, January 16 and has six FBI agents snatch her, along with prosecutors working for special presidential witch hunter Kenneth Starr. Ms. Tripp, the prosecutors and FBI agents then spent nine hours squeezing Lewinsky to secretly tape other White House staffers including the president's secretary, Betty Currie.
All in the name of the highest morality. Well how's this for immorality? A 48-year-old woman who befriends a young intern and sets her up for a prison sentence. And what about Starr? Has he ever read the Constitution guaranteeing U.S. citizens the right to counsel? Remember, Starr was just about to file a brief on behalf of Paula Jones before he was made special counsel to investigate the president on the 24-year-old matter of the Whitewater land development. Despite broad subpoena powers, he could prove no criminal misconduct there. So, as a last straw, he seized the possibility of getting an alleged perjury charge in connection with the unrelated Paula Jones civil suit.
But what Starr's real agenda is, and has been from day one, is to embarrass the president so he'll be forced to resign. With the type of tyrannical power granted Starr, I believe I could convict just about everyone in the U.S. Congress and most of the residents of Columbus for denying any minor discretion.
Outraged local Republicans are gleefully pointing to Clinton's alleged immorality, but where were they when Buck Rinehart was accused by his 13-year-old babysitter of performing unwanted oral sex with her? Where were they when the local Republican prosecutor allowed Buck's dream expert to claim she simply dreamt up the encounter? Or when her family was spied upon by the Columbus police?
The president has the same rights as every other U.S. citizen. He is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If the Congress wishes to investigate the charge that the president encouraged Lewinsky to lie under oath, that is their constitutional right. If it's true, they can impeach the president for criminal misconduct, for "high crimes and misdemeanors." They can't impeach him based on gossip, hearsay, non-corroborated evidence or immorality.
2/04/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
A family affair?
Are the Hamiltons using the Bureau of Workers Compensation?
by Bob Fitrakis
Another scandal is brewing that may affect Governor George Voinovich's bid for the U.S. Senate this year. Already mired in scandals involving his former chief of staff and his brother's construction company, the governor's administration may again be forced to do political battle because of what may be ethics violations involving the state Bureau of Workers Compensation.
Columbus Alive has learned that Steven R. Isaac, the former chief operating officer (COO) of the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation, was reorganized out of his job after he filed an ethics violation complaint against the Bureau's deputy administrator for special projects, Dale Hamilton.
Alive has obtained documents that are at the center of the alleged ethics violation against Hamilton. Sources familiar with the investigation say that Isaac turned over to state investigators documents linked to Hamilton that invite Ohio cities to receive money back from the Bureau of Workers Compensation for emergency medical services (EMS) and other health services. At the same time that he was working with the Bureau, Hamilton was apparently simultaneously working with Hamilton & Associates, a management consultant firm owned by his father.
Hamilton is the son of Phil Hamilton, a lobbyist and the governor's former transition chief. Phil Hamilton also is a lobbyist for the Voinovich Cos., now The V Group, a construction firm specializing in public projects that is embroiled in various influence-peddling and contract-steering scandals in Ohio. Phil Hamilton's wife is Patricia Hamilton, the chair of the powerful state Board of Personnel Review.
In the documents supplied to the Ohio Ethics Commission by Isaac, Dale Hamilton apparently had a second job in addition to his responsibilities at the Bureau of Workers Compensation where his position involves both internal auditing and external consulting. Dale Hamilton's name is listed on a business card under the heading, "Hamilton & Associates, Consultants to Management." In accompanying documents, a company called EMS Billing offers for a fee to show municipalities how to get up to "$500,000 per year" from the Bureau, all outlined on Hamilton & Associates letterhead.
Hamilton's fee for this apparent conflict of interest was 15 percent for the first $250,000 collected on EMS billings or $5,000 for municipalities that would set up a billing service to the Bureau and take $15 per claim submitted, according to the documents submitted to the Ohio Ethics Commission.
The events that led to Isaac's job termination reportedly started at a late Friday afternoon meeting in September, attended by the CEO and two other executives from Care System, a software provider. Dale Hamilton and Isaac represented the Bureau at the meeting. Following the 4:30 meeting, the attendees went for dinner. Isaac then returned to his office to find a briefcase with no name attached. When he opened it to find some identification, he told state investigators, he discovered the EMS Billing documents as well as business cards with Dale Hamilton's name on them.
A Hamilton & Associates document entitled "Worker's Compensation Billing" begins: "Cities with a large industrial base have a unique opportunity to recover some of the costs associated with servicing large employers that have industrial accidents. While many cities are reluctant to bill citizens in their communities, the services provided to workers injured on the job are generally covered by Ohio's Workers Compensation system." The paper explains, "For example, if a worker is injured on the worksite, the emergency services provided by and [sic] EMS squad are covered."
Isaac was no doubt shocked by phrases like "EMS Billing is very familiar with the procedures associated with Workers Compensation injuries. We understand the timeframes for eligibility determinations, we know the fee schedules that will be reimbursed and which MCO [Managed Care Organizations] to bill for the specific injured worker. We also are familiar with the billing requirements and how to assist the city in being certified as a valid provider in the workers compensation network."
This was undoubtedly true, as Dale Hamilton was one of the Bureau's internal auditors and a consultant to these same cities. The document notes that "for workers compensation, you have to be BWC certified."
Hamilton & Associates claimed to have established "base billing rates in Lancaster," Ohio and promised "to identify the 'going' reimbursement rate for EMS services for other cities." The documents continue, "we have an EMS certified firefighter on staff that will work with your squads on how to collect needed information in order to maximize your returns."
In the overview of a document entitled "EMS Billing" that Isaac turned over to the Ethics Commission, potential clients are told: "EMS Billing provides municipalities with a billing service to help offset the high cost of providing emergency medical services to the community. Administered by a team of experts familiar with the inner workings of insurance operations…" It is precisely Dale Hamilton's "insider" status that Isaac found unethical, since the funds would be coming from the agency that regulates the payouts.
In a section called "Facts," the document states: "A municipality having 1000 EMS transports per year (three per day) is losing between $100,000 and $500,000 per year." The "Solution," according to Hamilton & Associates, is to use their "broad expertise" since they "deal directly with the insurer and communicate with them electronically under their terms. We understand and use their codes and work for the municipality to maximize reimbursement."
The "Fee Structure" is outlined on page seven: Hamilton & Associates receives 15 percent for $0-250,000 in annual collections; 12 percent for $250,001-750,000; 10 percent for $750,001 plus. Or, Hamilton & Associates would charge a "flat fee of $15 per claim submitted," plus a $5,000 set-up fee. For an "additional $5 fee per claim" they promise to identify "the correct insurer for a patient," a service perhaps made easier by Hamilton's position in the Bureau of Workers Compensation.
Isaac reportedly told investigators that after he opened the briefcase to establish its ownership and found the documents, he then copied them and left the briefcase in his locked office to await Hamilton's return. Sources familiar with the investigation say that Isaac claimed he returned to his office at 7 a.m. Saturday, the next day, and the briefcase was gone. Isaac, sources maintain, was incensed over Hamilton entering his locked office.
At the time of the incident, the Bureau's chief administrator, Voinovich appointee Jim Conrad, was in Germany on state business so Isaac contacted the Bureau's staff attorney, John Annarino, who apparently felt that there was enough evidence to forward the documents to the Ohio Ethics Commission. Bureau legal staffer Tom Norris was also aware of Isaac's complaint.
Who wasn't aware, reportedly, was Dale Hamilton, who apparently thought he had retrieved his briefcase without Isaac's knowledge of the contents or ownership. Sources say that when Dale Hamilton became aware of the ethics investigation, he suspected another Bureau employee of turning him in. Hamilton, Bureau staffers report, was defending his actions and complaining of betrayal.
Isaac and Dale Hamilton traveled extensively together on state business in the three weeks following the briefcase incident. Hamilton reportedly admitted writing the documents, and sources say Isaac was appalled that Hamilton would use his position and expertise within the Bureau to retrieve insurance money for profit for himself and his father. Isaac reportedly told state investigators that he told Hamilton in early October that he had turned him in and that he considered the private consulting and documents unethical and possibly illegal.
Isaac also told Conrad around this time; sources say the chief administrator remained noticeably silent on the matter. On November 7, almost immediately following the November 4 elections in which voters decidedly turned down the governor's Workers Comp reform plan known as Issue 2, Isaac was summoned to Conrad's office and informed that his statutory position—and thus his job—had been eliminated, despite earlier oral representations that he would be employed at least until September 1998.
On November 8, press releases were issued from the Bureau announcing the elimination of his job. A Dispatch November 8 article cited his ouster "amid compliments for his work in converting to a managed-care health system," while a Bureau spokesperson, Jim Samuel, characterized Isaac's termination in an Akron Beacon-Journal article in terms of "poor performance."
Sources say that a stunned Isaac initially went to prominent local attorney Larry James, who told him he didn't think that Isaac had a wrongful termination case.
When Isaac—now the president and chief executive officer of Regents Electronic Commerce—was reached for comment on the ethics complaint last week, he referred Alive to his attorney, Charles Brant.
The elimination of the highly regarded Isaac from the Bureau following last November's election came as a shock to state government watchers. In July 1995, House Bill 7 was passed, revamping the Bureau. It dissolved direct state control of the agency, set up a five-member oversight commission and by statute established the position of chief operating officer. Under HB 7 the governor retained the right to appoint the Bureau's chief administrator and the oversight commission. Voinovich selected long-time political ally James Conrad.
After an extensive national search, Isaac was confirmed by the Senate as the Bureau's first COO on February 1, 1996. The Senate was looking for a COO with private sector experience and expertise. Isaac, who had been vice president and chief information officer for Willis Corroon (Americas), an insurance brokerage firm in Nashville, fit the bill. In the nearly 21 months he operated the Bureau, Isaac managed to shrink the work force by some 630 employees to bring Ohio in line with the National Council of Compensation Insurance (NCCI) standards.
Brant, said Monday: "We don't know why he was fired, we can't say. They've never given us an explanation. And if they don't within the next few weeks, I'm sure there'll be a lawsuit filed by my client."
Brant also forwarded a demand letter dated December 15, 1997 to Conrad asserting that Conrad had told the Ohio Hospital Association that Isaac was removed after a discussion of his "performance problems." Brant insists, "No such conversation ever occurred" between Conrad and his client, Isaac. Isaac demands payment from the time of his termination through August 31, 1998, and an additional $50,000 for "damage to his reputation resulting from your unlawful act." A copy of the demand letter was sent to the governor, Brant said, also mentioning that the attorney general has appointed a special counsel, Maron Little of Zeiger & Carpenter to the case.
David Freel, executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission, would neither confirm nor deny that his office was investigating the matter.
J.C. Benton, a media spokesperson at the Bureau. acknowledged, "in late September, concerns were raised regarding Dale Hamilton. Within 48 hours James Conrad requested an advisory opinion from the Ohio Ethics Commission. The Bureau has been in contact with the Commission and provided all documentation they requested. Additionally, three letters to the Commission have been sent by Conrad asking them to accelerate the investigation."
An attempt to reach Dale Hamilton at Hamilton & Associates by an Alive reporter who did not identify himself was greeted with the telephone response: "No, he's not in; may I take a message?" When this reporter identified himself in a separate phone call and asked for Hamilton, he was told, "Dale hasn't worked here for years, and when he did, it was only part-time." Two messages requesting comment, left on his voice mail at the Bureau of Workers Compensation, were not returned by presstime.
When this reporter attempted to reach Phil Hamilton at Hamilton & Associates for comment Monday, he was told that Hamilton was in but "not available" for comment.
Phil Hamilton, still one of the governor's closest personal advisers and lobbyist for The V Group, was accused of similar charges in 1991 by Joseph Gilyard, the governor's director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services. Gilyard was fired on July 22, 1991 after reporting that Hamilton was pressuring him to grant jail and prison construction contracts to the governor's brother, Paul Voinovich, at the Voinovich Cos.
Hamilton's name surfaced more recently in connection with the Jefferson County jail controversy and the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA) scandal now under investigation and the illegal contract probe involving former Voinovich Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, who was sentenced last year to do time in a correctional facility for ethics violations. A state investigator told Alive during the Mifsud investigation that "Phil Hamilton is the glue that holds it all together."
When asked to comment for this article, Gilyard said, "Look, it's the same players, the same pattern of appearances of impropriety and improprieties, of unethical conduct. In my opinion, and this is just my opinion, Phil Hamilton, Paul Voinovich and the governor are part of an ongoing …conspiracy that couldn't withstand any close scrutiny."
2/04/1998
He ain't Chevie, he's my brother
Oklahoma City link should be looked at closely
by Bob Fitrakis
With Tim McVeigh convicted and sentenced to death and Terry Nichols imprisoned for life for the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, John Doe Number Two and "others unknown" remain on the loose. And the best place to look is in the white supremacist, terrorist underground.
Cheyne Keyhoe's recent confession that "I do have knowledge of my brother's involvement in the bombing of a federal building" must be taken seriously. The FBI's immediate announcement that it would probe any connections between McVeigh and Chevie Keyhoe is long overdue. Chevie, an admitted white supremacist, had ties to both the Aryan Nations in the Idaho panhandle and the white supremacist compound in Elohim City, Oklahoma.
Telephone records prove that McVeigh called the Elohim compound on April 5, 1995, just two weeks before the bombing. Also, on October 12, 1993, McVeigh was ticketed within 10 miles of Elohim City on County Route 220, the only access road into the racist compound. Was McVeigh looking for a place to hide after the blast?
McVeigh's highly publicized motive of avenging the Waco massacre eclipses the equally important significance of the April 19, 1995 date for white supremacists. A few hours after McVeigh and John Doe Number Two lit the fuse to the Ryder fertilizer and fuel truck bomb, racist cop-killer Richard Snell was executed in an Arkansas prison. His body was brought to Elohim City by the Reverend Robert Millar for a white supremacist "martyr funeral."
It's also well established that McVeigh took his cues from the neo-Nazi novel, The Turner Diaries by William Pierce, a primer for inciting racial civil war in America. Anti-racist activists and investigators have long been fascinated with the testimony of a former manager of the Shadows Motel outside of Spokane, Washington. The manager told authorities that "Days before the bombing, he [Chevie Keyhoe] mentioned to me that there's going to be something happening on the 19th and it's going to wake people up." The manager described Chevie as "ecstatic" when a news flash reported the terrorists' bombing.
Chevie, currently facing trial in our state for a shoot-out with state troopers near the Aryan Nations headquarters in New Vienna, Ohio, was also indicted in December in Arkansas on seven counts of murder, racketeering and conspiracy to bring about an "all- white, Aryan People's Republic." Prosecutors claim that Chevie planned to create their racist republic through "a campaign of murder, robberies and kidnappings," according to the Associated Press.
As part of that indictment, Chevie was specifically charged with "transporting stolen goods from the white supremacist community of Elohim City, Oklahoma, to Spokane in March 1995"—a month before the bombing.
Additionally, Chevie is charged with directing his Aryan Republic cohorts to murder gun dealer William Mueller, his wife Nancy and Nancy's eight-year-old daughter in 1996. Chevie, prosecutors claim, became fascinated with Robert Matthews and his neo- Nazi terrorist organization, The Order. Matthews, after a series of robberies and murders, died in a shoot-out with federal agents in 1985.
Following the conviction of Terry Nichols, the jury forewoman Niki Deutchman said "I think a decision was made early on that McVeigh and Nichols were the ones they were looking for. The same resources were not used to try and find out who else might be responsible." The trial also made it clear that Nichols was not the individual seen with Tim McVeigh just prior to the explosions. Stephen Jones, McVeigh's trial attorney, is currently writing a book examining the involvement of other racist suspects in the bombing. You can bet Chevie's name will be in the book.
Jones reportedly will elaborate on evidence that he was not allowed to introduce at McVeigh's trial. The evidence suggests that the Oklahoma bombing was planned at Elohim City. An Oklahoma grand jury is already investigating these issues.
Cheyne's recent trial revelation that "Chevie asked me to get involved in the Aryan People's Republic, a white supremacist movement" is anything but shocking. The December 13 front page of Arkansas' Democrat Gazette noted that Chevie's criminal charges stemmed from his desire "to foment a revolution by the creation of a white power group, The Aryan People's Republic." Clinton County, Ohio Assistant Prosecutor Rick Moyer's comments in the January 7 Dispatch are well worth remembering: "The white supremacist issue is for some other trial in some other time and place…all I am trying is a man who came into Wilmington and fired at two law-enforcement officers."
A bizarre and curious comment from a county prosecutor. The Keyhoe brothers shoot-out with state troopers coincided with Aryan Nations' first public rally at the Ohio Statehouse. What were the Keyhoes doing in Ohio? Did they visit the New Vienna complex? What does Cheyne know about Chevie's involvement in the bombing of a federal building?
These are heavy questions, my brothers and sisters.
2/12/1998
News Briefs
Hog-tying incident not over
Recent report raises questions about police procedures
"Chief Jackson's account in the Columbus Dispatch, claiming a new study 'vindicates' the officers involved in the hog-tying death of Chris Kinneer, is hogwash," according to attorney James D. McNamara, who recently won a settlement from the city on behalf of Kinneer's girlfriend, Patricia Hetzer. Kinneer was arrested and hog-tied after allegedly menacing a police officer in December 1994 after he and Hetzer had argued in her apartment.
McNamara pointed out "some peculiarities" with the Dispatch's "news account." "First, they lead with the claim that 'A medical expert has reversed his decision that called the police practice of hog-tying prisoners deadly.' Then, they imply that it was the original medical expert that reversed himself, but they go on to cite 'a study by Dr. Tom Neuman,' and only briefly mention without quotes or citation that the original medical expert, Dr. Donald T. Reay 'agreed with the findings,'" explained McNamara.
"And what were Neuman's findings? 'What is killing these people are the drugs they are taking that make them so agitated and so violent.' People need to know that other than alcohol, there were no drugs of any kind in Kinneer's body. And that before they accept the chief's explanation, they ought to read the under-oath testimony of the police and Jackson himself," said McNamara.
A February 6, 1998 Dispatch article quotes Jackson saying, 'This seems to exonerate the officers and their actions, as well as the division." None of the police officers involved in the hog-tying death of Kinneer were disciplined for their actions.
But, the case itself provides an interesting look into the operations of the Columbus Police Department, and the way police officers are trained. On January 29, 1996, Jackson gave a sworn deposition in the Kinneer case. The chief said that he first learned that hog-tying could lead to death in February 1993. Jackson claimed no "technical knowledge" regarding hog-tying.
On January 30, 1994, Jackson issued Division Directive 3.40 prohibiting placing a hog-tied prisoner on his abdomen. Yet, Kinneer died nearly a year later on December 31, 1994 in that very position. Jackson acknowledged that officers are "required" to know his directives. But, Jackson revealed in his deposition that the officers never "received" his directive and "should not be held accountable because there was a failure in the system."
That failure, according to Jackson, occurred throughout the entire year of 1994.
His directives were supposed to be read and passed out to officers at roll call. Roll call, "wasn't taking place in some cases," particularly for "mid-watch officers."
Mid-watch Officer Steven E. Dean's May 23, 1996 deposition stated that Kinneer "seemed pretty calm ... very calm" when the police arrived. Dean described Kinneer's attitude as "nonchalant, hanging out, not doing anything." Dean swore that Kinneer initially complied with verbal directives and that he could not smell alcohol on Kinneer's breath, but he was moving slowly. Kinneer, according to Dean, was neither told that he was doing anything illegal nor warned that he might face arrest. After Dean "grabbed" Kinneer's "sleeve and tugged it" and said "Come on," Kinneer "pulled his arm back in a clenched fist." That's what led to Kinneer's arrest.
Following the clenched fist and subsequent arrest, Dean "told" Kinneer "to get on the ground." The officer never explained why he didn't have Kinneer simply turn around for cuffing. "And I started to force him to the ground using body weight to pull on his lapels," Dean explained. Dean couldn't recall exactly how Kinneer ended up on the ground but he clearly recalled Macing Kinneer in the face. Dean conceded that he'd arrested many people who were a lot more violent than Chris Kinneer. Somehow Kinneer ended up on his stomach hog-tied, but Dean's memory is "cloudy" since he was "extremely" affected by the Mace he had sprayed and found it hard to breathe. Dean went to the landing to get some air as the Maced and hog-tied Kinneer lay on his belly.
Officer Dean couldn't remember ever receiving roll call training on alternatives to hog-tying such as flex-cuffs or other restraint devices. He stated that Sergeant Jack Roth, responsible for his training, "never" trained him on restraint devices. He noted, though, that it would have been virtually impossible since Roth started at 11:00 and the mid-watch officers started four hours earlier at seven.
Officer Robert D. Edwards swore that he was unaware of the chief's directive also, and that hog-tying was an accepted practice for Columbus police in 1994. It was Edwards who later checked Kinneer's pulse and found it not beating.
Officer John A. Gall participated as well in Kinneer's hog-tying and admitted under oath that he'd hog-tied up to 30 people between January 1993 and December 1994. Gall also admitted he learned his "hog-tying…on the street," not at the "Academy." He swore in his deposition that he was also unaware of Jackson's directive and said that the Columbus police failed to adequately train him.
With the current debate raging among City Council, Chief Jackson, the Safety Inspector's office and Mayor Lashutka as to the quality and responsibility of police training, the Kinneer depositions are insightful reading.
"Since 1991, for example, we've received about 12 percent of the monies we've requested for training and travel. [In] 1991, I think we received about $19,000 for 2,000 employees for training and travel. For 1992, we didn't receive one penny for training and travel…'93 we received $10,000. '94 we received $10,000, and '95 it was about $50,000, but all of that is totally inadequate for training," Jackson stated under oath.
The Kinneer depositions reveal that all the officers involved in his hog-tying and subsequent death were unaware of a key directive from Chief Jackson. While Jackson admits that there was a "failure of the system," it's more than that. It's a crisis when the chief's essential directives are not passed on to officers on the street. "The Chief and the department are not exonerated," concluded McNamara, "They've got the same systemic problems they've always had."
—Bob Fitrakis
2/18/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Alive readers may have seen James Conrad's letter to the editor last week claiming that "…the allegations against BWC raised in your article [A Family Affair] are totally without merit."
What you probably didn't see, unless you work at the Bureau of Workers Compensation (BWC), is Conrad's February 6 internal e-mail that starts: "Gosh, what an exciting week: an inch of ice in Columbus; 16 inches of snow in Cincinnati; and then feet of bull in the Columbus Alive newspaper."
Seems Conrad, the Administrator/CEO of the Bureau, has his own peculiar standards for what is merit-worthy. And, he has a propensity to threaten Alive and at least one citizen with his publicly funded lawyers.
What's gotten Conrad so defensive is what he calls "the central implication of the article, that former BWC Chief Operating Officer Steve Isaac was terminated for filing an ethics violation complaint against a fellow employee," that Conrad claims "is completely baseless and irresponsible."
According to his letter, Conrad also assumes Alive and I have malice towards him and the BWC. Nothing could be further from the truth. I've never met the man and my only bias is towards clean government. But what I do have is a "confidential" Interview Summary Memo by BWC investigators based on an interview with Isaac on October 14, 1997, approximately three weeks prior to his ouster by Conrad.
In Alive's February 4 article, I outlined the chain of events that led up to Isaac being organized out of his job at the BWC last November, despite widespread praise for his work. Isaac's termination came just six weeks after he reported that BWC Deputy Administrator Dale Hamilton had in his possession documents linking him and his father's company to an agency seeking to help municipalities in collecting reimbursements from the BWC—an apparent violation of ethics regulations.
In the BWC summary memo, Isaac raises those serious allegations against Dale Hamilton, the son of the powerful lobbyist Phil Hamilton who served as the governor's transition chief. Phil Hamilton and Hamilton & Associates' names have surfaced in relationship to other government scandals covered in Alive.
According to that confidential memo, "Mr. Isaac then noticed business cards that had Dale Hamilton's name on them and some documents regarding EMS Billing." Add this to the documents we previously published on our front page, and even the most cynical should find some merit—the BWC's memo substantially confirms Alive's story.
Curiously, two days after the Alive story, the Columbus Dispatch reported—in an article without a byline—that "Dale Hamilton…prepared an information document for EMS Billing, which he helped form, before taking his $75,088 Bureau post in January 1996. The material prepared after he took the state job outlines how the Bureau reimburses municipalities for emergency ambulatory services for injured workers. For a percentage of total billings, EMS would help government entities collect reimbursements."
The Dispatch reported that Isaac informed the Bureau's attorney, John Annarino, on September 25 and that Hamilton "disassociated himself from EMS Billing on September 26." So Hamilton, according to Isaac and the Dispatch, was working for the BWC while carrying in his briefcase a stack of business cards and promotional material for EMS Billing, a private company doing business, or attempting to do business, with the BWC or its clients.
Mr. Conrad, let me ever so respectfully refer you to the BWC Code of Ethics, Chapter 4123-15, entitled "Eliminating Outside Influence and Related Issues." It states: "No employee of these agencies shall engage in outside employment that results in a conflict or apparent conflict with the employee's official duties and responsibilities."
What Isaac asserted, according to the confidential memo, "was his belief that the conflict of interest matter was the big issue" with Dale Hamilton. "Mr. Isaac stated that the information relative to the BWC being billed retroactively was the clearest conflict," the report states. Isaac also saw that "it appeared as Mr. Hamilton was funneling BWC information to Hamilton & Associates" and "that the program was either being marketed currently or would be marketed in the near future."
These are just about the last things he saw before he was let go from the BWC, amidst praise for his work. The BWC needs to explain fully why a highly praised public servant like Isaac was terminated after acting ethically and courageously in reporting alleged wrong-doing, while the politically connected Hamilton still works there.
As word of Conrad's termination of Steve Isaac hit the streets last November 8, local citizen Debbie Conley e-mailed Conrad the following message: "Mr. Conrad: I read about Mr. Isaac getting fired. If he did such a good job, what is the real reason for his release? Could it be that he caught someone doing political things instead of doing their job (that the taxpayers are paying this person to do). Seems to me that the wrong person got fired. We need people that do good jobs and get rid of the ones that don't."
Conrad e-mailed her back 13 minutes later on a Saturday noting that his message was of "High" importance. "I'd be real careful about accusations you make. Especially because you have no idea of what you are talking about… Again, if you're accusations are against me, please be more specific. I'd like my attorneys to see them also."
Richard G. Ward, Ohio's Inspector General released a report June 19, 1997, that states after investigating the BWC, "this experience served to illustrate serious deficiency in the ability of BWC to objectively identify, analyze, and deal with allegations of wrongdoing within the agency." Maybe Conrad better contact his lawyers about Ward.
2/25/1998
News Briefs
Will the destruction of the Ohio Pen cost Columbus citizens $10 million? Clifford Arnebeck said it just might: "The city has already forfeited $6.9 million for the B-4 connector that would have connected Neil to Front, or Nationwide Boulevard, in order to destroy the Pen without a federal historical review. Now it looks like they may lose $3 million related to the B-2 connector for the Spring-Sandusky Interchange due to their hasty demolition."
Arnebeck is the attorney for the Brewery District Society, the Dennison Place Association and Malcolm Cochran. Arnebeck's plaintiffs are suing the Federal Highway Administration and others in hopes of salvaging the Pen's final Victorian remnant or punishing the city of Columbus for the demolition.
The city of Columbus approved the destruction of the old Pen site, including structures dating from the 1830s, to make way for "temporary parking" related to the Nationwide arena construction project. As part of the Spring-Sandusky Interchange Project, surface street connectors were to be built to facilitate the flow of people from downtown into the northwest quadrant of the Columbus metropolitan area. Nationwide plans to build its arena where the B-4 highway segment would have gone. To accommodate Nationwide's insistence that the Pen buildings be destroyed, the city agreed to pay for the extension of Nationwide Boulevard to Neil Avenue with city tax dollars.
"The Federal Historical Preservation Act prohibits 'intentionally' destroying a building of historical significance without a proper historical review. One of the penalties is the loss of federal funds to the demolished historical site," Arnebeck explained.
If the city loses millions of transportation dollars for destroying the historic Pen facade, it will be a classic case of history repeating itself. On October 22, 1976, the Battelle Commons Company razed the historic Union Station arcade during the night to make way for the convention center. On February 10, 1977, Mike Curtin reported in the Columbus Dispatch that: "Razing the historic Union Station arcade cost Columbus millions of federal dollars for the planned $80 million convention center." Specifically, the federal Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA) "…notified Mayor Tom Moody that the city's request for $6.2 million for a transportation complex at the convention center had been turned down."
Arnebeck said that he plans to pursue reports that U.S. Representative John Kasich was called upon to influence federal officials to keep the money flowing despite the Pen's destruction. Arnebeck also intends to depose Nationwide CEO Dimon McFerson regarding his reported "master plan" for the area.
"Ultimately the issue here is whether mega-corporations like Nationwide can dominate both our local politics and our federal laws. This case presents perhaps an unprecedented mix of corporate welfare and corporate vandalism in that Nationwide was getting generous tax exemptions from the city at the same time it demanded that the city destroy one of the most valuable and historic architectural properties owned by the people of Columbus," argued Arnebeck.
—Bob Fitrakis
2/25/1998
News Briefs
While questions are finally being raised by the Franklin County Commissioners concerning massive cost overruns by the V—formerly Voinovich—Group's renovation of the Franklin County Jail, a battle continues to rage over the Voinovich jail project in Jefferson County.
In a February 5, 1998 letter from Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen M. Stern to Auditor of State Jim Petro, Stern contends that his office "…found what appeared to be at least twenty (20) inaccuracies and oversights in your [Petro's] report. Moreover, your report does not say whether the change orders discussed were actually performed and/or paid."
Petro's December 30, 1997 certified audit of the Jefferson County Jail construction project found that contracts between the Voinovich Companies and Jefferson County "would likely be ruled void as a matter of law." The contracts lacked the approval and signature of Stern, as county prosecutor, required by the Ohio Revised Code. Despite Petro's acknowledgment of the illegality of the contracts, the auditor's office recommended that Jefferson County officials pay the Voinovich Companies anyway, since they performed the work.
Stern's letter documents numerous alleged errors regarding construction "change orders" on the Voinovich project. "The fact that at least twenty errors exist in a report completed by your office after a year of investigation brings into question not only the validity of the report but the competency of those to whom you entrusted such an important task," Stern's letter stated.
After raising questions about the Voinovich Companies, Stern found himself the subject of an audit by Petro's office. "I have 'gone on record' in the past stating that I believe your office conducts many audits based upon political consideration or 'pay back.' The audit of the Jefferson County Jail Project, your [Petro's] office's strained support of the Voinovich Companies in that audit and previous experiences Jefferson County has had with your office lend further support to those beliefs," Stern's letter insisted.
"The business of running county government is difficult enough without a state agency going out of its way to sabotage or 'get even' with public officials of a different political persuasion," concluded Stern.
Despite scandal and controversy involving Voinovich jail projects in Ohio, sources report that the V Group is about to begin a large prison construction project in Hawaii in partnership with the Corrections Corporation of America.
—Bob Fitrakis
3/4/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
Trail of tears
Native Americans spread their sorrow over Big Mountain across the Midwest
by Bob Fitrakis
Last Wednesday, a standing-room-only crowd at the Native American Indian Center gathered to hear about the Big Mountain Resistance, fighting the largest forced relocation of American Native people in the 20th century. Since 1974, a group of Navajo have resisted the U.S. government's removal of them from their sacred mountain in Arizona.
Mark Welch, a Dacotah Indian, welcomed the mixed crowd of Native Americans, Greens, Anti-Racist activists, African-Americans, human rights advocates and others: "The Big Mountain struggle affects not only our people but all people everywhere."
Before the evening was over, none would dispute his words.
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3/04/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Heard the latest Clintonian spin on the Columbus/CNN town hall meeting seen 'round the world? After the Slickster of Love's national security trinity—Billy, Sandy and Maddy—fumed, fidgeted and got flustered before 200 million viewers, the first major lie—sorry, spin—went like this: "President Clinton is the only president with the courage to have a town hall meeting on war."
Perversely absurd, but a nice populist touch. Make no mistake about it, Bill Clinton sent his less than terrific trio to Columbus to preside over a pep rally for war, not to hold a town meeting. This was right out of the Prez's political playbook. First, announce it at the last minute, so lawful demonstrators can't counter-organize. Second, keep the location a secret as long as possible. Third, let one director script the pageant: CNN. Fourth, carefully select and screen your extras: ROTC, League of Women Voters, active duty military, alumni, Young Dems, veterans, and "nice" student groups like the "Ohio Staters."
As an example of how poorly planned the alleged town meeting was, take the story of the disgruntled activist who single-handedly brought in the bulk of the protesters. Angry that he had managed to procure only two of the white tickets granting entry to the event the activist took one of them and photocopied it at Kinko's the night before. Most of the protesters who disrupted the proceedings were holders of the fake 80 cardstock reproductions, calling into question the security measures taken before the event—and the administration's outright complacency.
Big Bill's done it before in Columbus. Most recently at a silly little conference at the Fawcett Center where he staged a live TV event with hand-picked questioners lobbing softball queries to the likes of Al Gore.
At the 1992 Democratic Party platform hearing, shown live on C-SPAN, Clinton flaks coerced, bullied, and bought off all but 16 hardcore delegates supporting Jerry Brown. When the party approved my petition for a minority plank to abolish the death penalty, this did not fit into Bill's TV plan for his upcoming made-for-TV convention coronation. By the time I got back to Columbus, there were calls on my answering machine from the Boston Globe and the Atlanta Constitution demanding to know why I'd submitted "fraudulent signatures" on the petition and if I was a neo-fascist "LaRouche-ite."
Although they later backed down on the "fraud" claim, I was forced to sue Bill Clinton to include the anti-death penalty plank in convention debate. I lost.
Clinton's the linear descent of every negative, phony, staged predecessor in American politics. The TV glibness of Kennedy; Nixon's media manipulation; Reagan's stage presence; and Bush's Nintendo Gulf War videos. Clinton knows a good TV image is worth a thousand facts.
Clinton's spinmeisters' second lie following the "debacle" appeared in the New York Times on February 20. It reported that "better advance people 'wouldn't have given tickets to the Spartacus League,' he [a Clinton aide] said referring to a Marxist group." I haven't seen a Spart in the 11 years I've been in Columbus, but they were indigenous to my hometown, Detroit. They once took time out from disrupting political meetings to accuse me of "exhuming the rotting corpse of social democracy." I was.
Local TV "news professionals" joined in Clinton's spin. They referred to those of us demonstrating outside St. John Arena as "professional protesters." Admittedly, some of us are highly skilled amateurs, but nobody sent paychecks for protesting to the assorted pastors, professors, social workers, Quakers, peaceniks, anti-racist activists, Muslim and Arab students, outspoken feminists, veterans and others who stood outside for two hours in a cold rain to call for peace.
Unlike CNN inside, our mic outside was open to everyone and no one had to have a red ticket and a "prescreened question" to speak. Clinton's orchestrated version of an Orwellian town hall meeting, with Stepford wives and their husbands cheering on Big Brother's Nuremberg-rally-style cues, was inexcusable and embarrassing.
Female demonstrators who got into the town meeting were forced to remove any clothes containing pictures, political slogans, or flags. That left one woman standing in her bra and another completely topless. Thank God, the security officers were chivalrous enough to turn their backs, which allowed those women to retrieve their garments.
Another snuck the now-famous "No War" banner in under her skirt. And the only person arrested inside the arena committed the heinous crime of refusing to give up a small picture of a dead Iraqi child, a victim of the UN sanctions. The only person who was allowed to have a picture of dead children was Defense Secretary Cohen. Just another prop in the propaganda war.
Oh, did you hear this week's Clinton spin? You see, Bill used to be a demonstrator himself, and he really staged the event in Columbus because he knew it'd be disrupted and we'd have peace. Ah, as the White House spins.
3/11/1998
News Briefs
The war of words between campus-area activists and Campus Partners just escalated with the founding of FCP, a new organization opposed to what they claim is "a campus-wide gentrification project" masquerading as a "partnership."
In recent months, Campus Partners has waged a war against fliers posted on utility poles. Julie Boyland, Campus Partners' community outreach coordinator, announced to the local media her non-profit organization's intention to beautify the campus area by ending this long-standing tradition. Copwatch, a campus-based activist organization, reported several callers to their office complaining that their posters had been torn down. Some fliers were mailed back with letters threatening possible legal action from Campus Partners, signed by Boyland, Pasquale Grado, director of the University Community Business Association, and Howard Skubovius, president of the University Area Commission.
One letter began by noting that "…under the City of Columbus Code, it is our understanding that it is illegal to post signs on private property without permission or in any public right-of-way" and then offered the following analysis: "They've [the fliers] become another form of graffiti."
The letter continued, "You will not find poles covered with litter in any other neighborhood in Columbus or in the surrounding communities such as Hilliard, Bexley and Dublin. The University Area Commission has requested—and the City Attorney is reviewing—new legislation which would levy a stiff fine on the establishment promoting an event for each illegally posted flier."
Columbus Alive asked FCP co-founder Don Morris what the initials of his organization meant. He replied, "The CP stands for Campus Partners. You can guess what the F-word is."
While Morris concedes that "revitalization is definitely something that is needed around the OSU area," he insists that Campus Partners has engaged in "land grabs, police harassment of locals. And money-based tear-down-and-rebuild is not the way to go."
Campus Partners, an Ohio State University-sponsored non-profit neighborhood redevelopment corporation, has sparked controversy in the High Street campus corridor and neighborhoods just east of the university since its inception. From the outset, Campus Partners executives openly talked of using eminent domain to take non-campus property on High Street and replace them with businesses they deemed more suitable to the area. South Campus bar owners and small business people are leery that their businesses might not fit in to Campus Partners' blueprint for a revitalized campus corridor.
In August of 1997, the University Community News newsletter lauded the hiring of the architectural firm Goody, Clancy & Associates by Campus Partners. Two current Campus Partners executives and former campus-area progressive activists from the '70s, Boyland and Steve Sterrett are "contributing writers" for the University Community News, published by the University Community Association. Goody, Clancy & Associates were hired to "prepare an urban design plan and a comprehensive development strategy for North High Street from 5th Avenue to Arcadia Avenue," although the article notes that it's "more than just a 'plan,' the products of the urban design effort will include enforceable urban design standards and other revitalization tools for this critical portion of the University District."
Morris argues that what the campus area really needs is "A police presence that is dedicated to maintaining peace rather than enforcing order through fear."
That is one of the tenets in a seven-point alternative campus revitalization plan offered by FCP. The plan also includes: "Better community services"; "Businesses that are actually practical and relevant to the needs of the area"; "A greater sense of community and responsibility throughout the OSU area"; "Better job and educational opportunities for people with lower incomes and an end to discriminatory hiring practices"; "Fair and equal housing opportunities"; and finally, "An end to the racism and classism that is seen all too often around OSU."
—Bob Fitrakis
3/18/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Who’s trying to sabotage Columbus Democrat Charleta Tavares’ campaign for Secretary of State? Friday’s Dispatch noted that Mark Hanni of Youngstown, who’s also running in the Democratic primary for that seat, filed a protest claiming that Tavares submitted illegal nominating petitions.
Hanni must be psychic or he’s practicing that well-known brand of Youngstown politics that his family is famous for. His father, Don "Bull Moose" Hanni Jr., is the former boss of the Mahoning County Democratic political machine. He and his other son, Don III, were associated with the petition debacle that prevented presidential contender Jerry Brown’s name from appearing on the Ohio ballot in 1980—effectively ending Brown’s presidential bid. A June 1980 Ohio Magazine article about it is well worth reading.
Bull Moose Hanni was working for Ted Kennedy while Hanni the Younger volunteered that January to help get Brown on the ballot. At the time, the older Hanni was trying to unseat Ohio Democratic Party Chair Paul Tipps. Tipps was supporting Carter, and a Brown candidacy would have drawn votes from Kennedy. So what did the son do for his dad? Plenty, according to the article: "First, Hanni did not circulate petitions and gain the necessary 1,000 signatures to put Brown on the statewide ballot. Second, persons at the Mahoning County Board of Elections where Hanni worked allegedly signed false names on petitions for several slates of Brown delegates. Third, several sheets of Kennedy delegate signatures were reportedly stapled onto Brown petitions. Finally...Brown campaign workers contend Hanni intentionally delayed the batch of petitions in his office so that the courier delegated to transport them to the Secretary of State’s office in Columbus could not possibly have gotten them there before the filing deadline."
Now, another Hanni is on the scene, filing his last-second protest based on what he claims was an "anonymous phone call" that purportedly said that the petitions Tavares submitted were illegal because she failed to include the signed original, as required by law. He was wrong, all the Tavares petitions included originals and she had been certified for the ballot.
Oddly, prior to filing, there was a missing original Tavares petition that would have invalidated 2,000 signatures and most likely would have knocked her off the ballot. Greg Haas, a political consultant volunteering in Tavares’ campaign, caught the mistake and did not submit the petitions in question.
How did Hanni, or his anonymous caller, know about the missing originals? Why was Hanni confident enough to file a protest without evidence based on an anonymous call? Perhaps the caller, if there was one, or Hanni know more about the missing or stolen original petition than they’re telling. Perhaps Hanni would be willing to turn over his phone logs and the approximate time of the call to the appropriate government investigatory agency.
Haas noted that, "All the elements of sabotage are here. Hanni filed a protest over something he anticipated happening, but never happened. Who would be the likely beneficiary? Not the Democratic Party. Only Hanni and Kenneth Blackwell, Charleta’s Republican opponent."
To assume that the homeless have an advocate on the task force charged with advising the city on what to do with homeless people living on the so-called "Scioto Peninsula" is wrong. Task force spokesperson Barbara Poppe, executive director of the Community Shelter Board, theoretically should play the advocate’s role.
Now let’s deal with reality. After Poppe’s migration from Cincinnati less than a decade ago, she served as executive director of the Friends of the Homeless, where she distinguished herself by battling with her staff and purging the grassroots activist elements off her board. She corporatized, sanitized and neutered what was the most militant homeless advocate organization in Columbus.
No doubt this paved the way to her ascendancy as head of the Shelter Board, a partnership between corporate and government interests. Poppe’s become the czarina of all shelter policy in central Ohio. The Shelter Board is no longer there to serve the various shelters with different and complementing philosophies; they are there to do her, and corporate, bidding. Thus, if the Open Shelter is standing in the way of development—in this case, on the Scioto Peninsula where COSI will be going—corporate leaders can count on Poppe to push them out without much real debate. Those who have worked closely with Poppe, and I include myself as a former Friends board member, know her magic mantras: "We’re not going to talk about that," "It’s not on the agenda," and "We’ll talk about it later."
So, it should be no surprise to anyone that the Dispatch quotes Poppe as recently saying, "We’re not going to have a general discussion about it." The "it" is the relocation of homeless people and two shelters from the peninsula.
What Poppe has yet to talk about is her reported preference for "privatization" of the homeless problem based on "harm reduction" policy. Harm reduction strives to sweep the poor off the street, place them into housing and provide them with clean needles to continue their self-destructive lifestyle in a less harmful manner. Poppe’s dream of some Central Park-type hotel where the non-rehabbed homeless cavort in harm reduction harmony may or may not be a good idea. But here’s the problem. One of the worst-kept secrets in the city is that there’s a "gentleman’s agreement" not to allow any more homeless beds into the Discovery District.
Friends of the Homeless and Faith Mission rigidly stress rehabilitation and don’t allow intoxicated people in. The Open Shelter is one of the only refuges for the drunk and strung-out homeless. If Poppe’s task force closes it, where will it relocate? What neighborhood is that tolerant? Poppe must allow an open and public debate on this issue.
3/25/1998
News Briefs
NEW YORK CITY—What’s up with the American Left? Usually the best place to find out is the Socialist Scholars conference held in New York City each spring. Although primarily a lemming-like gathering of the America’s leading intellectual Leftists—and one should heed the observation of conservative William F. Buckley who once noted that being one of America’s foremost radicals or socialists is a lot like being called "the tallest building in Topeka, Kansas"—this conference seemed less focused on political theory and more on activism.
Dr. Manning Marable, former director of Ohio State’s Black Studies program and currently professor of history at Columbia University, was joined by a who’s who of black radical activists in calling for the formation of a "Black Radical Congress." Founding mother of the Black Panther Party, Kathleen Cleaver, poet-activist Amiri Baraka, and an assortment of black activists from militant nationalists to Marxists have agreed to set aside their theoretical and ideological differences in hopes of creating a new black radical organization. The Black Radical Congress (BRC) advocates are actively engaged in organizing their founding Juneteenth convention to be held June 19-21, 1998 in Chicago.
"There were only 240 people in the Niagara movement led by W.E.B. DuBois, which led to the founding of the NAACP in 1905; the Student Non-Violence Coordinating Committee, ‘SNCC,’ never had more than 1,000 people when they sat in at lunch counters throughout the South and destroyed the Jim Crow system; and CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, only had 2,500 members at its height when it led the Freedom Rides into the South," Marable preached repeatedly throughout the weekend.
"We’re radical because we want to strike at the roots of the problem. That’s what the word means," explained Marable, "And the problem is a system that’s building 150 new prison cells a day to lock up primarily black and Latino people."
White activists like Democratic Socialists of America Director Alan Charney wholly support the BRC, so much so that Charney donated his hip TriBeCa loft for a fund-raising reception on Saturday night. Marable, with Cleaver by his side, made an impassioned plea for funds promising that the founding convention "will lead to the establishment of a permanent national structure for a black pluralist left within the black liberation struggle."
"We have been so obsessed with rallying the masses, we’ve forgotten that a small, dedicated group of people are at the core of every great movement. Just ask Kathleen. The Black Panthers, at their peak, only had 5,000-10,000 members nationwide," added Marable.
Cleaver believes a new black radical organization is long overdue and conceded that the Black Panthers had not anticipated the repression of the federal government that destroyed the party and took a heavy toll on her ex-husband, Eldridge. The Black Panther mystique—mythologized in recent films like Panther—hung heavily in the air.
Kathleen Cleaver, when asked the age-old question of who was right, the late Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton or her former husband, who split over whether the Panthers should remain community-based or push for international revolution, stated: "Martin Luther King is dead, Huey P. Newton is dead, Eldridge is alive, but mentally ill. I learned a lot from Eldridge and think that he was basically right in his understanding that the struggle is international and would continue to be so into the future. It’s no longer a question of who’s right or wrong. Corporations now operate worldwide and communities are oppressed everywhere."
Filmmaker and TV Nation creator Michael Moore had a similar message in a plenary session entitled, "The Left Speaks to America: Are We Listening?" His answer, spiced with witty observation and sarcasm, was simple: when the Left speaks, nobody’s listening these days. He’d just come from a protest at Nike’s premier Manhattan shoe outlet that he’d helped organize for black high school students. "I’m tired of showing up at rallies organized by the left with seven people. So, I organized my own rally by going to public school teachers and going directly to the market that Nike targets for its $150 sneakers. You should have seen the terror in Nike officials’ eyes when their targeted market showed up screaming at them about exploiting workers in the Third World."
Moore chastised the leftists for speaking in outdated Marxist-Leninese. "C’mon, you gotta ‘Comrade List’ on page six of your conference program. Nobody talks like that. There’s also a certain arrogance that comes out of New York and Washington that somehow looks at people like myself from the Midwest as yahoos or bumpkins where you can pull the wool over our eyes. But, we sure kicked Clinton’s ass in Columbus when he came in to sell the war. People can’t be treated like idiots and with contempt."
At that point, one of the leftists that Moore was chastising who looked a lot like the young Leon Trotsky shouted, "Go Buckeyes!" Hardly high theory, but a pervasive sentiment among conference attendees. Marable also praised the activists in Columbus and stressed the importance of holding the BRC conference in the heartland.
—Bob Fitrakis
4/01/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
"Arena district 'to take off'" screeched the headline of the Columbus Dispatch's front page Sunday edition. The hockey hype is transforming itself into "an arena-area entertainment district" powered by the virtually unstoppable and unholy alliance between Nationwide Insurance and the Dispatch Printing Company. The masters of Columbus have a "master plan." Still, a key question remains unanswered, one of Constitutional importance. Is the arena a private venture, as we've been told—nay, as we demanded after 57 percent of us voted not to finance it with our tax dollars—or is it a public arena or some grotesque quasi-public hybrid?
Perhaps a more important and curious article appears on page 2C in the Metro section in Sunday's Dispatch. Here we learn that the public entity known as the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority is taking land from the city, other corporations and private businesses. The U.S. Constitution prohibits the taking of private property except for "public use." Throughout most of our history, that meant public spaces like parks, airports and roads. In the 1960s, under the guise of "slum clearance," government entities took private property that was abandoned and condemned. By the 1980s, it became common to use government agencies to take or steal other people's valuable private property to give it to other politically connected private citizens who could make money off it.
Seems that Nationwide, a former mutual insurance company established to help small farmers protect themselves from the robber barons, has transformed into the modern version of the people they were founded to fight. With the Dispatch, they've managed to corral the Convention Authority to do their dirty work. Not surprisingly, the city "gave" three-quarters of an acre of taxpayer property to the Convention Authority for the private arena development. Why do we need to give away property worth nearly a million dollars to mega-buck corporations? We already know that this private for-profit entertainment-arena district will cost taxpayers between $50-100 million in public investment through building roads, sewers, clean-up costs, legal fees and forfeited federal transportation funds.
More bizarre is that fact that the Convention Authority is offering the Cincinnati-based CP-Maple nearly $5 million to take 4.3 acres of land where they own and operate parking lots in the newly proclaimed arena-entertainment district. Who will the land belong to? The people? Or will the Authority lease, sell or give it to Nationwide, who then may choose to run their own lucrative private parking lot on the same site? What's this got to do with free enterprise and the market? Absolutely nothing, say it again!
Or even worse, what if you're Harley Greene, a lease-holder on property in the arena district and owner of the nightclub Tabu? Greene, a local pharmacist, started Tabu in July 1996 with his best friend, now deceased. With great personal effort and $100,000 of their own money, they transformed a decaying and neglected Herbie's Tavern into the premier show bar for female impersonators, cabaret performers—a home-grown La Cage aux Folles.
Hardly the type of entertainment coveted by Nationwide and the Dispatch. Greene delayed many improvements to the plush show bar until the voters in Columbus turned down financing the arena. Unfortunately, he bought the big lie. You remember, you read it in the Dispatch: there is no Plan B—if the voters turn this down there will be no hockey arena. With a 10-year lease on the property from National City Bank, Greene felt secure in spending big bucks remodeling the club. Imagine his shock when he received a call on January 28 from a bank trustee stating that he had to vacate the premises by April 30. If he didn't, the new owners, the Convention Facility, might "evict him" so they could no doubt later give the property to Nationwide. Can you say sports bar, anyone?
Greene said National City Bank told him he would receive no compensation and referred him to the Convention Authority's attorney, Don Plank, of the law firm Schuler, Plank and Morgan, a firm with close ties to Mayor Lashutka. Plank would only deal with National City. The appraisers would only deal with the bank and refused to look inside his bar to consider Greene's improvements.
Plank informed Greene that his business lease was "fraudulent" because it hadn't been filed with the County Recorder's office. Greene found that it would cost him $600,000 just to buy a comparable downtown business with liquor license and lease. Then there are the moving expenses, the legal fees he incurred fighting the big boys and loss of revenues when he's closed down.
It seemed to Greene as though the Convention Authority, National City Bank, Nationwide and the Wolfe family were in collusion. As Greene puts it: "I have a problem understanding how a private-enterprise arena situation such as this is able to employ the Franklin County Convention Authority for appropriation of the land on which the arena will sit."
Greene would have a variety of remedies if he was negotiating directly with Nationwide as one private business to another in a free market system. But when you can get the government to do your work through "eminent domain" for you and "take" and destroy another person's business without a penny of compensation, it's far more profitable. After all, how do you think the big boys get so big? And why do you think they call it politics?
4/08/1998
BWC under fire
Former COO files suit in connection with termination, Ethics Commission investigation
Steve Isaac, the former second-in-command of Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Compensation (BWC) is now suing his former boss at the Bureau, James Conrad, a long-time political operative for Governor George Voinovich. The suit raises several explosive allegations regarding possible cronyism and corruption in the Voinovich administration. The central allegations in the suit were originally reported in Columbus Alive in a copyrighted story February 4, 1998.
Isaac was appointed Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the BWC in March 1996. His position was specially created by Ohio's General Assembly following the passage of House Bill 7 in July 1995. Under the new law, Isaac's position had to be confirmed by the Ohio Senate. Isaac, with extensive experience in private business, was hired primarily to convert the BWC's care of injured workers' bureaucracy to a privately run managed-care system.
In his complaint filed in federal court, Isaac's lawyer asserted that he met "each of the goals established for him when he accepted the position" and that he was "repeatedly commended" for his performance. A day after Conrad terminated Isaac, BWC issued a memo notifying businesses that there would be a 75 percent reduction in their Workers' Compensation rates. Bureau insiders credit Isaac for many of the reforms that made this reduction possible.
As previously reported in Alive, Isaac alleged in his suit that the real reason for his termination was not his performance, but the fact that in September 1997 he accidentally "discovered billing documents for emergency medical services and other health services and business cards with Dale Hamilton's name on them." Hamilton, who served as the Bureau's Deputy Administrator for Special Projects at the time the documents were discovered, is the son of Phil Hamilton, Governor Voinovich's former transition chief and a powerful lobbyist for the Voinovich Cos. (now known as The V Group). Dale's mother, Patricia, is chair of the powerful state Board of Personnel Review.
According to the suit, Isaac "believed that the documents…showed that Hamilton had used his 'insider' status at the Bureau and the information to which he had acquired access through administering managed care technology, internal auditing, and external consulting for the Bureau, to benefit Hamilton and Associates." Isaac immediately brought the documents to the attention of the Bureau's staff attorney, John Annarino, who forwarded the documents on to the Ohio Ethics Commission, prompting an investigation. Soon after this in early November, Conrad asked Isaac for his resignation.
Sources close to the Ohio Ethics Commission investigation claim that Annarino asked only for an "advisory opinion" on the Hamilton affair and failed to fully disclose Hamilton's relationship with his father's well-connected political firm. Various Bureau insiders claim that the Commission had to use its subpoena power in order to secure all the information surrounding the Dale Hamilton incident.
Isaac refused to resign and Conrad terminated his employment. Isaac's complaint claimed that Conrad "acted outside the scope of his authority as Administrator by unilaterally terminating" him "without Senate approval."
Isaac is also suing Jim Samuel, a BWC spokesperson who issued a press release later picked up by the Akron-Beacon Journal that portrayed Isaac's firing in terms of "poor performance." Isaac also alleges that Conrad advised the Ohio Hospital Association that he "had been removed from his position due to a discussion which had occurred thirty days earlier regarding…performance problems."
Isaac's complaint said: "No such conversation had ever occurred," and that the reasons for termination given by Conrad and Samuel to the media and the Hospital Association "were patently false" and that "at no time during the nineteen months he [Isaac] was employed" by the Bureau did Conrad "ever communicate any concerns."
The suit contends that Isaac was fired, and his subsequent public disparagement, "were done in retaliation for…having reported the Hamilton affair to the Bureau's counsel and the resulting ethics investigation of Conrad and Hamilton."
Isaac's suit raises the following questions of public interest: What actually prompted his termination? Can Conrad produce a paper trail showing poor performance for a well-regarded public administrator? Why didn't Conrad consult with the Bureau's Oversight Board Commission? And, did Conrad act legally in terminating Isaac?
One of the documents reportedly written by Dale Hamilton contained a reference to a contract between EMS Billing, a company associated with Hamilton and Associates, and the city of Lancaster. If Isaac can establish that Dale Hamilton had been working simultaneously for the state and his father's firm, and that his firing is linked to this discovery, that fact may pose significant embarrassment to both Conrad and Governor Voinovich, who's currently running for the U.S. Senate.
Isaac is seeking $850,000 in damages. But the real damage, if he prevails, will be to the reputation of the Voinovich administration.
—Bob Fitrakis
4/15/1998
Oddi-ous
How Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi was brought to justice by his staff
by Bob Fitrakis
The sight of Franklin County Common Pleas Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi led away in handcuffs last Friday, charged with "theft in office," should come as no surprise to Columbus Alive readers. The "Odor of Oddi" is an old story; one known to many political and law-enforcement officials in the county as well as the Columbus Dispatch.
In 1992, Linda Evans was the Democratic candidate for Clerk of Courts, running against incumbent Thomas Enright. Evans explained that she wasn't really running against Enright—who she described as a "nice old guy who golfed a lot"—but his then-Deputy Clerk Oddi, who was the de facto head administrator of the courts. After Enright's victory, he subsequently resigned and Oddi was appointed to the position of Clerk of Courts in January 1995. This a common practice in Franklin County politics.
During Evans' campaign, she said a group of court employees contacted her and "courageously went with me to the Dispatch with information about Oddi destroying court documents." Evans claimed they supplied a young Dispatch reporter with "a photocopy of microfiche that had been destroyed and evidence of possible money-laundering." She recalled that the reporter took the folder to then-political editor Michael Curtin and later the message came back that it was "too close to the election to run the story."
"I celebrate with the honest employees of the Clerk's office who have been vindicated and liberated after their six-year struggle to expose Oddi's corruption," Evans said last week, "but this is only the tip of the iceberg. They should look at sexual harassment, the destruction of public records, using his public office for partisan politics and a variety of other possible illegalities."
Jacque Bracken, who ran against Oddi in 1996, tells a similar story. "I took a lot of very disturbing information about Oddi to the Dispatch, the Democratic Party Chair, and Sheriff Jim Karnes. These were horrendous allegations and I included the names of present employees who were willing to talk. None of them would take the charges by the employees seriously," Bracken bemoaned.
Bracken was "shocked" by the Republican Oddi's obvious connections with prominent Democrats. "The party did nothing for me while Karnes and Oddi were as tight as brothers, and [Oddi] socialized with [Franklin County Democratic Party Chair] Denny White," Bracken noted.
This writer did meet with those same employees and a column outlining many of their allegations appeared in the October 30, 1996 issue of Columbus Alive. A 16-year employee of the Clerk's office explained anonymously that Oddi was "doing something with the dollars…in the Juvenile Division. The dollars aren't jiving with the accountant's books." Rose Kerr, now recently retired from the Clerk's office, concurred with Evans' observation about the extent of Oddi's alleged wrongdoings. "There's a lot more to this that hasn't been looked into yet, and other people are involved."
As it turns out, last Friday Oddi was caught red-handed on videotape lifting $381 in marked bills from the Juvenile Division, according to police. In addition, Columbus Alive has tracked in several articles over the past year and a half a pattern of possible abuse of the bail bond system in Franklin County. Bail bond forfeitures were apparently not enforced, records were missing, and bail business was reportedly directed toward a single bail bonds company in violation of court procedures, among other seeming irregularities.
"Oh honey, you knew what was going on. Jesse would wait around for the money from Juvenile and only two people were allowed to touch it, Sharon Pennington and Kathy J. Harper, and then they'd go in the room and close the door and figure up their receipts on the computer. Both those girls are still there as supervisors and they've got to know a lot," Kerr commented.
When asked if she suspected other possible wrongdoings at the Clerk's office, Kerr described irregularities involving local car dealers who would bring in expired 30-day tags in bulk and never be charged the $5 renewal fee. "And then come election time, Jesse'd send … two girls around to the car dealers to collect donations and sell tickets for fund-raisers."
"If you knew Jesse like I knew Jesse, you wouldn't be surprised by any of this. He was also the type of guy, if he needed a feel from a woman, he took a feel," Kerr claimed.
One young female staffer who was allegedly pressed for sex repeatedly by Oddi kept a detailed journal about all of Oddi's activities. A review of the journal revealed specific details of possible illegalities regarding not only sexual harassment, but improper political use of a public office by Oddi. Recorded in the journal is an account of three female employees being sent to a prosecutor's office by Oddi in order to intimidate them with the threat of possible criminal charges. Kerr confirmed the incident. "Jesse just scared the hell out of those girls…if they didn't do what he wanted," she recalled.
Kenneth Griffith, Oddi's Deputy Chief and current Acting Clerk of Courts, is no stranger to harassment charges. The May 7, 1997 Alive reported that Griffith had "signed a paternity agreement with recently terminated Court employee Diane Cossin regarding two children ages 12 and 14." Alive reported that Oddi and Griffith "harassed her and made her fear for her life." Reached for comment on Oddi's arrest, Cossin said she was "not surprised." She also confirmed reports by current employees surrounding a purported confrontation between Griffith and Oddi over missing court money. "Kenny told me that he confronted Jesse over $400,000 in money that was missing from the court, but that Jesse was lying his way out of it," Cossin said. Cossin, who enjoyed a close personal relationship with Griffith at the time, said the conversation occurred in either late 1995 or early 1996.
After her paternity suit, Cossin reported falling out of favor with Griffith and Oddi in late 1996. "I was beaten in the parking garage, first in November of '96 when they stole my wedding ring, and then I was beaten a second time in December on the day I received my first cash payment from Kenny and it was stolen. Then I was beaten again in January of 1997, a few months before I was fired," remarked Cossin.
The same day that Griffith signed the paternity agreement, Cossin filed report #970084 with the Franklin County Sheriff's office stating that she was attacked in the court's parking garage by "an unknown person" who "kicked her in the left hip, with his foot, for an unknown reason." Cossin frequently contacted the Alive in early 1997 reporting beating and death threats. Her supervisor had her phone removed from her desk just prior to her firing. This reporter received similar threats by phone during that time period.
On April 22, 1997, Oddi terminated Cossin's employment. In his termination letter, Oddi wrote: "Since you had no rational [sic] or basis to call me at home and accuse me of being a member of the 'Italian Mafia' and you also accused me of having a 'contract' to have you killed, I am left with no choice but to terminate your employment….You are guilty of defaming me in that you accuse me of being a criminal, such insubordination constitutes misfeasance and malfeasance, which more than justifies your discharge."
In her written response, Cossin claimed, "I, in no way 'accused' Jesse of anything. If anything, he, in the past and present, has 'accused' me of things. He 'accused' me of giving his wife info on his affair he was having, when in fact his wife had an investigation on him."
Cossin said that others had told her that Oddi had reputed ties to organized crime through a relative and that she simply brought it up in the conversation.
"Look, I was afraid for my life when I called Oddi, and I still am," Cossin told the Alive at the time of her termination.
Donna Born, Cossin's former supervisor, confirmed in a 1997 Alive interview that, "My supervisors [Oddi and Griffith] didn't want her [Cossin] there. They knew they had to be careful… the policy was to make life hard for her. Don't talk to her, ignore her, harass her; to instill in the employees that if they were nice to her, they would be the next one fired."
Bob Pond, another former employee of the Clerk's office, filed a wrongful discharge suit claiming harassment by Oddi and others. Pond charged in his suit that he was harassed out of his job by Oddi and supervisor Sharon Pennington while Enright was still the Clerk, because he objected to the "dictatorial" way that Oddi ran the office. Pond contends that "Kenny [Griffith] and Sharon Pennington are just as guilty as Oddi and someone needs to go in and clean house."
In a journal kept by Pond prior to his firing, he noted that "the office is divided into two factions," those that were loyal to Oddi and those that feared him. But it was clear to Pond what was the best way to get ahead in the Clerk's office: "Night of the Galbreath function, Suzy Koch gives me ride home. Tells that she went out with Jesse, three wks. later she becomes the next one in charge of Juvenile..." Alive had previously written about the close personal relationship between Oddi and Koch.
"Oddi has so many friends, I don't trust any of these state and local people. They really need federal auditor and law enforcement people to look at his office. My great sin was when I saw something wrong, I spoke up. I wanted to serve the public, I was politically naive, I wasn't a team player according to Jesse," Pond stated. "To survive there you had to be 'connected,' a 'boot-licker,' like the three monkeys, hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil."
One anonymous staff member in the prosecutor's office felt something was amiss and took action by supplying Alive with several files regarding Oddi's "car bonding" practices. A May 1997 Alive column entitled "Skimming and Scamming" pointed out that "Franklin County Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi is responsible for filing civil actions for car forfeitures," but apparently was not doing his job and somebody was having the files destroyed. Alive reported details on three specific cases and noted that: "All of these cases involved the civil forfeitures under the jurisdiction of Jesse Oddi; all of these cases need to be looked into by law-enforcement officials, preferably those not compromised by campaign contributions and political expediency."
Alive also reported questionable practices involving campaign contributions to Oddi and county judges from local bondsmen and irregular bonding practices in the same issue.
In a March 11, 1997 letter signed by Dorothy Carnes, supervisor of the Criminal Division of Common Pleas Court, she noted that she couldn't comply with an Open Records request since, "we do not keep copies of checks paid to the Clerk's Office from any outside entity, bondsmen or not. We also do not categorize or separate the daily receipts that are written as to type." Oddi never tried to hide his odd bookkeeping practices from the public, and they were well documented in a 1996 state audit of the Court.
Despite the Alive articles and the state audit, County Commissioner Dewey Stokes, former head of the National Fraternal Order of Police, told WTVN radio last week that the theft charges against Oddi were "out of character." The Dispatch reported that County Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker was "heartsick…He's [Oddi] always…wanted to serve his constituents." Both called for his resignation.
Kerr worried about the same thing. She pointed out that Oddi will be appearing before "Judge [Michael T.] Brandt, who's a good friend of his." Clerk's office employees seem to share Evans' view that this is the tip of the iceberg, and they also claim that Oddi has done a lot of favors for a lot of very powerful people in both political parties. According to the Dispatch, "both Michael F. Colley, Chairman of the County Republican Party, and Denny White, Chairman of the County Democratic Party, noted that Oddi had not been convicted." Bracken called White's statement "strange for a supposed member of the opposing party."
Many current employees told Alive that they are afraid that the Oddi affair will be "swept under the rug." As one put it, "there's a whole lot of us here that would love to be put under oath and forced to testify against our supervisors. We're relieved and elated that Oddi's arrested. But we're not sure anything is really going to change."
4/23/1998
News Briefs
Columbus Police settle with campus activists
The tactics of Columbus police in the OSU area just cost city taxpayers $26,800 in a settlement of the first civil suit brought by the campus-based Copwatch organization. The figure could go much higher with five more cases involving seven claimants still pending. Add to this 11 Antioch students preparing to sue the Columbus police for Macing them while peacefully demonstrating at the federal building, and you get a better understanding of Mayor Gregory Lashutka's and City Council's concern over police training. The same day the case was settled, Lashutka called Police Chief James Jackson's report on police training and conduct "unimpressive," according to WTVN radio.
On Monday, April 20, City Attorney Janet Jackson agreed to the first settlement of $26,800 in the case of Copwatch member Anne Pussel, arrested for allegedly "obstructing official business" on the evening of October 27, 1996. Her suit claimed she was protesting police "violence" against another Copwatch member, Josh Klein. In her complaint filed in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court, Pussel charged the Columbus police with "assault and battery," "false arrest," "malicious prosecution," violations of First and Fourth Amendment rights, and the City of Columbus for "failure to adequately and reasonably train, supervise, and discipline officers…."
Copwatch describes itself as "a community organization….formed to monitor police activities in response to allegations of police misconduct in the area near the Ohio State University." A Copwatch pamphlet reads: "We have cameras. We have lawyers. We have people who can be seen, and people who can't. We are watching cops rights now in the OSU area." A November 27, 1996 Columbus Alive article, "12th Avenue Freeze Out" documents the group's formation and growth. Copwatch began as an outgrowth of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) on the night of May 17, 1996, when Columbus police confronted campus-area revelers attending the traditional African-American Heritage Festival and Anti-Fest.
Shamus Jones, then a third-year criminology major, was the first to pick up a video camera and use it as a Copwatch tool that night. Jones videotaped police charging down 12th Avenue, firing tear gas and wooden bullets and making numerous random arrests. Consequently he was also arrested, charged with "assault, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and obstructing official business." Jones rejected an offer from the city to drop all charges in exchange for an agreement not to sue the police. After a week-long criminal trial, the jury quickly found Jones not guilty on all counts. His attorney, Jim McNamara, filed a civil suit against the Columbus police claiming that Jones was illegally "attacked from behind by the police, Maced in the face, knocked to the ground, pushed and struck violently and repeatedly…because he had videotaped improper police action."
Jones' two co-plaintiffs, Chris Wisniewski, an ARA member, and Walter Leake were never arrested but both alleged that they were attacked for criticizing police behavior against Jones. The Jones, Wisniewski, Leake civil trial is scheduled to begin next Tuesday.
In a two-week period between October 13 and 27 four Copwatch members, including Pussel, were arrested on various charges after videotaping and monitoring police activity. On October 13, police arrested Copwatch member Justin Gelenek after he videotaped a police arrest.
Columbus Alive reviewed the tape shot by Gelenek that night. In the tape, Gelenek, after complying with police orders to move a safe distance away from the arrest, is pushed into a crowd of students and is subsequently arrested after he said, "Get macho for the camera," to police. Criminal charges were dismissed against Gelenek, who also has a civil suit pending against the police.
On October 27, Pussel and two other Copwatch members, Josh Klein and Trisha Sikora, were arrested. All criminal charges were dropped against the Copwatchers including what McNamara terms the "ludicrous" charge against Sikora that she was "following an emergency vehicle" after she followed the police paddy wagon to the jail in an attempt to arrange bail for Klein and Pussel. Both Klein and Sikora have civil cases pending against the police.
Finally, the Fraternal Order of Police had had enough and began to put political pressure on City Attorney Jackson not to drop criminal charges against Copwatchers. Soon after that, Pussel and Sikora were again arrested and brought to trial. In Pussel's case, Judge James Fais threw out the case after the prosecution presented its witnesses in November of '97; and on March 26, the city attorney asked that Sikora's case be dismissed after failing to present their case. Both Pussel and Sikora have filed additional civil suits from their second arrests.
The final day of the African-American Heritage Festival and Anti-Fest is slated for May 16 this year, and Copwatch is determined to send a message to the Columbus police and city politicians: "We intend to monitor these events. We'll be looking at police tactics from unnecessary street closings, to interfering with the business of local merchants, to harassment of citizens."
When asked what Copwatch wants, McNamara said his clients "want citizens in the campus area to be treated the same as those in the Brewery District and those attending the Short North Gallery Hop.
"Ultimately, taxpayers are going to conclude that police misconduct is costing them a lot of money. By not training these officers properly, nor disciplining them when they violate citizens' rights, publicly elected officials are complicit in this process," concluded McNamara.
—Bob Fitrakis
4/30/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
Knightmare
How poor planning and the CEA helped lynch the Africentric school experiment
by Bob Fitrakis
On Saturday morning, Columbus Dispatch readers picked up their newspaper and found a photo of Columbus' Africentric School Principal Wanda Knight—her head bowed as if in disgrace—with the banner headline "Africentric School Overhauled" announcing the lead story. The article informed readers that Columbus Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith had reassigned Knight from the Africentric school after "two years of dissent" between Knight and teachers.
Saturday's photo of Knight originally was printed by the newspaper on July 6, 1997 and showed the principal looking down on two children she was hugging over the headline: "A year of ups and downs." The Dispatch cropped this same picture for last Saturday's article to include only her face, giving the impression of a downcast Knight. One of her supporters likened it to Newsweek's darkening of O.J. Simpson's face in a cover photo to make him look more menacing.
Columbus Alive has obtained internal documents suggesting that, like the photo, there is much more to the story.
The documents outline a two-year battle between Knight and the combined forces of the Columbus Education Association (CEA) and Columbus Schools Deputy Administrator Dr. Phyllis Wilson. They show that the school was plagued from the outset by poor planning on the part of the district, and serious disputes among faculty and administration over discipline policy eventually leading to a full-fledged fallout.
Internal documents including memos and videotapes support the conclusion that the school was troubled from the beginning by the hasty nature of the school's creation. In a November 3, 1997 memo from Carolyn L. Nellon, the district's administrator of personnel services, to newly arrived Superintendent Smith, five specific problems were noted from "the start-up of the school." According to Nellon, these were: "Ms. Knight was hired in late July or early August of 1996-1997 and provided little or no orientation to the district…"; "Mohawk-Africentric was not included in the planning matrix, as such, school records for the attending students were scattered throughout the district"; "A secretary was not appointed until October, but had to go out on leave in March. In addition the secretary was completely new to the district"; "An administrative trainee was requested, but not received"; "The building had been used for summer school and was not ready to receive students… The curriculum was not fully developed and had to be written this past summer."
Nellon's observations were tempered by bureaucratic restraint. In reality, the highly successful Mohawk School teachers and staff, with a well-deserved reputation for excellence in teaching students with disabilities, felt victimized by the Africentric School taking over their building. When Knight entered the former Mohawk School building she videotaped locker doors glued shut, trash everywhere, missing computers, and human waste scattered throughout the building. Perhaps more disturbing were the messages scrawled on chalkboards and walls, usually accompanied by drawings of children crying: "You are destroying our lives"; "You are taking our school and hurting our children."
Because she had been hastily selected, Knight found herself in the unfavorable position of not being able to select her teaching staff, powers previously granted to the principals of Columbus Spanish Immersion Academy and Kentwood School. Also, she said she found that virtually none of her teachers had been trained in Africentric theory and teaching methods. In addition, the Africentric School wasn't listed on the Columbus Public School's computer matrix until just before Christmas break.
In August 1996, the school opened amid the chaos of a media feeding frenzy and up to 100 telephone calls a day that Knight had to answer without a secretary or administrative trainee. At the October 26, 1996 meeting of the school board's African-American Advisory Council, according to a council member, then-district Superintendent Larry Mixon said, "Black people are upset with a black administrator for not kicking black children out of the school" in reference to a faction in the Africentric School critical of Knight and urging harsher discipline. "Six weeks into the school year, the school was being touted as a failure by this group," according to Albert Warner, president of ADW Management Systems, Inc. and member of the Africentric School Advisory Board.
The Dispatch noted that, "Much of the disagreement at the school centered around Knight's approach to discipline." From the outset, an immediate dispute erupted between a few teachers who strongly supported the CEA's "zero tolerance policy" toward disruptive pupils and Knight's Africentric approach to discipline. Compounding the problem was some of the public's perception that the Africentric School was more of a military-style academy, like the Malcolm X School in Detroit for disruptive pupils.
Knight's approach to discipline was much less severe and more interactive and participatory in nature. Privately, she confided to friends that she wouldn't allow the children to be "physically abused." Rumors began to circulate that Knight wasn't tough enough to run the school, some critics openly called for a man to be in charge. In Warner's assessment, "In December of '96, there became a declared war on this administrator [Knight]. Secret meetings started being held all around town, at libraries, at restaurants, in people's homes."
The July Dispatch article noted that "Discipline issues—and Knight's handling of them—have raised concerns among some parents and teachers."
The next fall, the discipline controversy grew more intense. In a September 12, 1997 letter, Knight told Ms. Darryl Johnson, a sixth-grade teacher, that "telling a first grader that you will 'break his finger off and shove it down his throat' was intimidating and inappropriate." Records show that the first grader withdrew from the school.
Johnson was also accused of publicly "humiliating" a sixth grader in front of the entire sixth-grade class by telling him that he did not "belong in this program." A September 19 letter of reprimand was issued by Knight to Johnson.
Knight also wrote art teacher Lisa Hendricks that same day that she "cannot and will not support intentional acts of disruption, disrespect or inanity," and warned that "any repetition of this or similar violent acts may result in disciplinary action." Knight had accused Hendricks earlier of "insubordinate behavior in our staff meeting on June 2 [1997]."
That same week in September, CEA Vice President Rhonda Johnson conducted a union meeting at the school. Six teachers signed a memo dated September 29 to CEA President John Grossman complaining about Rhonda Johnson's comments at the meeting. The memo reads in part: "The entire meeting centered around propaganda and malicious statements… Rhonda made several comments such as 'This is how you can get rid of her' [Knight]."
"We expected our union should not be in the business of 'targeting' or slandering our administrator," the teachers complained. The CEA's activities came as no surprise to school board member Bill Moss, who said, "The CEA is the chief mischief maker in the district. Always beating up on principals, particularly black principals that want to make teachers accountable."
Relations between Knight and the CEA continued to deteriorate when on Wednesday, October 8, she attempted to deliver a message from Personnel Director John Tornes to teacher Sharlene Sommer. CEA union steward and vocal music instructor Huey White and Hendricks refused to allow Knight to talk to Sommer in private. On October 10, Knight requested that White and Hendricks "be cited for insubordination."
These incidents were the impetus for a report by district Administrator of Personnel Services Nellon on November 3. In Nellon's four-page report, she requested "permission" from Superintendent Smith to both "move the teachers who are in conflict" and "negotiate the same staffing rights for Ms. Knight and the Africentric School as exist in the Columbus Spanish Immersion Academy."
Permission was never granted. Conflicts between Knight and White and Hendricks continued throughout the fall of 1997.
On December 16, 1997, Stan Embry, principal at Fifth Avenue International Alternative Elementary School, visited the school. He would later write a memo to Knight: "I had a wonderful experience in your building. You have accomplished much in a very short period of time. Believe me—you have much to be proud of." Embry was named last Friday to replace Knight and the Dispatch reported that "The Africentric School under Embry is likely to take on a more multicultural approach."
On March 25, Dr. Linda James Myers, executive director of the Center for Optimal Thought, sent Phyllis Wilson an "evaluation summary" of the school's progress. Myers cited four problem areas: "Lack of trust among staff," "ambivalence on many levels to the process of improving professional relationships and engaging in Africentric educational practices," "rejecting or minimizing the assistance of those in a position to aid," and "resistance" to "work together" despite central administration directives.
Myers found that "Principal Knight is simply trying to wear too many hats to be as effective as we need her to be in the current environment. Office assistance is needed (seasoned clerical support, e.g., records and attendance clerk), as well as some sort of assisting administrator." On the divisive issue of discipline, Myers recommended "at least two special education units (for emotional/behavioral problems and learning disabilities) are needed at the school to address the special educational needs that so many of the children seem to have." Myers also noted that the central administration "would only be able to support 50 percent of the consultive services" that were necessary for the school.
Myers, also a Black Studies professor at OSU, allowed her graduate students to observe the Africentric School. The different styles of discipline stand out in their reports. One observer described a fourth-grade teacher as having "frequently scapegoated and put down" students; a student observing a sixth-grade class noted that the "name calling and labeling, contradicts a supportive emphatic learning environment"; another called the experience "dismal" as "children were disciplined in front of the other students regardless of the degree of the problem" and suggested that "the teachers need to become more aware of their own development."
Heather Frazier observed "a couple of teachers grab children by the jaw and forcefully shake the child's head around. The children are given threats to make them do what's right." Ansha Saunders described a first-grade class atmosphere as "definitely negative," and reported "the separation of one student in a closet" for "at least 30 minutes."
Meanwhile, PTA Vice President Michael Straughter recalled that Hendricks had taken to stopping parents, grabbing their arms as they entered the building and whispering "We've got to get rid of that woman" in reference to Knight.
The March 12 PTA meeting spun out of control when a group of teachers, not on the agenda, demanded that the PTA back their faction supported by the CEA against Knight. Straughter remembers the evening well: "You had Phyllis Wilson taking over the meeting and talking about all sorts of private staff issues that should not have been discussed in public. We told Wilson and the teachers that we weren't going to take sides in the dispute."
Wilson referred all comment on this article to Superintendent Smith.
When asked about the discipline issue, Straughter praised his son's first-grade teacher, Baba Hancock, for his use of "The Circle of Justice." He said, "I hadn't realized that this Africentric practice was not used in all the classes." In the Circle, an offending student is placed in the middle and allowed a fellow student as an advocate to plead his case. The students decide his punishment, such as "no snack today," subject to the approval of the teacher. "They don't have discipline problems in that class," Straughter laughed.
But the school's discipline dispute continued unabated. On March 30, Ms. Adrianne Davis wrote the school complaining that Hendricks had repeatedly called her sixth-grade son a "rapist." On April 3, Yvonne P. Jones of Gladstone Elementary sent a memo to Wilson after evaluating the Africentric School. She immediately called for "a Vice Principal" to be assigned and pointed out that "the issues associated with transportation are monumental" with 13 buses a day arriving from all over Columbus.
On April 5, Lynda Paynther, a resource teacher, wrote Superintendent Smith. Her letter began, "Again! Once again the same few teachers secretly got together with Dr. Wilson to complain about the same ol' thing—that Mama Knight is to blame for their problems with student discipline." Paynther demanded, "Let the whining end and those 'bitch sessions' end. They are one-sided, negative, divisive and create discord...."
The next day, second-grade teacher Sheila Welch wrote Wilson: "...The meetings have only fanned the fire of hostility towards our administrator... Teachers are making accusations that I know are not true. I view the meetings as more of a witch hunt than seeking to resolve the issues.... Last, myself and several other staff members believe the meetings to be biased and totally ignoring the culture and philosophy of our school."
As pressure mounted from Wilson and the union on Superintendent Smith, it was just a matter of time before Knight's sacrifice and highly public lynching.
CEA President John Grossman told the Dispatch that "even before Smith's announcement, 13 of the school's 18 teachers had applied for transfers." But the roster provided by the PTA shows 25 full-time teachers, not 18. School data suggests that Grossman arrived at his number by including as transfers three vacancies, now being filled by permanent subs; four unfilled new positions; and four teachers who are "698's," those hired after October 15.
In response to a request for comment, Grossman said Tuesday: "We have had difficulties with the Africentric School since it opened. The problem is that they did not have a core group of teachers or a curriculum, two essentials for any alternative programs to start from day one. As a result, we have had continuous grievances and problems. We do know that 13 staffers have submitted resumes to apply for other positions; other faculty may be denying it, but they have applied elsewhere. We support the superintendent's action and a new staff will be selected from teachers and parents from that community. This protects teachers' rights," Grossman continued.
When reached for comment, Knight acknowledged that two teachers have interviewed and were likely to leave, although they hadn't officially requested it, prior to her ouster. She refused any other comment on why Grossman's data was so distorted.
Data distortion is also the theme of accusations leveled by Warner, the member of the Africentric School Advisory Board. Warner was investigating data concerning the transfer of students from the school that he thinks may have been falsified to make Knight and the school look bad. In an effort to substantiate his data, he made a massive public records request on April 22, 1998—just two days prior to Knight's reassignment. In a letter to Smith, Warner requested "any and all information regarding the administrative affairs, minutes/notes of meetings held with or in regard to the Principal of Columbus Africentric School..."
Warner wrote in a draft report dated April 23, 1998 that initial problems occurred when "the staff was integrated with CPS [Columbus Public Schools] teachers and community people. Many of these community people were suggested and/or recruited from the African Nationalist Party in Columbus. Some of these people were of the same deliberation that this should be an independent school, operated as though it were a private school, absent of any interference from the CPS."
An April 24, 1998 letter of response from Smith said that he would receive a response mailed to him by April 29.
Alive has obtained a draft copy of Warner's report that includes a section entitled "The Miracle of 74." Warner wrote: "On February 21st [1998], much to my astonishment the numbers that came back from Ms. Roman's office were significant.... Out of a registered class of 82 students, documentation indicated that 74 had requested transfer…. The accuracy was verified on no less than four separate occasions [with the central administrative office]."
Warner calculated that for the numbers to be right, 66 of the 82 students would have had to apply for transfer in a 21-day period, according to available administrative data.
The report stated that the numbers "could cast the school and the district in a bad light" and "could be a set up." His report noted that: "On April 7th, a miracle occurred. Of the 74 students who had 'undoubtedly' put in requests for transfer from CAS [Columbus Africentric School] after an exhaustive 'review' only 36 valid applications could be found, 16 of which had accepted transfers. This is particularly interesting since this only occurred after a Board member and the principal requested copies of the applications that had been alleged to have been submitted."
The possibility of sabotage against Knight and Columbus' only Africentric school is not unthinkable. Columbus School Board member Moss, one of the Africentric school's earliest advocates, recalled the history of the controversial project: "People need to remember the immediate resistance from [Dispatch Publisher] John F. Wolfe and the Columbus Dispatch to the concept of an Africentric School. Bob Teater was the school board president back in February 1995, and both he and Superintendent Larry Mixon lobbied against the creation of the school." Moss said that Mixon and Teater fought the idea up until the spring of 1996, when they embraced the concept as a strategy to get the black community to support a school levy ballot proposal.
The initial public debate over the Africentric School was at best heated and often turned ugly. The original Africentric Advisory Board (of which this writer was a member) recommended the school be promoted as another cultural choice, like the French and Spanish immersion schools, within a diversified school district. The public debate never really focused on African culture and instead centered around the race issue. At one point the board debated the idea of calling it the "African Immersion School" to move beyond the fear and hostility coming from much of the mainstream press.
In Moss' assessment, the school's "overhaul" was all too "predictable." He contended that "Mixon and Teater threw this thing together at the last minute. They put it in a white neighborhood, German Village, that didn't want it, and brought in Knight as a sacrificial lamb. Mixon used her. She didn't know what she was getting into. She came in with a pure heart and clean hands, but she was politically naive."
In January 1997, Dr. Mixon announced his resignation as superintendent as attacks against Knight escalated. "Rumors of her not being certified to be a principal surfaced… Rumors that she was not Africentric enough or that she was Euro-centered began to take root. Verbal attacks against her family, her style of dress, her pride, her moral character, etc., were all being circulated in an attempt to assassinate her character…," Warner wrote.
A January 6, 1997 peer evaluation statement from fellow principals Barbara Blake and Joyce Hackett noted that "Dr. Knight has managed to remain very positive under very difficult circumstances with constant conflicts between the administration, staff, students and parents. Dr. Knight has continued to strive for positive outcomes in very trying situations."
Despite the school's problems, PTA Vice President Michael Straughter signed his son up for another year. "He is in first grade, but he knows Martin Luther King's speech, reads at a second-grade level and knows all the planets in order. We like the black role models. My son has been exposed to 12 black teachers in one year—more than I was in my whole education in Columbus Public Schools."
05/07/1998
News Briefs
Was the Africentric School and its first principal, Wanda Knight, set up for failure?
Knight was removed as principal of the Mohawk Africentric School on April 24. Additional documents obtained by Columbus Alive shed light on the ongoing controversy. The new documents point to a battle between Knight and the central administration over special education services.
School Board member Bill Moss, who pushed for the Africentric School's creation, said that one of his great fears was that the school would not be treated as similar alternative schools, and would instead become a dumping ground for students with behavioral problems. "We wanted the school to be a model for Africentric education, but then-Superintendent [Larry] Mixon fought us on that," said Moss.
Sources familiar with the special education needs of the Africentric school claim that as of January 1998 approximately 180 of the 400 students had been referred for special counseling because of behavioral, developmental and disability needs. At the time of Knight's ouster, documents indicate that there were no full-time special education teachers at the school for the 180 students in need. Internal documents and a draft report on the Africentric school being prepared by Albert Warner of the African-American Advisory Board of the Columbus Public Schools indicate that the special education issue was pivotal in Knight's removal.
In October 1996, just after the school opened, Knight met with Community of School's leader Peg Wilson and requested a special education unit. Due to the accelerated school opening, which some say was hastened to garner black votes for the fall levy, no special education unit had been officially assigned. On October 11, Wilson contacted Lou Mazolli, the executive director of the Special Education Department, and worked out "intervention strategies" for the remainder of the first year, according to Warner.
Wilson sent a memo dated December 3, 1996 to Mixon outlining the "review of special education identified students" completed by her and Mazolli. In January, Mazolli had developed a four-point plan for temporarily meeting the special education needs at the school with a part-time staffer. On January 21, he forwarded two memos on the subject to Dr. Phyllis Wilson, the district's assistant superintendent.
On April 29, 1997, a memo indicated that Knight contacted Mazolli regarding the school's special education needs for the following 1997-8 academic year. A May 2 memo from Mazolli to Knight promised that "one special education unit will be placed at Mohawk for next year. This unit will be cross categorical…" serving both slow learners and students with disabilities. The much-needed special education unit never arrived.
On June 3, 1997, according to the Warner report, Knight received a call from Bess Sherard, a special education teacher at Siebert Elementary, indicating that she was to be the new special ed teacher at the Africentric School. Sherard also said that she would be bringing five fifth grade boys with disabilities from Siebert. This was news to Knight who was not expecting a special education unit solely for disabled students. At the time, the reported waiting list at the Africentric School was some 800 students. Knight questioned whether or not the five disabled students should bypass the lottery waiting list, whether they could be "mainstreamed" into the school's general population, and whether it was wise to push two fifth grade class sizes from their limit of 25 students to 28 and 27 respectively.
A June 13 memo from Marie Tooker, Special Education administrator, to Mazolli noted that Knight was insisting that "the unit assigned must fit in with her school program and that we could not assign any students to the class, now or later. All students must be assigned through the lottery…" Also, the memo noted: "She [Knight] had not planned to assign the teacher [Sherard] a classroom, she had decided it would be an inclusive model" in reference to Knight's belief that the students with disabilities would not be segregated. The memo suggested "…keep the unit at Siebert or move it to another location" other than the Africentric School. The special education unit remained at Siebert and the Africentric School started its second year without the promised "cross categorical" unit. Students with behavioral and disability problems at the Africentric School continued to mount. Conflicts over how to discipline the students split the teaching staff as described in Alive's cover story last week.
Knight could not request additional special education services until January 1998. By that time, almost half the school's students had been referred for special education counseling, sources say. In the month prior to her ouster, school documents indicate that Knight continued to demand an "inclusive…cross categorical" special ed unit for the Africentric School.
While other alternative school principals had been granted broad authority to hire their own staff in line with their school's philosophy—a power immediately given to Knight's replacement, Stan Embry—Knight was never granted such power.
An April 21, 1998 memo from Stefanie Rivers, Africentric school psychologist, to Dr. Phyllis Wilson appears to place the blame on Knight for failing to accept special education services. The memo states that, "I spoke with Ms. Sherard about her not being at the school and she informed me that when she came to the school to deliver her classroom supplies she was told by Ms. Knight that she did not have a classroom for her."
Sources say that Knight claimed that the incident described by Rivers between her and Sherard at the Africentric School never happened.
—Bob Fitrakis
5/14/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
See no evil, Hear no evil
Mum's the word at the State Employment Relations Board
by Bob Fitrakis
Does SERB refer to Ohio's State Employment Relations Board or Serbia, a repressive state where dissent is not tolerated? A member of the State Employment Relations Board seems to find little difference between the practices of the two.
Chauncey Mason, one of the three members of SERB appointed by the governor, filed suit in April 1997 seeking to halt "closed 'pre-meetings,'" and "to issue dissenting opinions." Mason's suit was the culmination of what he contends was a four-year partisan-driven battle with the chair of SERB over everything from rules of conduct to affirmative action implementation. Mason claims that his protests with the two other board members over several matters have been silenced by the board in violation of state open meetings laws, and that ultimately the right of an American to offer a dissenting opinion is at stake.
On April 15, 1998, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge James J. O'Grady ruled that: "The court concludes that plaintiff, as a board member, does not having to sue SERB and its board members with respect to decisions or conduct in which he [Mason] participated." The court dismissed it without ruling on the merits of the far-reaching case. But Mason, who is footing the expense of the lawsuit, said that his attorney, Fred Gittes, plans to appeal.
SERB exists to administer Ohio's collctive bargaining law for public employees. It also conducts public sector union elections and investigates charges of unfair labor practices. Mason's original suit contended that board members illegally met with staff and discussed labor issues that the board would later rule on at closed meetings prior to the public discussions. Such closed meetings, according to Mason, made the SERB's public meetings "perfunctory, denying the public access to deliberations of the board."
Mason claimed that board and staff illegally discussed policy decisions, "including the standards to be applied in certain types of unfair labor practice cases, the timing for board determinations related to civil service employees and various procedural matters."
His complaint alleged that the other board members were meeting secretly, excluding him, to decide whether to appeal court decisions. "The idea that decisions are being made by two members of the board in secret and without my participation as to whether or not court decisions should be appealed is not only a violation of Ohio's Open Meetings Laws, but a calculated effort to eliminate any opposing views from these discussions," Mason charged.
Governor George Voinovich appointed Mason, a Democrat, to SERB in January 1993 for a six-year term. By law, only two members can be from one political party. Mason's reputation as a pro-management Democrat, who also happened to be an African-American, made him a logical choice. In March 1994, the governor appointed Republican Sue Pohler to chair the SERB.
Soon after Pohler's appointment, Mason contended, the board began holding "pre-meetings"; Pohler called them "information meetings." More than information was exchanged at these meetings, in Mason's opinion: "Staff recommendations are often changed as a result of the 'pre-meeting' to better comport with the position of a majority of the board…. This occurs without any public deliberation and has tended to eliminate the need for public deliberations. The public meetings themselves where such determinations are required by law to take place, have been reduced to a mere formality."
Mason's suit alleged that "The 'pre-meetings' included pre-arranged discussions of the public business of SERB Board by a majority of its members, and were not preceded by a prior notice of the Board's intent to hold an executive session." Since the public was neither notified nor given access to the pre-meeting, and since no minutes were kept at the pre-meetings, the suit claimed Ohio's Open Meeting Act was violated.
Also at issue in the suit is Mason's right to make public his "dissenting opinions," different from the board's Republican majority. SERB minutes reflect a history of clashes between Mason and Pohler dating back to at least 1996. The July 20 SERB minutes from that year stated: "Board Member Mason stated that he reviewed the report [on the SERB's 1997 Affirmative Action Plan] and could not support it because the compliance report for 'Quantitative Goals and Timetables' is false and misrepresents composition of SERB's workforce." Mason attacked the SERB plan to report recently reclassified black secretaries as "professional" administrative assistants rather than "clericals."
"Board Member Mason further stated that when he voted to approve changing the title for the agency secretaries to administrative assistants he was told that this was merely a routine paperwork change; he would not have supported this change if he had known they would be falsely classified as professionals in the EEO report," the minutes read.
On July 16, 1996 Mason filed a discrimination complaint with Ohio's Department of Administrative Services (DAS) asserting that the SERB Affirmative Action Plan was "a deliberate attempt to hide the apparent disparate effects of SERB's hiring and promotion practices." His complaint noted that: "All of SERB's secretaries and clerks are female. 60% of SERB's African American staff are secretaries. These individuals are being improperly reported to give the false impression that SERB is exceeding its EEO objectives."
On August 20, Merelyn Bates-Mims, the deputy director of DAS, wrote Mason refusing "to process your complaint" since "your complaint fails to state an individual cause of action for which relief can be granted."
The clash between Mason and the other two SERB members over affirmative action triggered a larger dispute over Pohler's practices as chair. The next day Mason fired off a six-page letter to Governor Voinovich detailing his concerns about Pohler.
"When Donna Owens was Chairman, SERB was committed to Ohio's Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) program. Chairman Pohler's record in this area indicates a troubling pattern of deception and subterfuge," his letter stated. The letter also accused Pohler of granting "unwarranted and excessive pay increases" to cronies and political friends at the SERB. Mason detailed his charges with half a dozen examples including "a 13.9% increase in salary" for SERB's General Counsel and a "parking benefit…not previously provided for this position…and not approved by the entire SERB Board."
At the crux of Mason's complaints was the belief that Pohler was using perks such as salaries, parking privileges and state cars to buy the loyalty of SERB staff and enhance her control as board chair.
"Chairman Pohler has engaged in lavish agency spending. In addition to generous salaries and perks provided to favorite employees, and the frenzied spending near the end of each fiscal year, SERB has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on office furniture, artwork, copiers, computers, computer auxiliary personnel, as well as extensive painting, renovation, and remodeling of its office," Mason informed the Governor.
On September 17, 1996, Mason replied to Bates-Mims noting that he was "discouraged by this action." He stated: "Not withstanding your legal counsel's narrow interpretation of 'standing,' I believe that as an officer of the State of Ohio I have an ethical obligation to report fraudulent practices of state administrators. As an African-American, I know that I have a moral obligation to stand up and oppose racially discriminatory practices of state administrators.
"It was my understanding that your agency was responsible for advocating and regulating equal employment opportunities. If you will not enforce these basic administrative reporting requirements, what hope is there for actual equal employment opportunities for the historically disadvantaged? How will anyone ever know that African Americans are often restricted to the lowest classes of jobs when your erroneous numbers contradict this fact? Your failure to properly address and correct this situation is disheartening," Mason's letter to Bates-Mims concluded.
Along with this conflict over SERB's EEO filing, Mason also found himself at odds with Pohler over his right to issue his dissenting opinions on SERB decisions. On August 5, 1996, the SERB, in a 2-1 majority decision, stopped what Mason, in the minority, believed to be a lawful strike by health care workers at the Park Health Center.
Within two weeks of the decision, Mason and the other two board members exchanged draft copies of the opinions they planned to publish in the SERB journal. Once Pohler read Mason's opinion, she refused to publish it.
His controversial dissent read in part that: "Strike deadline pressure has been proven to be a most effective method for resolving labor negotiation impasses. The ten-day period before a scheduled strike is a time to consider compromises, reach settlement agreements, and avert a strike. However, the majority's ruling conveys a perturbing message: A public employer's deficient contingency plan [for a strike] will result in the loss of public employees' statutory right to engage in a lawful strike. This message also suggests an unsound public policy."
There was agreement between Mason and the majority that his opinion would not be published pending legal research on the majority's ability to suppress the minority's opinion. An August 29 memo from legal intern Tom Somos to Russ Keith, SERB's general counsel, sided with Mason's right to issue a dissenting opinion. Somos noted that: "There are examples of Supreme Court cases where the justices have not stated any reasons for their decisions, and only offer either concurring or dissenting opinions." Moreover, Somos outlined: "The Ohio Administrative Code which governs the adjudicative practices of the committee poses few restrictions on how members need to render their opinions." Despite Somos' memo, Keith delayed his decision.
On October 16, Mason wrote Pohler a memo demanding to know the status of the legal research being done to justify the censoring of his opinion. "My patience is exhausted," he noted. Keith's reply is dated the same day. Instead of following Somos' legal reasoning, Keith found that "The Unemployment Compensation Board of Review, a three-member board, is the only board or commission to address this question directly. It has done so through an administrative rule." Since the rule allowed for dissent, and since SERB had no such rule, then Keith reasoned, "There is nothing in the law or administrative rules authorizing the insurance of a concurring or dissenting opinion without the simultaneous release of a majority opinion, unlike the Unemployment Compensation Board of Review's administrative rules. Therefore, if SERB were to issue only a concurring or dissenting opinion, Board action authorizing its release is needed."
An outraged Mason, upset by Keith's twisted legal logic, next turned to Attorney General Betty Montgomery for assistance on the Open Meetings problem. On October 20, 1996, Mason requested that "an attorney be appointed to advise and represent me as an individual Board Member."
"The Chairman of the Board, Sue Pohler has in my opinion unlawfully established herself as the principal executive officer of SERB with the sole authority to make important legal and operational decisions without the advice and consent of the full Board," Mason wrote Montgomery.
"I also believe that the Board majority frequently violates the Open Meetings Act (Revised Code 121.22) by meeting privately to conduct public business…. The Chairman has conducted other private meetings where SERB legal, managerial and legislative business has been discussed and decided. I am routinely excluded from these latter meetings," the letter explained.
Finally, Mason complained that: "Revised Code 4117.18(B) provides that 'No person shall…prevent or attempt to prevent any member of the Board…from performing his lawful duties.' In addition to excluding me from participating in the management and operation of this agency, Chairman Pohler has directly acted to prevent me from performing my lawful duties as a member of the Board by refusing to allow me to officially issue my opinions."
In an October 31 memo refuting Keith, Mason wrote: "To restrict any view, particularly by majority action, deters the development of Ohio's public sector laws and defeats the inherent advantages of our pluralistic legal and administrative system."
Mason's plea for a marketplace of ideas fell on deaf ears at Attorney General Montgomery's office. Mason's February 14, 1997 letter to Assistant Attorney General Dan Jones ends: "Stephen L. Carter, the author of the best selling book Integrity, eloquently makes my case when he argues that, 'Democracy is about making sure that every voice is heard, that no voice is privileged, and that everyone plays by the rules.'" Montgomery declined Mason's request for an attorney and instead provided legal counsel to Pohler when Mason decided to sue last April.
05/14/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Disgraced former Franklin County Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi ain't the only problem. Sure, Oddi's got that odor, but he picked up that smell from the political sewer known as the Franklin County Court system. What Republicans will never admit and most Democrats are too cowardly to mention is that the Franklin County courts are an old-style, political patronage machine similar to Chicago in its heyday of corruption under the boss, Mayor Richard Daley.
The Republicans' highly fortified "Fortress Franklin County," protected by PR propaganda from the Dispatch, is really nothing more than the old "spoils system" outlawed at the federal level in the 19th century. Psssst, don't tell anybody that we don't have civil servants in the courts—we got them good old-fashioned deputy clerks, each and every one of them serving at the pleasure of the Clerk of Courts. If he don't like ya, he can fire ya, with no questions asked.
Oddi—who awaits trial on theft charges—had over 200 of these deputy clerks. If you refused to hawk his campaign fundraiser tickets over the counter on public time, you could be canned; if you refused to work in other Republican campaigns, hit the road, Jack. The politically connected could always find a spot for a family member.
And it's not any different in the Municipal Court where Paul Herbert has 150 deputy clerks, last time I looked. Just ask Oddi's sister who's over there in the Accounting Division or another deputy clerk, the daughter of Oddi's old boss, former Clerk of Courts Thomas Enright.
Interim Clerk of Courts Bill Shimp, the former County Prosecutor with a reputation as a political fixer, knows that his job is to blame it all on Oddi but keep the political machine in place. Shimp will get plenty of help demonizing Oddi from the Dispatch. But, what they're trying to do is difficult, akin to trying to dump Hitler while ignoring the Nazi party.
Let's go back to Oddi's election in 1996. On February 1, the Dispatch noted that, "The departure last year of some longtime Republican Franklin County officeholders didn't spell the end of their hold on county politics…. The former holders of perhaps the county's two richest patronage offices—former Clerk of Courts Tom Enright and William J. Dawson, former Municipal Clerk of Courts—will leave their appointed successors well-heeled to meet the challengers."
The Dispatch reported that Enright left Oddi campaign funds of "more than $37,000, helping Oddi amass more than $111,000 during the year—the highest total for any county officeholder." Oddi immediately oiled the county Republican machine "by giving or loaning more than $12,000 to the Franklin County Republican Party."
With his political coffers stuffed with cash, Oddi could count on the Dispatch to downplay any dirt on him and polish his image. On March 3, a Dispatch article on Oddi led with, "Tired of waiting for computer-imaging technology to come to him, Clerk of Courts Jesse D. Oddi is taking his idea on imaging to the Franklin County Data Processing Board." Images of the high-tech Oddi danced in the electorate's head as the headline screamed: "Clerk of Court pushed for study on efficiency."
As some of Oddi's braver deputy clerks met with the Dispatch staff, risking their jobs to expose possible wrongdoing by Oddi, nothing appeared in the Big D. We did learn that "Oddi aims to take Clerk of Courts office to the people" on October 1, 1996. The regular-guy-working-his-way-to-the-top political yarn spun by the Dispatch had just the right touch for Columbus. "His 27-year career began on the bottom rung. While a business student at Ohio State University, Oddi worked part time affixing embossed seals to motor vehicle titles and filing papers in the domestic court." The article had it all—OSU, embossed seals—but no mention of the booty calls that his female deputy clerks continually complained about to the media.
The mandatory Dispatch endorsement followed on October 23. Its political spin on Oddi was so good it had to be repeated: "While a business student at Ohio State University, Oddi worked part time affixing seals to motor-vehicle titles and filing papers in court." Ah, the stuff of legend.
The Dispatch endorsement downplayed the campaign of Jacque Bracken, Oddi's Democratic opponent: "Bracken had taken the well-traveled challenger's route of attacking Oddi on such issues as alleged unhappiness among employees and soliciting campaign funds from the staff. She also says the Clerk's office has been in Republican hands since 1962 and that it's time for the change. Her case has not been a compelling one."
After all, if the Clerk's office went Democratic you wouldn't have the one-party Republican domination of the county, except for Sheriff Jim Karnes. But Oddi had all his bases covered when he admitted on October 25 that he'd contributed money to Karnes' campaign as well.
With Bracken "Dispatched," Oddi could run on "accountability." His campaign literature stated: "Jesse Oddi's office has an extraordinary record of handling and safeguarding over $90 million dollars in fees each year." Oh, he guarded it all right. At the time of the Dispatch endorsement, Oddi had raised over $117,000 in campaign contributions. Bracken had only $5,000. Oddi had enough money in his coffers to donate to Republican Recorder candidate Richard Metcalf in the only close race in Franklin County. That's how the machine works. Shake the deputy clerks down for cash and turn them into political campaign zombies for the party.
The Franklin County Republicans want you to hate Oddi and ignore the political machine that created him.
5/21/1998
NEWS BRIEFS
OSU unrest prompts Copwatch action
Group threatens lawsuits
The city of Columbus can expect another round of lawsuits from the campus-based Copwatch organization following Saturday night's clash between the police and crowds of people mingling on High Street. Copwatch—a group that monitors police activity in the campus area armed with video and still cameras—was out in force because of past problems associated with the aftermath of the African-American Heritage Festival at Ohio State University.
On Monday, Copwatch activists released video footage of a conflict between police and citizens near the corner of 10th and High. Copwatch members had no criticism of police actions on Friday night when 16 people were arrested, primarily for disorderly conduct and open container violations. The Copwatchers noted that the police gave the large crowd gathered in the 7-Eleven store parking lot a 10-minute warning before sweeping the streets at 4:30 a.m. early Saturday morning.
At nearly the same spot the following night, the Copwatch video caught the police moving in at 2 a.m. As the primarily African-American revelers peacefully socialized in the parking lot, the police twice announced that "The 7-Eleven parking lot is now closed," the videotape revealed. No warning to the crowd to disperse is audible on the tape. As if by design, a military-style armored personnel vehicle is seen moving into the picture and the police assuming a military formation. Twice again the police inform the crowd that "7-Eleven is now closed. Vacate the lot now."
The police again issued no specific warnings on the tape. The video next captured a volley of shots—wooden riot-control 'knee-knockers'—fired by the police into the crowd. The tape records the words of a panicked black bystander who shouted, "They're trying to kill us!" The obviously intimidated crowd scattered; the police followed with another volley of knee-knockers before charging in to clear the parking lot. Twelve people were arrested, mostly for disorderly conduct.
The police version of the what transpired appeared in Monday's Dispatch: "A dozen people were arrested between 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 a.m. yesterday after police were pelted with rocks and bottles." Copwatch videotape appears to document that the police started the confrontation with the unprovoked firing of wooden bullets, and Copwatchers insist if bottles were thrown, it was in response to the police shootings.
Eight Copwatch activists took spent knee-knocker canisters, wooden bullets and the video footage to City Council on Monday to illustrate their complaint against the cops' behavior. The police told council that they have their own video supporting their version of events. Earlier, at Copwatch headquarters, one member pointed out that several of the wooden bullets were "unscuffed" and had been fired "not at the ground, as they are supposed to, but in the air directly at people."
A Copwatch press release attacked "most media coverage" for focusing "on a few isolated acts of bottle-breaking and mischief—which was actually in reaction to the unjust, inciteful and escalative actions by the police…" Copwatch claimed, "This was no 'alcohol-fueled riot' as they claim—trying also to implicate and scapegoat campus bar owners…[there was] no reason to act with the impatience—sweeping the streets right at bar close, or the blanket use of force—indiscriminate Macings, stampeding of crowds that they did."
Just last Friday, Copwatch attorney James McNamara filed three suits on behalf of three plaintiffs against the city of Columbus and various Columbus police officers as a result of police actions during last year's African-American Heritage weekend.
—Bob Fitrakis
5/28/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Neo-Nazi propaganda is sprouting in the campus area. Anti-Racist Action activists report finding National Alliance fliers from as far north as 18th Avenue to as far south as W. Eighth Avenue. The fliers would make Goebbels proud. Perhaps you've seen them. The text on the fliers is identical, but it comes with two different pictures. One has a young Aryan poster child doing her homework in a seemingly blissful suburban setting; the other has a preschooler with a puppy on the lawn. The headline blares: "She Needs The Truth" and asks "Where Will She Find It?"
Not, according to the National Alliance, "On television, with its racially mixed couples and multicultural propaganda" or "In her classroom, which has been converted into a neo-Communist brainwashing pen" or "On the streets, where she stands a greater than one in four chance of being raped, probably by a non-white."
The National Alliance assures the reader that: "We are here to make sure that more and more young people like her will have access."
I don't claim to have "truth" like the National Alliance, but I do know some facts about them. The organization, National Youth Alliance, sprang from the hate-filled racist 1968 George Wallace for President campaign. Its goal: "To liquidate the enemies of the American people." Initially controlled by Willis Carto, the head honcho behind the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, the group became ardent admirers of Adolf Hitler. They sell and promote Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium, a 600-page tome intended as the "second Mein Kampf."
In 1970, former members of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party split with Carto and renamed the organization the National Alliance. It's fearless leader: William L. Pierce, an American Nazi and author of the infamous Turner Diaries. Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was an avid reader and enthusiastic proselytizer of the Turner Diaries. The book was intended as a primer for promoting race war in America. There is a graphic and strikingly similar account between the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and a bombing in the Diaries.
Pierce professes that his calling in life is to "save white people from themselves." He runs his neo-Nazi organization from a isolated heavily wooded 400-acre compound in West Virginia. Recently, National Alliance members were indicted in Florida as part of an alleged 12-state terror network with plans to plant bombs around Disneyland to distract the police so they could rob banks for their movement.
The most disturbing thing about the flier is the local post office box in Hilliard, Ohio. These neo-Nazis stand for death and genocide. If you know who they are, out them.
Just when things were calming down at the Mohawk-Africentric School, the parents have another reason to be up in arms. According to PTA Vice-President Michael Straughter, parents were told in April by the recently reassigned principal, Wanda Knight, that the nearby athletic track and field stadium at the northeast corner of Grant and Livingston would undergo renovation for use by the school. Newly assigned Principal-to-be Stan Embry also promised parents the same thing. "Stan said there'd been talks with Mike Rotunda of the Central Administration about renovating the field and using it for a soccer team," Straughter said.
So imagine Straughter's distress when, at the May 19 Columbus school board meeting, school board member Bill Moss demanded to know if the stadium property was being sold without his knowledge. Moss specifically accused school board President Karen Schwarzwalder and Bob Teater, chair of the Business and Operations panel, "of selling the school's assets parcel by parcel, behind the back of the public and without proper bidding."
When asked for proof, Moss produced two documents. One is a letter dated April 24, 1998 from Warren W. Tyler, then vice president at State Savings, to Schwarzwalder, stating, "This letter is follow-up to the asset reuse ideas we discussed on December 19th, and at our meeting with you and Bob Teater on January 20th… Since our last meeting, the investor group has been assembled which has the real estate development experience and financial capability needed to undertake a mixed-use development of the scale we discussed. The principles have a demonstrated commitment to urban Columbus and are convinced that a contemplated investment in the range of $50 to $60 million in the District is rational." Tyler requested that he be allowed "to present a project concept to the Business and Operations Panel" during May.
Moss' second document is a May 18 Briefing Report from the Business and Operations Panel which notes, "The panel recessed into executive session to discuss the sale of property. The panel gave direction to staff to gather some additional information so the Board could respond to an offer."
A source familiar with Tyler's investment group claimed the idea of a consortium of black business and community leaders building two- and three-bedroom luxury apartments with a view of Columbus' downtown skyline was initiated by Sam Gresham of the Urban League. Tyler and Gresham, according to the source, have already solicited support for the project from various well-known people such as the Rev. Timothy Clark, Fred Parker of the NAACP, local businessman Al Warner, Jerry Hammond and Larry James, among others.
"If this thing is as far along as I think, and I haven't been informed, there's going to be trouble. When we passed the resolution for the Africentric School in 1995, it was for an elementary, middle and high school. And they all can fit in Mohawk and use that field. That stadium is a public asset and there won't be any deals struck behind closed doors.
"They want to sell it, they'll have to put it up for bid," Moss vowed.
6/04/1998
News Briefs
Who's afraid of Virginia Barney?
Last Thursday, the Franklin County Republican Party tapped the little-known Virginia Barney for the County's Common Pleas Clerk of Courts position. Barney replaces the better known but widely discredited Jesse Oddi, recently arrested for alleged theft in office. Barney's selection came only after the Republican Party failed to persuade more high-profile local Republicans to screen for the job, including Franklin County Commissioners Arlene Shoemaker and Dorothy Teater, County Treasurer Bobbie Hall, and State Representatives Priscilla Mead and E.J. Thomas.
Franklin County Democratic Party insiders believe that Anthony Celebrezze III, son of Ohio's former Attorney General, can beat Barney in November. "Look, it's going to be a quarter-of-a-million-dollar race. Celebrezze is the only one interested in the job who can raise that kind of money," said a high-ranking Dem official.
At stake in the probable Celebrezze-Barney electoral match-up is the patronage-rich Clerk's office—with over 200 political appointees. The Republicans' domination of both the Common Pleas Clerk's office and the Municipal Clerk's office is considered central to its control of Franklin County politics. The Republicans have won every Common Pleas election since 1962.
Barney's enthusiastic support for last year's Issue 1—a taxpayer-funded "private" arena and soccer stadium for billionaire Lamar Hunt—looms large as an issue in the race. Fifty-six of the voters turned down the issue. "There's an interesting pattern to the Republican Clerk of Courts: first Oddi steals more than a quarter of a million dollars from the taxpayers and Barney wanted to take a quarter of a billion dollars from the same taxpayers to give to Lamar Hunt," commented Franklin County Democratic Chair Denny White.
Barney served as the Community Development Council's (CDC) secretary. The CDC was "a non-profit corporation created to develop a downtown stadium and arena for Columbus," according to the Dispatch. Worthington Industries Chairman John H. McConnell chaired the Council; there was one other member.
Barney's ties to the rich and powerful emerged as an issue during the Republican Party's selection process for Clerk of Courts. Her CDC activities, which include stumping for the defeated sales tax, were not included on the resume she submitted to the Republican Party. A May 25 letter from Republican County Chair Michael Colley listed Mayor Greg Lashutka, Ohio's Speaker of the House Jo Ann Davidson, Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker, City Councilwoman Jeanette Bradley, developers Jack Chester and Jack Kessler, and Merom B. Brachman as members. Reportedly, Bill Debolt, the 66th Ward Committeeman, complained that the screening committee that appointed Barney lacked any Central Committee members. Twenty-third Ward Committeeman Bill Neill wrote Colley a letter stating that the lack of elected committee persons "has the appearance of impropriety…" and "brings an unfavorable light on the process."
"The fact that Virginia Barney was forced on the Committee as the only decision has brought a true crisis of faith on me," Neill continued, "Many people have expressed to me that they have the burden of being forced to work for candidates without having the privilege [of screening them]…. The grass roots members are being alienated and ignored by the Party. When candidates are chosen by the elite…then they are only campaigning to the elite and the press, thus leaving out the true mass of the Party."
Despite Barney's low public profile, she has an impressive political resume. Barney lists being awarded a B.S. in business management from Bradley University in 1970. Since 1977, she's owned and operated the Barney Corporation, which she describes as an "industrial distribution company which distributes filtration products to the chemical, pharmaceutical, electronic, automobile industries." Barney is the company's president.
Following her recent appointment as Clerk, Barney told the Dispatch that she plans to continue working part-time for her business while serving as Clerk.
Barney also plans to remain on the board of Central Ohio's Solid Waste Authority, where she's served as chairperson since 1994. She became chair the same year the Authority was forced by federal court rulings, the U.S. EPA and community activists to close its trash-burning power plant. The Authority has been sued several times in local courts, and four lawsuits still were pending in Common Pleas Court as of June 1, which raises the question of conflict of interest for Barney in her new position.
Barney served on the Upper Arlington City Council from March 1987 until December 1995. In 1992-93, fellow Council members elected her to the dual roles of Council president and mayor of Upper Arlington. She was the second female mayor in the history of that city. The Dispatch reported that Barney's agenda was "to help the city foster more commercial and retail development to increase Upper Arlington's tax base."
In August 1992, Barney concocted a controversial plan to have a private group buy up property bounded roughly by Lane Avenue, Riverside Drive, Trabue Road, and the Scioto River and donate it to the city for a Quarry Park. Questions arose as to whether "the private group came forward on its own," or was it "coaxed to pursue the project" by the mayor, according to the Dispatch.
In 1995, her last year on the Upper Arlington City Council, Barney voted with the Council's majority to give lucrative pay raises and multi-year contracts to the Upper Arlington City Clerk Margie Halk, City Manager Rich King and City Attorney Sharon Pfancuff. Halk received a four-year pact from the Council, which raised her salary from $53,892 to $59,978 the first year, an 11.3 percent increase. By the end of the pact, Halk's salary would be approximately $71,000. King's salary rose in three years from $82,000 to $94,000 plus a $350 per month car allowance regardless of actual mileage driven.
In 1996, Barney served as president of the Upper Arlington Community Improvement Corp., a quasi-public body that promoted commercial growth in the city. The corporation's plans to put a medical office building next to the Upper Arlington municipal building created a public outcry when it requested that the city "donate" the land to a private company. This activity is also absent from Barney's resume.
6/12/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Putting together the bizarre bits and pieces to see the bigger picture we call Ohio "pay to play" politics isn’t always easy, but it’s steady work. Last week, the picture got much clearer for the average Ohioan, thanks in part to some fine reporting by Sandy Theis of the Cincinnati Enquirer, and similar stellar work by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Per usual, the Dispatch is either ignoring the story or missed it entirely. On June 3, Theis reported how ex-Voinovich Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud occupied his time "consulting" after leaving the Governor’s staff and serving a six-month stint in jail.
Mifsud received over $450,000 in so-called "consulting fees" over the last two years from Ohio Edison, an Akron-based electric company. The Enquirer reported that Ohio Edison paid over $300,000 to the Kingwood Consulting Group. Mifsud is its president. It’s no surprise that Mr. Mifsud appears to once again be in the middle of a political influence-peddling scandal. Recall when he was sentenced for destroying public records surrounding a questionable hundred thousand dollar construction discount from controversial builder T.G. Banks, who went on to become Ohio’s foremost taxpayer-funded minority contractor, the judge noted that the crux of the problem was "influence peddling."
Mifsud resigned in July 1996 "to spend more time with his family" with the press hot on his trail in the Banks scandal. The next month he received an initial $30,000 installment from Ohio Edison. It also should be no surprise that the state legislature is about to hand Ohio’s utility industry one of the biggest welfare checks in U.S. history. Hiding behind the Orwellian phrase "utility deregulation," Mifsud and assorted other Voinovich cronies are attempting to engineer one of the greatest consumer rip-offs in memory. The bill essentially kills competition and penalizes the most efficient and environmentally-conscious companies by allowing them to "strand"—with us—the cost of their dangerous nukes and filthiest coal-burners.
Since Mifsud isn’t "lobbying," only "consulting," Ohio law does not require that he report these blatantly political activities. Under federal law, Mifsud would have had to wait a year after leaving his post before making contact with government officials and to disclose his activities. The only reason we know of the new scandal is because a merger involving Ohio Edison required a disclosure with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C. Them damn pesky feds. No wonder Voinovich favors "state’s rights."
The legislative architect behind the utility bail-out is Republican Senator Roy Ray of Akron, who the Plain Dealer listed as receiving $161,000 in consultant fees from Ohio Edison. Prior to pleading guilty on September 3, 1997, Mifsud was busily at work on behalf of his former boss, Governor Voinovich. In January 1997, the Dispatch reported that Mifsud was "working on electric industry deregulation on behalf of the Ohio Alliance for Affordable Power." The group is an industry "astroturf-roots" lobby concocted by high-priced consultants to fool the average voter. Utility companies have given the group more than $600,000 to craft "deregulation." Affordable energy, my ass.
The Dispatch also noted that Mifsud "attended a $1,000-per-person fund-raiser in Miami, Fla., attended largely by utility officials, benefiting Voinovich’s U.S. Senate campaign." Does this begin to parse?
The picture grows clearer when you add assorted other Voinovich fund-raisers, pals and pols: Alex Arshinkoff, a major Voinovich fund-raiser and Summit County GOP Chair, received $110,000 in consulting fees from utility companies in 1996-97; Edward Flask, former head of the scandal-ridden Mahoning Valley Sanitary District (MVSD), received $74,000 in consulting fees between 1995-7; Kurt Tunnel, former Chief Legal Counsel for the Governor, is also in on the utility gravy train; and R. Gregory Browning, the former Budget Director, admitted to the Plain Dealer that he’s negotiating a deal with the utilities.
Remember that last August, Ohio Auditor Jim Petro released a special audit documenting that Flask had collected more than $1.9 million in legal and consulting fees from some of the very same vendors who are under contract to the MVSD.
The Voinovich administration’s record beginning with the prison building by his family business, the direct correlation between state development and grant money and political donations, the Mifsud contract-steering scandal, spilling over to the Bureau of Worker’s Compensation and ending with a utility consumer rip-off will most likely be regarded by future historians as one of the most systematically corrupt in our state’s history.
But there is a ray of hope. Prior to the utility scandal, political handicappers were already saying that Voinovich appears beatable in November. Of course he is. In the last two years he’s enthusiastically backed two unpopular referendums—the so-called Worker’s Comp reform and the misguided school funding fiasco—both losing by crushing margins. Add to this: a K-12 state school funding system declared "unconstitutional" by a Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court that’s still never been fixed; a higher-education system that dropped from 37th in state public funding to 44th in the nation; an atrocious environmental record highlighted by the Governor’s attempt to build a six-state nuke waste dump in Ohio; and one corporate mega-farm with permits to house 18 million chickens and tons of chicken shit, and you see why Governor V needs the utility cash.
The portrait of King George’s reign is clear. The voters need to revolt against his "long train of abuses" this November.
06/18/1998
Concrete jungle
Will the Spring/Sandusky Interchange spell ecological disaster?
by Bob Fitrakis
The name is innocuous enough—the Spring/Sandusky Interchange Project—but the reality of the nearly three-decade-delayed federal highway expansion has central city residents fighting mad. At the May meeting of the Victorian Village Society, members voted to sue the Federal Highway Administration over the project.
"As a historic district, we are protected under federal law from impacts pertaining to traffic, noise, visual intrusion, etc. The Federal Highway Administration has blatantly ignored its own rules while shoving commuter traffic down our throats," stated an article in June’s Village Vibe, the newsletter of the Victorian Village Society.
The Victorian Village Society is part of a greater alliance, the Urban Oasis Coalition, that has a laundry list of concerns beyond the projected traffic congestion. The Coalition is a self-described "alliance of organizations committed to protecting and restoring the river corridor of the Central City." The organization contends that widespread environmental degradation will result from the project: over 1,100 feet of the Scioto River will be relocated; 31 acres of inner-city hardwood trees removed; 11 new bridges constructed; and at least 18 acres of wetlands destroyed.
The 16-member coalition brings together five city commissions including the Historic Resources Commission, both the German and Italian Village Societies as well as environmental and recreation organizations such as Rivers Unlimited and the U.S. Canoe Association. Only a massive project could spawn such a diverse coalition of opponents.
The project’s name itself causes confusion and indifference among the general public. The Spring/Sandusky Interchange Project presumably referred to the original two streets that would intersect with the freeway entrance and exits, though where Sandusky Street is located remains a mystery to many today. Some people have actually confused it with Sandusky, Ohio. Conceived in the late ’60s, the highway project is colossal in its scope.
Generally, the plan is intended to straighten 315 as part of the overall effort to complete I-670. The original plan was the product of an affluent and less environmentally aware America that dreamed about making commuting easier for people who migrated to the burgeoning northwest suburbs but worked in downtown Columbus. The project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), required by federal law, was completed in 1983. It relied on environmental assessment documents from as far back as 1971, the year the construction plans were completed. According to Jeff Skelding, executive director of Rivers Unlimited, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) didn’t "revisit" those documents until recently. At an April 8 speech before the Central Ohio Sierra Club, Skelding contended that "there’s an emerging awareness over the value of downtown urban rivers. We have much more information today on the impact of these highway projects on the watershed, on the land use. It’s just not chemical discharge anymore. Historically, we’ve looked at these urban rivers as waste conduits, a place to discharge our waste and sewage."
Skelding told the audience that ODOT probably thought "no one was watching. We’re 27 years into the project, there’s lots of people from Dublin driving cars downtown. We have to do it." ODOT scheduled a December 5, 1997 public hearing about its request for a federal boilerplate 404 Permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, required under the Clean Water Act to begin construction. The hearing was postponed at ODOT’s insistence after more wetlands were "discovered." The project was temporary delayed while environmentalists and government officials agreed on a "mitigation" or replacement plan for the wetlands.
Some suggest that ODOT’s recent discovery is disingenuous since its own files contain letters and hand-drawn maps dating back to 1978 from an avid local fisherman, Charles Miller, showing the location of the "newly discovered" wetlands. Miller had accurately informed ODOT of the existence of eight of the wetlands totaling more than 60 percent of ODOT’s December 1997 "discovery." Miller also included the location of his favorite fishing spots. In a January 11, 1978 letter Wayne Kauble of ODOT told Miller that "recent developments have made it desirable to now reconsider these detailed plans, we will take into account the relocation of the Scioto River, the wetlands, the type of wildlife in and around the river and the layout of I-670 itself." An August 11, 1978 news article reported a promise from Warren Baas, chief engineer for ODOT, that "engineers will work with the BES [Bureau of Environmental Services] throughout the project’s planning phase…the BES will evaluate effects of the new design on traffic flow, noise level, and local residents."
A January 5, 1998 letter from Tim Wagner, the corresponding secretary of the Urban Oasis Coalition, to Federal Highway Administrator Leonard Brown, raised a dozen or so additional environmental issues. The Coalition claimed that "new information" existed "regarding environmental impacts at Rickenbacker (Confluence) Park" including "an area of wetlands…not identified as such in the EIS review of the property 15 years ago." Wagner noted that "the new identified values of the area [wetlands] will be taken by the relocation of the Scioto River 150 feet northward."
Next, the letter raised concerns that the project would infringe on recreational activities such as canoeing, fishing and crewing. "To what extent do you believe the 5,100 lineal feet of rock channel protection (ODOT specification 18-30" diameter rock) in various locations on the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers will impede the access at those points for persons using the riverbanks…," Wagner asked.
Standard ODOT construction practices call for the removal of all trees and vegetation on the riverbank and its replacement with controversial rip-rap—those "big white sterile-looking boulders," explained an environmentalist. The boulders serve to protect the bare riverbank from erosion. Skelding put it more bluntly at the Sierra Club meeting: "It’s denuding the stream bank of green space, of trees and vegetation."
ODOT contends that rip-rap is an acceptable alternative and serves as habitat for small-mouth bass. Environmentalists are skeptical of these claims, and believe the rip-rap will destroy the habitat of many forms of wildlife along the riverbank. Skelding champions a newer approach to erosion control called bio-engineering that would actually use some the 31 acres of removed hardwood trees instead of rocks. Though the trees would be dead, they would spawn new vegetation and more natural habitat for wildlife. One of the Coalition members complained that when you tried to explain a new concept to "ODOT bureaucrats, they just stare blankly or reach for their book of specs."
The Coalition’s letter specifically complained about the "cumulative effects of the loss of habitat and habitat fragmentation" on wildlife. The letter also goes on to question whether human uses such as bike paths were considered in creating and engineering the new riverbank. Chain-link fences—described by one high-ranking state official as "standard ODOT ugly"—and 100-foot-tall light fixtures are not, in Wagner’s words, "consistent with current human environment and usage."
The Coalition also invoked the specter of "historic preservation" and asked: "What consideration has been given to the historic cultural resources impacted by the project including the reconstruction of the Spring Street Bridge, the Franklinton Cemetery, and the Near Northside Historic District?" According to the Village Vibe, "the Near North Side Historic District agreed to contribute $500" to the planned lawsuit against the Federal Highway Administration. The District is specifically concerned, according to the Coalition, with "the impact of traffic, noise, aesthetics and other impacts."
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the Coalition’s letter dealt with the issue of "contaminated sediment" on the Scioto River bottom caused by past industrialization. The thought of the project literally dredging up this buried contamination when the river is moved 150 feet scares environmentalists. An Ohio Environmental Impact Statement noted "some of the disturbed sediments may contain relatively high concentrations of heavy metals." The Coalition fears that these "resuspended toxic substances may poison aquatic life and migratory waterfowl." The letter demanded that ODOT commission a supplemental Environmental Impact Statement before continuing with the project.
On January 29, Brown and the Federal Highway Administration sided with ODOT in turning down the Coalition’s request. As Brown explained, ODOT "recognized the importance of the river habitat" since they originally wanted to relocate 8,200 feet of the river and scaled it back to under 1,200 feet.
After being dismissed by Federal Highway authorities, Wagner and the Coalition found an ally at the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA). Jeri-Anne Garl, Office of Strategic Analysis director in Region 5, informed Coalition members that since the Spring/Sandusky Interchange Project had "formally closed out its NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act]process" in 1983 by submitting its Environmental Impact Statement, there was another provision in the law that may be applicable. "When a project is not initiated for five years or longer following submission of the final EIS, the applicable NEPA guidelines of the Council on Environmental Quality require that a re-evaluation be made of the project’s likely environmental consequences." Garl’s admission sets up the possibility of a successful lawsuit.
In a letter to the U.S. EPA dated March 12, Wagner informed the agency that he had turned up a 1983 letter proving that both the city of Columbus and ODOT had agreed to coordinate with the U.S. EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to "develop a mitigation package to minimize impacts of 1,100 feet of channelization and loss of 31.3 acres of wooded habitat." Wagner also forwarded his sworn affidavit claiming that Tom Linkous, assistant environmental administrator at ODOT, "advised" him "that ODOT had not coordinated or otherwise met this condition during this period of time."
Despite Wagner’s and the Coalition’s complaints, ODOT began "segmenting" the project—carving the construction into small pieces in order to get around U.S. environmental regulations. Each smaller construction segment would, ODOT argued, have only a minor environmental impact. But Wagner and others wanted the whole project considered. Wagner wrote the U.S. EPA complaining of "massive riverine habitat destruction." A letter from Brown conceded that "the project has been advancing incrementally over the last 15 years and had not required a re-evaluation… The only design changes were minor."
Even as the city and ODOT’s old promise was made public, acres of inner-city trees were cleared, rip-rap placed and the river’s environment irreversibly altered.
On March 14, Wagner wrote Dave Ullrich, Region Five administrator, alleging that ODOT had "illegally filled" wetlands. Soon federal officials were in a memo war. U.S. EPA official Michael MacMullen wrote Brown stating that a "supplemental EIS would have to be prepared and distributed." On April 16, MacMullen met with Federal Highway and ODOT administrators who pleaded their case. A letter from Brown summarizing the meeting stated "…we knew that there were no changes to the project that would result in significant environmental impacts that were not previously evaluated."
Wagner had a different take on ODOT’s conduct. In a May 11 letter to MacMullen, he argued that "the record shows that ODOT has possessed extensive information about the wetlands in the project area for 20 years" and "waiting until the project was under construction to evaluate information that it possessed for 20 years" was unacceptable and possibly a violation of law.
On June 3, Wagner and 60 other citizens attended the Army Corps of Engineers public hearing on ODOT’s request for its 404 Permit. A dozen or so people spoke. Wagner’s statement demanded that ODOT "be required to consult with engineers about new technologies that have been developed during the past 15-20 years."
Skelding believes that there’s a fighting chance that the issue could turn into one of "ODOT vs. Columbus." Right now the public doesn’t understand the project since by 1990s standards, "the scope of the project is unimaginable and hard to believe," Skelding explained. He’s banking on the fact that big monied developers understand that "people will pay to live" near a scenic river.
How the Spring/Sandusky dinosaur fits into the new plans for a nine-mile stretch of the Scioto and Olentangy river corridor being drawn up by the Riverfront Commons Corporation (RCC) remains unanswered. Neither public green space advocates nor developers are likely to be rip-rap fans. The RCC’s three public forums in 1996 drew some 750 citizens who overwhelmingly insisted on the protection of the rivers, access to the river and continued recreational use of it. Skelding reminded his audience that the project, as conceived in the late ’60s, would destroy the "scenic value" of the downtown rivers. "For an urban area, it’s really a very nice place," he added.
A sympathetic state ODOT adviser, who requested not to be identified, said the agency’s "thinking is stuck in the past, this is what destroyed L.A. They want to turn the place into a concrete jungle."
But as Skelding and others have pointed out, often the rivers and Mother Nature have the last word. Destroyed wetlands and paved floodplains have caused massive flooding in recent years across the U.S. and rivers unnaturally ripped from their beds have often found their way back home despite the best efforts of the bureaucrats and engineers.
06/25/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
The great Buckeye Lake land squeeze is on.
Recently, Ruth Lewis sold her lakefront house for $5,000. Hard to believe? She owned the house for 16 years, but not the land it sat on. The land is owned by the Buckeye Lake Park Company as part of the Carlin estate administered by the law firm of Shaller, Campbell and United of Newark. In 1982, Lewis bought the property for $15,000, made substantial improvements and sold it at a $10,000 loss. All because she lives in a village where originally seven families owned all the land. Sounds a bit like Guatemala.
The trailer park practice of leasing land works well when you have a mobile home, but not when you have a fixed structure. Lewis saw the cost of her land lease double from $300 to $600 a month, yet that was only part of her problem. The company would only give her a year-to-year lease, so when she tried to sell her home (initially for $70,000, then $50,000, then $35,000), no one was interested. Most rational people won’t invest $35,000 to $70,000 and risk losing it after a year.
This is not hyperbole. One of Lewis’ neighbors received a letter from the Shaller law firm that gave her less than a month to move out. The letter read in part: "This is to inform you that your lease expires on March 31, 1997 and the Buckeye Lake Park Company has decided not to renew your lease for another term. Please remove all personal property from the premises on or before the 31st day of March." She had the option of moving her house on short notice or selling it to the company at "fair" market value. But you can see where fairness got Lewis.
This is all part of an out-with-the-riff-raff and in-with-the-rich movement sweeping the heretofore socio-economically mixed lake. Class segregation of the worst sort is afoot. On the far eastern corner of the lake, a 159-acre residential resort called Heron Bay has the well-to-do upgrading their summer homes and replacing them with year-round mansions. As the Greater Buckeye Lake Chamber of Commerce gushes: "Traveling up and down the lake’s channels, it is unbelievable the houses that are being built."
Equally unbelievable and unconscionable are the houses being stolen from the less affluent. I wonder how much public money has gone in to dikes, dams and dredging of the lake so that the truly affluent can enjoy it?
Sources inside the Bureau of Worker’s Compensation (BWC) say there’s yet to be an announcement of Dale Hamilton’s quiet and untimely departure. The son of the politically powerful Hamilton clan, rumored to sit at King George Voinovich’s right hand, left the Bureau during an ethics investigation. Once touted as a possible successor to the highly regarded chief operating officer, Steve Isaac, Hamilton is reportedly now working for Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Columbus Alive reported in a copyrighted story last February that Isaac was fired from the Bureau after he found documents in Hamilton’s briefcase that, according to a "confidential" memo, "it appeared as Mr. Hamilton was funneling BWC information to Hamilton and Associates [his family firm]."
Isaac, you recall, has since filed a federal lawsuit against the Bureau. An investigator retained by Isaac told Columbus Alive that the Lancaster Fire Chief admits to being solicited by Dale Hamilton with a proposal to go back two years and bill the state for past EMS services covered by the BWC.
With the recent revelations involving alleged abuse of consulting fees by the energy industry seeking "deregulation," new questions are being raised concerning a similar practice used by the BWC. Insiders claim that prior to coming to the bureau, Dale Hamilton was paid a substantial consulting fee for a study on the bureau’s rehabilitation center. One insider termed the study "recycled material, nothing original." Another claims it was "outside Hamilton’s area of expertise." Stay tuned.
New owner of Ohio’s Call and Post newspaper chain, Don King, should bring some savvy street connections to the paper. After all, Spy Magazine puts the amount of people he’s killed at two and Jim Neff, Kiplinger Professor at Ohio State, goes into details on a King murder in his book, Mobbed Up. Investigative reporter Jack Newfield claims that King promoted the Muhammad Ali vs. Chuck "The Bayonet Bleeder" Wepner fight with alleged mob money.
Still, it’s got to be good news for Governor Voinovich. Yes, it was the Guv, then a Cleveland politician, who wrote a letter helping to spring King from the joint. The rest is history. From promoter to publisher. Can a Pulitzer be far behind?
P.S. Skyhawk: Please contact me. The project you wrote me about is proceeding.
7/02/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
by Bob Fitrakis
For more than a year, the Columbus Division of Police Intelligence Bureau has investigated the practices of bail bondsmen in the Franklin County court system. The bureau has found that open bail bond solicitation allegedly occurs on a daily basis in violation of city law.
Internal memos and investigative reports obtained by Columbus Alive indicate that despite police recommendations dating from late October 1997 to charge six bondsmen for soliciting in the court, Police Chief James G. Jackson and City Attorney Janet Jackson have yet to enforce the law. Meanwhile, bail bondsmen allegedly continue the illegal practice directly under the noses of judges and police inside municipal courtrooms.
A May 7, 1997 Columbus Alive article, "The Gatekeepers: Striking it rich in the bail bond business," described the practice of bail bondsmen using a court "interview room" as "a high-powered office for the SMD/HLS Bonding Company." The interview room is next to Municipal Court Room 4D where daily criminal arraignments take place. Little has changed since the story, except the bondsmen have moved from their "office" into the hall of the Halls of Justice, and into the courtroom itself
The law appears to clearly prohibit the very activity documented by both the Alive and the Police Intelligence Bureau. Columbus City Ordinance 2317.48(A) states: "No person, with purpose to solicit business for bail bondsmen, shall loiter in or around any court or public place."
A June 15 memo from Lieutenant Edward B. Devennish of the Intelligence Bureau to Public Safety Director Thomas W. Rice Sr. suggested that the failure to prosecute the bail bondsmen for their blatant daily solicitation rests with Democratic City Attorney Jackson. "My recollection of the City Attorney’s expressed concern is that while the ordinance prohibits solicitation on behalf of a bondsmen, it doesn’t prohibit the bondsmen soliciting for themselves," Devennish wrote. Rice, in a June 19 memo to Jackson, referred the issue back to the city attorney.
This week, Jackson confirmed that she finds the bail bondsmen solicitation ordinance to be "ambiguous and unenforcable." The city attorney told Columbus Alive that she hasn’t located any legislative history to indicate whether the ordninance was designed to keep state-licensed bondsmen out of the courthouse, or just unlicensed third parties acting on behalf of bondsmen. Jackson, a former Franklin County judge, pointed out that for at least the last decade, the practice has been for bondsmen to solicit business in the courthouse.
While she wouldn’t elaborate on meetings she’s had with city officials—Jackson said it would be an absolutely unethical violation of attorney-client confidentiality—the city attorney did tell Alive that she has already started rewriting the bondsmen ordinance language. Jackon anticipates a draft may be completed within 30 days and forwarded to City Council. Action may be taken as early as September 1.
An August 13, 1997 investigative report from Detectives James M. O’Brien and Jeri L. Morgan outlined a much broader probe of which the solicitations are just one of five allegations involving the court’s operation: "Bonding companies are not paying court-order bond forfeitures"; "Funds collected by the Clerk of Courts on behalf of defendants are refunded to bonding companies who should then refund their clients but fail to do so"; "The ten percent rule on surety bonds is not followed as required by law"; "Accounting practices by the Clerk of Courts are suspect as to proper billing and accounts receivable for bonding companies"; and "Bonding companies are working outside the Municipal fourth floor court room in violation of Columbus City Code."
All of these allegations have been raised in past Columbus Alive stories and columns. With former Republican Common Pleas Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi currently under indictment on 49 felony charges of theft in office, the court investigation raises new concerns over the practices of Republican Municipal Clerk of Courts Paul Herbert, where most of the allegations are being investigated.
The solicitation allegations are the least complicated in the court investigation. Bondsmen cluster daily around the Municipal Arraignment Courtroom. Municipal Court judges set bond for felons who may later be indicted by a grand jury and tried in the Common Pleas Court; routinely, those charged with felonies are arraigned and bonded on the fourth floor of the Municipal Court. Just as routinely, the charges are dismissed a few days later, pending a "possible future indictment." A short time later, when alleged felons are indicted by the grand jury, they must post a different bond all over again.
Many other court systems carry the bond from Municipal Court over to Common Pleas Court. In Franklin County, this is not the case. As former bondsman Bill Neill put it, "With felons, it’s money for nothing, and the person being let out of jail is being scammed by the bondsmen. It’s no risk. The bondsmen know the charges are going to be dismissed in Municipal Court and it won’t matter whether the defendant skips or not. It’s free money. That’s why they hang out at the arraignment room."
The Ohio Supreme Court has long recognized this double bonding problem. In 1972, then-Ohio Chief Justice C. William O’Neill told the Columbus Dispatch, "In 90 percent of the cases the bail bondsman renders no service and takes no risk, but keeps his profit." Criminal Rule 46 of Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure addresses the question of "pre-trial releases in felony cases." The rule says that judges should use "personal recognizance" or an "unsecured appearance bond" as the "preferred method of release."
Still, many judges who also have the option of securing appearances of alleged felons through property assets prefer so-called "surety" or insurance bonds provided by bondsmen. If a defendant’s bond is set at $50,000 in Municipal Court with an "appearance bond," the defendant would post $5,000 in cash or assets. When the defendant shows up for court, all but 10 percent, or $4,500, would be refunded. If a bail bondsmen posted a "surety bond" of $50,000 for the defendant, none of the $5,000 would be refunded when the defendant shows up in court. With this often risk-free cash available, it’s no wonder the bondsmen swarm the Municipal Arraignment Courtroom.
Bondsmen named in investigation
On September 3, 1997, an investigative report filed by O’Brien and Morgan recorded their trip to Common Pleas Arraignment Court. "As we sat in the courtroom, a male/black, later identified as Mike English [a bail bondsmen], came up to Detective Morgan and asked, ‘Are you here to bond someone out of jail?’ ... The next solicitation happened as both Detectives were sitting in the courtroom. A male, white, later identified as Greg Powers tapped Detective Morgan on the shoulder and asked her ‘Who are you here for?’ Detective Morgan answered, ‘Why do you want to know?’ Greg Powers said, ‘I’m Greg, with Columbus Bail Bonds.’" The report also notes that bail bondsman and former Franklin County Chief Deputy Al Clark was in the courtroom along with bondsman Harvey Handler.
Detective William J. White reported that on September 4, he was "approached" by a white male claiming to be a "bail bondsman" who gave him "his business card from Columbus Bail Bonds and asked that I call him if I need their assistance. The name on the card was Jeramy May." Within 25 minutes, he was approached again by a white female named "Candie" who "then handed me a business card from American Bail Bonds and said ‘Call us if you need us.’"
On September 5, Detective James D. McDevitt filed a report that "Harvey Handler was observed approaching people sitting in the courtroom and he was overheard asking them if they were trying to get someone out of jail. At one point, he attempted to give an individual a business card, however, was turned down because she had been given a card from another person in the hallway." Bondsman "Lowell Fox was observed in the hallway outside the courtroom questioning people about who they were trying to get out of jail."
McDevitt’s report ended with "Handler, Fox and the unknown couple had copies of the Arraignment sheets in their hands." The arraignment sheets show which defendants are being arraigned and what they’re being charged with. Handler, Fox, Clark and English all work for the politically powerful SMD/HLS Bonding Company.
Even attorneys don’t have this much freedom in the courthouse, under threat of being disbarred. The Ohio Supreme Court’s Disceplinary Rule 2-103 prohibits attorneys from approaching people to solicit business in courthouses, hospitals or any other public place (except for advertising).
Following the early September 1997 solicitation of undercover detectives by bondsmen, a meeting was held on Thursday, September 25, at the Intelligence Bureau to discuss the ongoing bail bond investigation. Notes on the meeting show that those present included Assistant Safety Director David Wilson, Intelligence Section Commander Walter Distelzweig, Lieutenant Devennish, Detectives O’Brien and Morgan, and two sergeants. Those present agreed that "The next step will be the enforcement of City Code 2317.48, Soliciting Business for Bondsmen," and the investigation would continue.
Detective Cynthia Shaw "observed" bondsmen Handler, Woody Fox, English and Al Clark all in court on September 30. Woody Fox is a former Columbus police officer and the brother of Lowell Fox. "Mr. [Woody] Fox talked to persons at the defense table and the prosecutor’s table several times and even exited the door to [judges’] chambers once." Shaw also reported, "...a defense attorney, approached Mr. Handler at the rear of the courtroom and ... [told] him he had a client for him tomorrow."
On October 1, Detective Anthony Rogers, in plain clothes, "was approached by Harvey Handler" outside Municipal Arraignment Court Room 4D. Rogers’ investigative report recorded the following exchange: "Mr. Handler stated ‘Can I help you?’ ... ‘Who are you here for?’ Detective Rogers stated ‘An employee ... are you a prosecutor?’ Mr. Handler stated ‘No, I am a bail bondsman.’"
Another bondsman, James Barnhart, got on the elevator with Rogers as he was leaving and told him: "‘Those guys will solicit you upstairs and will charge you too much.’ ... ‘I can make you a better deal.’ ... ‘Call me’" as he handed Rogers a card.
Rogers’ report ended with the observation that "While waiting in the hallway outside of courtroom 4D, prior to Mr. Handler approaching Detective Rogers, Detective Rogers observed [Franklin County Prosecutor] Ron O’Brien go up to Mr. Handler and exchange pleasantries. Mr. O’Brien smiled and walked into courtroom 4D."
The money flowing from bondsmen into the political coffers of the county prosecutor, city attorney, clerk of courts, judges and between the various Republican campaigns has been fluid, according to campaign finance reports. For example, in June 1993, Handler contributed $225 to then-City Attorney Ron O’Brien. On March 14, 1996, Handler contributed $175 at an O’Brien political fund-raising event. On June 17, 1996, Citizens for Paul Herbert gave O’Brien $100. Eleven days later at another fund-raiser, Herbert gave O’Brien another $500. The Oddi for Clerk Committee kicked in $100 and Handler coughed up $250 more for O’Brien.
Of the four Municipal Court judges who served as arraignment judges at the time of the police investigation—Michael T. Brandt, James Green, Dwayne W. Maynard and Marvin Romanoff—all but Romanoff received money from bail bondsmen for their election campaigns. Romanoff was the only of the three who ran unopposed. City Attorney Jackson also received political contributions from bail bondsmen during her last campaign.
Deputy clerks in the courts have long complained that Oddi and Herbert shook them down for campaign contributions under threat of losing their jobs. Many came to regard Handler as a hero, telling Alive that he would often buy tickets to campaign fund-raisers from the deputy clerks so they could meet their "quotas." As one court insider explains it, "Look, if Handler buys in cash a $25 ticket or two every day, he doesn’t have to report that money. It’s not a check, it’s not over $100. There’s no record of it. It’s an easy way to purchase political influence."
On October 2, 1997, two undercover Columbus Police recruits were sent to Municipal Court, where they were solicited by both English and Fox and "described their experience with the aforementioned bondsmen as ‘vultures swooping down on you’ and very intimidating," according to an investigative report filed by Detectives O’Brien and Morgan.
Two more recruits were sent in on October 10 and one was solicited again by English. Morgan and O’Brien’s report noted that the recruits "observed Harvey Handler, Woody Fox and Mike English sitting at the table directly facing the judge and also observed Al Clark and Mark Glaser sitting in the audience section of the courtroom. Both recruits stated Mr. Glaser was ‘all over the courtroom, even entering and exiting the courtroom through doors located behind the judge’s bench.’" All of these bondsmen work for SMD/HLS Bonding Company.
In 1994, the Dispatch reported that "Bondsman Jack Bates said his nose was bloodied and his face bruised when Mark Glaser, a bondsman with Harvey Handler’s bail bonding agency struck him in the face on the fourth floor of the Franklin County Municipal Court."
Bondsmen battles are legendary in the Franklin County Court and on the street as well, where many bondsmen carry weapons in pursuit of bail jumpers. On February 3, bondsmen Greg Powers and James Barnhart had their guns confiscated by Deputy Sheriff Donald Eurez as they entered the courthouse, according to an incident report.
The access of Handler’s bail bondsmen to judges and elected officials has long been the envy of other bail bondsmen. This Columbus Alive reporter first mistook Handler for an attorney after he watched Handler approach a judge and negotiate a reduction in bond during an arraignment. As Neill explains, "I’ve seen them approach some of the most unapproachable judges. You know why? Who approaches the biggest, meanest dog in the neighborhood? The person that feeds it."
On October 28, 1997 Detectives O’Brien and Morgan sent their investigation summary on bail bond solicitation to Acting Deputy Chief Curtis Marcum. "Officers and recruits that attended the different court sessions report that bondsmen operate daily as if the courtroom was their business office," the detectives wrote. Their summary recommended that "Greg Powers, Jeramy May, Harvey Handler, James G. Barnhart, Mike English and Woody Fox ... be charged with Soliciting Business for a Bondsman" in violation of the City Code, a third-degree misdemeanor.
One investigator told Alive that enforcing the no-solicitation law was the first and most obvious step in cleaning up the widely discredited Franklin County Court system and restoring public confidence. An investigative source said that Marcum initially concurred but quickly changed his mind after conferring with Police Chief James G. Jackson.
On December 4, 1997, Chief Jackson forwarded copies of the investigative summary to City Attorney Janet Jackson and wrote her explaining the situation: "Apparently this conduct has been the norm for a number of years, and has been observed by the Court, the Prosecutors as well as members of the Division of Police. It is unknown which, if any, of these persons were aware that the conduct was a violation of law."
Chief Jackson continued: "After our initial observations we recommended that criminal charges be filed as discussed against those bail bondsmen whom we had observed soliciting business. However, following meetings between Division of Police investigators, yourself and members of your staff, the section as written, may be unconstitutionally over-broad and vague. Also, since bondsmen apparently have been permitted to solicit in and around the courts for a considerable period, it would be more reasonable to announce a change in enforcement practice prior to implementing it, and then only after we have a rewritten, enforceable law."
Chief Jackson concluded by requesting that the city attorney’s office "seek to have this section either rewritten to be enforceable, or repealed; thereby permitting all concerned to do their duties if the conduct as it is occurring is something that your office and City Council feels should be prohibited."
Further complicating the matter is the fact that a former girlfriend of Chief Jackson, Charlynn English, is the wife of bail bondsman Mike English. The chief has admitted under oath that the Englishes visited him at his Bryden Road house around the time that Ms. English was under criminal investigation.
Chief Jackson also admitted that Commander Marcum had talked to him in January 1996 about then-Columbus Police Officer Cass Long passing out business cards as a bail bondsman in Municipal Court. This activity occurred just prior to Long’s retirement. Chief Jackson, however, did intervene last year and order police to the courthouse when informed that a Municipal Court supervisor was seen shredding bond documents after hours.
A June 1 memo from Detectives O’Brien and Morgan noted that no action had been taken by the city attorney’s office six months after the December meeting where City Attorney Jackson and her staff argued against the enforcement of the law. "The conduct by bondsmen in Franklin County courtrooms as documented by this investigation goes on daily. Some type of control should be placed on bondsmen to ensure the citizens of Columbus are treated in a professional manner. This should be done by the enforcement of the City Code and/or court administrative procedures," recommended Detectives O’Brien and Morgan.
A November 1996 letter from Paul Herbert to Columbus Alive stated, "I have not been designated, nor do I have any authority to enforce the use of the conference room next to Court Room 4D... The rules for the use of the room have been clearly posted on the door." In April, at Jesse Oddi’s arraignment, Columbus Alive observed eight bondsmen in the hall outside Court Room 4D.
A June 2 memo from Lieutenant Devennish to Chief Jackson took issue with the city attorney and police department’s decision not to prosecute the bondsmen: "In my opinion, the law is quite clear. Failure to enforce it could cast the division in a bad light in spite of the opinion rendered by the City Attorney and Municipal Court judges. However, attempting to enforce a law which the prosecutor does not believe is prosecutable in dealing with a situation which the judges do not perceive is a problem could also be counterproductive."
7/09/1998
Pimping for bondsmen
by Bob Fitrakis
In the wake of patriotic celebrations for Fourth of July, it's time once again to reflect on the notion of "justice for all." Theoretically, Justice is an eminently fair woman. She purposely blinds herself so she can hear just the facts, Jack. If Justice is corrupted, then nothing is safe.
Neither is due process, our right to be treated fairly in the justice system, nor constitutional rights which the courts safeguard. That's why the bail bond issue is so important in Franklin County. If judges, prosecutors, clerks of court and the city attorney look the other way while bail bondsmen fleece people, then the Franklin County courts are systematically corrupt.
Last week, Columbus Alive published another in-depth article documenting the bondsmen's iron grip on the court through their political contributions. Major donors make politicians say and do the craziest things. Take, for example City Attorney and former judge Janet Jackson. Columbus' City Code states, "No person, with purpose to solicit business for bail bondsmen, shall loiter in or around any court or public place." Jackson says the law is vague and unclear, and it just might mean that third parties can't solicit "for" bondsmen. The ordinance hasn't been enforced in anyone's memory. Bondsmen routinely run their businesses—and run amok—in the fourth floor hallway of Municipal Court.
Columbus Police Intelligence Bureau Lieutenant Edward DeVennish says the law is clear: No person ... shall. Now, what do you suppose the ordinance means? "Some people shall," "Some bondsmen shall," "Some major donors shall" or "No person shall"?
Let's substitute prostitutes for bail bondsmen: "No person, with purpose to solicit sex for prostitutes, shall loiter in or around any court or public place." In Janet Jackson's reading, this would mean that only the pimps would be breaking the law, not the whores soliciting on their own behalf.
Bail bond solicitation is only one of five serious allegations investigated by the Police Intelligence Bureau. Two other allegations—that the bonding companies are not paying court-ordered bond forfeitures, as required by law, and that the Municipal Clerk of Court's "accounting practices" are "suspect"—are more important.
DeVennish believes that "The best way to determine the validity of these allegations would be a full-blown audit." He's recommended "that the Division of Police formally notify the auditor [Hugh Dorrian] of these allegations." Remember, State Auditor James Petro found that the Municipal Court used "non-standard" business practices in its record-keeping. The Municipal Court must be audited by Dorrian, preferably with the help of the Police Economics Crime Unit. The only question is whether Dorrian's got the guts to do it—to make some very important people in very impressive black robes look bad.
The people of Columbus need to know if certain drug traffickers or violent felons are posting bond and walking. We need to know if the court is forcing the bondsmen to pay the bond forfeitures when the felons flee, putting us all at risk. Particularly after the Oddi affair in Common Pleas Court, we need to know if Municipal Clerk of Court Paul Herbert's office is clean.
Another allegation in the investigation involves whether the bondsmen are keeping funds posted by defendants for the Crime Victim's Compensation Program. Every person who posts bail is also charged a fee for this program. Felons arraigned in Municipal Court have their charges routinely dismissed pending future indictment by a grand jury in Common Pleas Court, as our Constitution mandates. The bondsmen keep their bail money, and force people to post a new bond in Common Pleas.
But what about the $31 Crime Victim fee? The court gives it back to the bondsman to refund his bond client, sort of on the honor system. But some bondsmen say it's tax-free money, since the vast majority of the cash never makes it back to its rightful owner and instead lines the bondsman's pocket.
Neither does it end up helping crime victims. As DeVennish put it, "Apparently, there is a problem in this area. One person, when asked if he received such a [Crime Victim fee] refund, replied incredulously, 'What? Get money back from a bondsman?'"
DeVennish correctly noted in a memo to Police Chief James Jackson, "Two problems in this area are ignorance of the entitlement to a refund and difficulty in tracking down the people who are so entitled." DeVennish offered a novel concept: "Establish a rule requiring bondsmen give their clients itemized receipts advising them as to what fees they are paying and what portion of those fees may be refundable." Hell, other insurance agents—and that's what bail bondsmen are—must by law send the money back. Why shouldn't the bondsmen?
The bail bond issue is a simple and patriotic one. Is there justice for all or can judges, prosecutors and city attorneys establish a system to perpetuate their political careers that allows bail bondsmen to rip-off defendants?
7/16/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
The Shapiro murder file
Police accidently release a report linking
Leslie Wexner and the Mob
by Bob Fitrakis
The ghost of Arthur Shapiro—a prominent local attorney who was slain in a 1985 "mob-style murder"—continues to haunt the City of Columbus. Shapiro’s doomed soul was resurrected recently when the Columbus Division of Police released the controversial—and once believed destroyed—document investigating his death.
Columbus Alive obtained a copy of the "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis" report through a public records request on Friday. As previously reported in Alive, the report confirms that the name of central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner was linked "with associates reputed to be organized crime figures." The names of businessman Jack Kessler, former Columbus City Council President and current Wexner associate Jerry Hammond and current City Council member Les Wright also appear in the report.
The ghost of Arthur Shapiro—a prominent local attorney who was slain in a 1985 "mob-style murder"—continues to haunt the City of Columbus. Shapiro’s doomed soul was resurrected recently when the Columbus Division of Police released the controversial—and once believed destroyed—document investigating his death.
Columbus Alive obtained a copy of the "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis" report through a public records request on Friday. As previously reported in Alive, the report confirms that the name of central Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner was linked "with associates reputed to be organized crime figures." The names of businessman Jack Kessler, former Columbus City Council President and current Wexner associate Jerry Hammond and current City Council member Les Wright also appear in the report.
In June 1991, the document’s potentially explosive revelations caused Columbus Police Chief James G. Jackson to order the public record destroyed the same month it was completed. When confronted by Channel 4 News with the document last week, Jackson said, "I thought I got rid of it." He termed the report "scandalous."
Another high-ranking law enforcement official familiar with the Shapiro investigation disagrees. "The report is a viable and valuable document in an open murder investigation, although it’s a horrible mistake to make it public," the official said last week.
City Attorney Janet Jackson called Columbus Alive Tuesday and confirmed that the unredacted document was accidentally released to Alive in response to our public-information request. The report "was released quite frankly in error," Jackson said, adding that publication of its details could be "very embarrassing" to many people.
In response to a request to Police Chief James Jackson for comment on the release of the file, Sherry Jones of the Columbus Division of Police said Monday, "The chief has no comment."
In 1996, following a mayoral investigation of Chief Jackson and other top police officers, the Columbus Civil Service Commission found Jackson guilty of destroying the Shapiro report. He received a five-day suspension for the destruction of a public record and another charge of showing favoritism in the discipline of Commander Walter Burns.
Elizabeth A. Leupp, an analyst with Columbus police’s Organized Crime Bureau, began researching and writing the report in early 1991. She sent the report to Intelligence Bureau Commander Curtis K. Marcum on June 6, 1991. Sources say the report remained "hidden" until Jackson ordered its destruction. Marcum bypassed the police legal bureau in carrying out Jackson’s order, according to the mayoral investigative team.
This team, initiated by Safety Director Thomas W. Rice Sr., and under the direction of Assistant Safety Director David D. Sturtz, stumbled on to the destruction of the Shapiro report while investigating missing documents relating to escort services and prostitution. A ledger seized from Marcum’s office contained a reference to Jackson’s order to destroy the report. Reportedly, the only reason the document still exists is because Deputy Chief Robert Kern gave a copy to the Columbus FBI office.
Following the sensational mob-style slaying of Shapiro on March 6, 1985, the report noted that "an analytical project" was started "because of the strong similarities between this homicide and a Mafia (L.C.N.) [La Cosa Nostra] ‘hit.’"
Shapiro was a partner in the now-defunct Columbus law firm of Schwartz, Shapiro, Kelm & Warren. The firm "represented the Limited," according to the report, and "prior to his death, Arthur Shapiro managed this account for the law firm." Homicide squad investigators described Shapiro as "a quiet, shy, private, secretive person" who "tended to be a ‘loner.’"
Just prior to his murder, Shapiro "was the subject of an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service because he had failed to file income tax returns for some seven years prior to his death, and he had invested in some questionable tax shelters," the report stated. His death "occurred one day prior to Shapiro’s scheduled appearance before a Grand Jury in the I.R.S. investigation, and there was some conjecture that Shapiro was in position to provide information to the Grand Jury that would have been damaging to some other party."
Who wanted Shapiro killed and why remains a mystery to Columbus police.
"Thus, while the motive remains unclear, the suspect is an individual who (a) knew Shapiro and had some personal/professional contact with him; (b) would benefit from his death or from ensuring his silence; (c) had close contact with L.C.N. figures or trusted L.C.N. associates; (d) had the personal financial resources to afford the cost of the contract (‘hit’)," reads Leupp’s analysis in the report.
The Shapiro report relied on information from Columbus Police Intelligence summaries, reports from the Organized Crime Bureau, information from both the Pennsylvania Crime Commission and the New Jersey Crime Commission, major media news reports and intelligence data from MAGLOCLEN—a law-enforcement data bank that gathers and verifies reports on organized crime.
The report analyzed "unusual interactive relations between the following business organizations" and then listed: the Major Chord Jazz Club, in which Jerry Hammond was a prinicipal; The Limited; Walsh Trucking Company; the re-named Schwartz, Kelm, Warren and Rubenstein law firm; Omni Oil Company; the Edward DeBartolo Company of Youngstown, Ohio; and local developer John W. Kessler.
Wexner’s business "relations" with Francis J. Walsh, the owner and chief executive officer of Walsh Trucking Company out of New Jersey, were explored. Alive found that a Limited spokesperson told Women’s Wear Daily in the July 25, 1987 issue that "Walsh has done an excess of 90 percent of the Limited’s" trucking business around the time of Shapiro’s murder. The spokesperson estimated that the current figure was "30 to 35 percent of the Limited’s business." The Limited, Inc. was described as "Walsh’s single largest customer."
In July 1984 the New York Department of Law Organized Crime Task Force issued a subpoena for Walsh’s bank records. National Westminster Bank of New York, in response to the subpoena, notified Frank Walsh Financial Resources Company. "The notice was addressed to Frank Walsh Financial Resources at One Limited Parkway"—the address of The Limited.
"Both [Youngstown real estate developer Edward J.] DeBartolo and Walsh have been identified as associates of the Genovese-LaRocca crime family in Pittsburgh (now called simply the Pittsburgh Family)," the police report states.
As Columbus Alive previously reported, Walsh Trucking Company was incorporated in the state of New Jersey in May 1973 and has had a controversial business history. In August 1984, a federal jury ordered Walsh Trucking to pay $39.6 million to a smaller competitor that had sued, claiming that Walsh sabotaged its business in New York City’s garment district and destroyed its truck routes. The jury found Walsh Trucking guilty of conspiring to monopolize apparel shipping. In 1987, a U.S. Appeals Court overturned the verdict.
In 1988, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Walsh was charged with making "illegal pay-offs to reported mob figures and officials of Teamster Local 560 which had been under judicial control in an effort to rid it from mob influence." The May 16, 1988 indictment drew media interest when it named as "unindicted co-conspirators" convicted Genovese crime family boss Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, alleged crime family captain Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello and three former officials of Local 560—the Provenzano brothers, Anthony, Nunzio, and Salvatore. The Provenzanos, alleged mobsters, have been convicted of various charges in the past and linked in media accounts to the murder of former Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa.
"DeBartolo and Walsh were still considered associates of the Genovese/LaRocca crime family, and Walsh was still providing truck transportation for The Limited," in 1990, the report stated.
In 1984, DeBartolo and Wexner were partners in a two-month takeover war against Carter-Hawley-Hale stores, the largest West Coast retailer and owner of the prestigious Nieman-Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores. Two-and-a-half years later, in November 1986, The Limited and the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation again attempted a hostile takeover of Carter-Hawley-Hale stores with a $1.8 billion cash offer.
The New York Times described the DeBartolo Corporation as "the nation’s largest developer of shopping centers." The Times referred to Wexner as the "restless, aggressive chairman" of The Limited. Forbes magazine estimated Wexner’s personal fortune at $2.7 billion in 1987, stating, "On paper, at least, he is one of the dozen richest people in America."
A 1989 New York Times article described "the DeBartolo organization" as a company that "develops shopping malls and owns sports enterprises ranging from the San Francisco 49ers and the Pittsburgh Penguins to small tracks in Louisiana and Ohio." In September 1990, Edward DeBartolo Jr. was fined $500,000 by NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, according to the Los Angeles Times, "for transferring ownership of the team to Edward DeBartolo’s Corporation without league approval three years ago."
DeBartolo Jr. made national news late last year when he resigned as chairman and chief executive officer of the 49ers on December 2, 1997 because he was the subject of a federal grand jury hearing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on charges of gambling fraud. DeBartolo bought the 49ers for a reported $17 million in 1977, becoming the youngest NFL owner at age 30. The Rocky Mountain News reported on April 2 this year that DeBartolo was negotiating a deal subject to NFL approval whereby he "would gain full ownership of the franchise in return for giving up his share in the family-Edward DeBartolo Corporation."
Leupp concluded, "From the predicate facts presented, it appears that Les Wexner had established contact with associates reputed to be organized crime figures, one of whom was a major investment partner and another was using The Limited headquarters as a mailing address."
"It is not known whether there are other such figures among Wexner’s associates, but it can be hypothesized that the Genovese/LaRocca crime families might consider Wexner a friend," Leupp speculated.
The Shapiro report noted that "the primary illegal activity of the LaRocca family is gambling.... Its operation extends into the West Virginia panhandle and eastern Ohio. The family has also become well entrenched in legitimate businesses. These include, but probably are not limited to, construction, trucking, food service and vending businesses." At the time the report was written, the Genovese crime family was considered "second in strength, power, and wealth to the Gambino LCN family."
A 1991 report by the Pennsylvania Crime Commission assessed that the Genovese/LaRocca network "appears to be strong and capable of continued growth throughout another decade. It has asserted itself as the primary crime group in the [Pittsburgh] area and, by becoming more active in narcotics, has demonstrated its ability to be a full-service criminal organization."
While investigating the Shapiro homicide, Leupp probed the relationship between the former City Council president and Les Wexner: "Like Arthur Shapiro was, Wexner is considered a very secretive, very private person, and little is known about his business transactions that might raise questions of ethics and legality. For example, while it cannot be proved, it is hypothesized that W & K Partnership was an investment of Wexner and Kessler in Jerry Hammond’s Jazz Club hoping to influence favorable zoning and annexation considerations for ‘Wexley.’"
Sources close to the Shapiro investigation report that early on, investigators wondered whether or not Shapiro had been involved in the preliminary stages of Wexner’s New Albany development project.
John W. "Jack" Kessler co-founded the New Albany Company with Wexner. The Cleveland Plain Dealer explained the genesis of the New Albany project in a February 21, 1993 article: "Legend has it that in 1986 or so, Jack and Les were cruising in Les’ Land Rover near New Albany, about 12 miles from downtown Columbus. They saw acre after acre of empty farmland. Virgin soil. And thus the billionaire, getting a vision thing, declared to his buddy, this will be my new home." This account places the New Albany project just after Shapiro’s murder.
The politically controversial New Albany project initially involved a tremendous amount of secrecy. As the Plain Dealer explained, "Wexner and Kessler formed the New Albany Co. and spun off a bunch of paper corporations to cover their footprints. Then their minions knocked on doors and made the proverbial offers you couldn’t refuse."
One of the keys to the development’s success was changing a Columbus policy dating from the 1950s that refused to extend water and sewage contracts to such developments unless they were annexed into the City of Columbus.
The Shapiro report noted that "SNJC Holding, Inc. is named as an investor in the [Major Chord] Jazz Club. It was incorporated August 6, 1987 by James H. Balthaser, attorney with Schwartz, Kelm, Warren and Rubenstein. This law firm was/is legal counsel for The Limited." SNJC Holding shared Suite 3710 at the Huntington Center with the Wexner Investment Company.
"It was reported that Jerry Hammond purchased Suite 405 in Waterford Tower in August 1988, and there was some question of whether Mr. Hammond’s income at the time would support the mortgage payments. Within the next 18 to 24 months, Mr. Hammond left his position with City Council and with the gas company and the jazz club closed," Leupp observed.
Contacted for comment on the report Monday, Hammond gave the terse response, "Don’t know anything about it."
Leupp’s report stated that "Arthur Shapiro was reportedly in direct contact with Vice-Chairman Robert Morosky (‘Number Two’) at the Limited." And that in June 1987, Morosky "abruptly and inexplicably left his employment with The Limited amid rumors of friction with Les Wexner." Details of the Morosky-Wexner break-up were covered in the September 1987 Columbus Monthly.
The Shapiro report raises significant questions concerning the business practices of Ohio’s wealthiest citizen, Les Wexner, particularly his association with alleged organized crime associates. As Leupp noted, "While there is no question of ethics or legality on the surface, it is noted that some business organizations and individuals have co-located and become submerged without merging with Wexner and his varied business interests. Most notably is Stanley Schwartz and the large Schwartz, Kelm, Warren and Rubenstein law firm."
Alive called Wexner’s spokesperson, Al Dietzel, four times for comment about the allegations raised in the police report. After initially offering a phone interview at a specific time Tuesday, Limited spokesman James Temple later said that Dietzel would not be available for comment.
Chief Jackson, under oath during the mayoral investigation, at first couldn’t recall any order to destroy the Shapiro file. Later, when confronted with the ledger and other evidence, both Jackson and his attorney Bill Wilkinson claimed that he destroyed the public document because the chief said it contained bizarre and half-baked theories implicating prominent people that would expose the city to possibly billions of dollars in damages if the document ever became public.
That’s one hypothesis.
The Shapiro report has its own "concluding hypothesis." Leupp wrote: "Arthur Shapiro could have answered too many of these sorts of questions, and might have been forced to answer them in his impending Grand Jury hearing; Stanley Schwartz might now be able to answer some of the same questions for the same reason, but does not face a Grand Jury, is immersed in the pattern himself, and now has a powerful incentive to maintain discretion."
Schwartz has since passed away and his law firm closed. Attorney James Balthaser found employment at Thompson, Hine and Flory, the same firm that employs Jackson’s lawyer, Wilkinson.
One of the recommendations made by the mayoral investigation team into the practices of the police department was that Chief Jackson should reconstruct the "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis" report. With the report now public, Jackson needn’t worry about this recommendation. The Shapiro murder remains unsolved.
7/16/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
The state of Ohio may owe a big apology to Governor Voinovich’s ex-Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud. Mifsud spent six months in jail for his involvement in altering a public record in connection with a suspected sweetheart construction deal on his then-fiancee’s house.
On July 7, Judge James J. O’Grady of the Franklin County Common Pleas Court sentenced the flamboyant former statehouse lobbyist Thomas S. Strussion to just 30 days in jail, 300 hours of community service and fined him $1,250 for the same falsification of documents as Mifsud. Strussion also pleaded guilty to attempted bribery, an ethics violation, failing to register with the state as a lobbyist and failing to disclose his lobbying expenses.
Ohio Inspector General Richard G. Ward’s executive summary of the Strussion affair provides a detailed and disturbing account of the relationship between the former Ohio Department of Insurance Deputy Director David J. Randall and Strussion. In the late 1980s, both Randall and Strussion served as aides to former State Senator and current U.S. Congressman Robert W. Ney.
Randall joined the Voinovich administration on March 1, 1991 serving as deputy director until he resigned on April 18, 1997. Since 1993, Strussion had acted as a lobbyist primarily for insurance and health industry clients. High-ranking state officials and lobbyists are required to avoid even the "appearance of impropriety."
Inspector General Ward opened a joint investigation with Ohio’s Legislative Inspector General Thomas P. Charles of Strussion and Randall’s relationship on June 6, 1997. Columbus Alive reported last August that Strussion was under investigation by state and federal authorities and that Tony’s Restaurant was targeted as part of the probe.
Ward’s report includes an account of Randall’s bachelor party that took place on August 21, 1993 at a local Holiday Inn. Strussion rented two limousines from Aladdin Limousines "to transport guests from Tony’s Restaurant located at 16 W. Beck St. in Columbus to the site of the party." Strussion paid $246 for the limousines, $267.60 for a hotel room but was later charged "an additional $70" after "a bed in Room 125 was broken by dancers."
According to Ward’s report, "Holiday Inn representatives state that the party was unauthorized but recall Strussion providing a business card for Fantasy Productions, apparent sponsors of the dancers." Ward’s report is unclear what activities the dancers were engaged in when the bed broke, but noted that, "Initially, Strussion denied, under oath, paying any of these expenses."
On September 25, 1993, Randall married and a wedding reception was held at the New Albany Country Club. One of the checks submitted by the newlywed Randalls was "drawn on the account of Strussion Consulting Service, Inc., in the amount of $2163.38." Ward’s report again noted that "Initially, Strussion denied, under oath, making any payment towards the expenses of the Randall wedding reception." He did, however, admit to the payment after he was "convicted."
At the beginning of 1994, Randall traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona, to attend a conference on Strussion’s credit card: the cost, $1181.38. A year later, they traveled to Washington, D.C., together. Strussion picked up the $629.21 tab. Four months later, on May 2, 1995, Randall and Strussion both stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City.
"Strussion admitted that the purpose of this trip was to make contact with the New York Department of Insurance to assist one of Strussion’s clients in securing a license to do business in the State of New York. Strussion admitted that he was paid the sum of $10,000 as a bonus for his New York efforts. In addition to his $4,500 monthly retainer from the company. In his sworn statement, Strussion stated that he was to receive a similar $10,000 bonus for his assistance on each additional state licensure and that Randall assisted him in making these contacts," reported Ward.
A month later, Randall and Strussion were back in New York. This time they stayed at the Renaissance Hotel for three days. Strussion paid $100 of Randall’s expenses, and Randall submitted the invoice paid by Strussion for reimbursement to the state of Ohio. They switched to the Le Parker Meridian Hotel for the last two days of their stay. Strussion paid Randall’s $443.21 bill, including a $67 "health club massage."
Randall also began using Strussion’s telephone calling card. "A total of 414 long distance calls were billed to the Strussion credit card number and traced to Randall," according to Ward. Strussion and Randall chatted almost daily. Between March 1993 and April 1997, 1,351 calls were made from Randall’s office to Strussion’s lobbying firm.
On February 11, 1997, Strussion bought Randall a $4,248.89 laptop computer in accordance with Randall’s handwritten specifications. "Initially, Strussion denied, under oath, the purchase of a computer for Randall," wrote Ward.
Just prior to Randall’s resignation, Strussion hired his friend’s wife, Courtney B. Randall, as a "Medicaid trend consultant." The report states that "Witnesses familiar with Courtney B. Randall’s work experience uniformly opined that she was in no way qualified as such a consultant... Strussion stated that no work product was ever provided by Courtney." Strussion also admitted to giving Randall between $7,000 and $10,000 in "the last couple of years."
In return, Ward established that Randall intervened on behalf of Strussion’s client, Genesis Health Plan of Ohio, to allow them to participate in Ohio’s Medicaid program without first securing a Certificate of Authority from the Ohio Department of Insurance. Randall also intervened on behalf of MedOhio Health Plan, Inc., another Strussion client, but "MedOhio’s application was so deficient that it was otherwise rejected," said the report.
In February 1996, the Health Insurance Association of America (HIAA), another Strussion client, wanted to change Ohio’s administrative rules pertaining to long-term health care. "Randall personally went to the offices of Strussion Consulting to participate in a conference call with HIAA representatives to these changes," Ward found. In a sworn statement, Strussion admitted that Randall participated "in approximately 50 such conference calls" in order to "work out problems with ... his clients."
Ward termed Randall and Strussion’s activities "a de facto joint venture." The Inspector General concluded that "Randall told Strussion that he was ‘for sale’ if Strussion and his clients were willing to pay." In sum, they were "clearly motivated by greed."
Strussion also paid for Representative Michael A. Fox’s ticket to fly to Scottsdale, Arizona where he stayed at Strussion’s residence with a woman. Representative Fox was censured by the Ohio Legislature on June 26, 1997. In late May or early June of 1997, Strussion was seen in the Solid Gold exotic dance club passing $50 bills to an Ohio legislator, who reportedly tucked them into a dancer’s G-string. There’s no record of Strussion reporting these gifts to the legislator.
After hearing all these facts, Judge O’Grady sentenced Strussion to 30 days in jail.
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7/30/1998 by Bob Fitrakis
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8/06/1998
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8/06/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Last Thursday’s revelation that the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice is considering filing suit against the city of Columbus and the Columbus Division of Police (CDP) should come as no surprise to readers of this column and Columbus Alive. We’ve been reporting about these allegations and the just-concluded investigation for nearly two years.
The July 21 letter from Bill Lann Lee, acting assistant U.S. Attorney General, to City Attorney Janet E. Jackson, stated: "As a result of our investigation, we have determined that CDP officers are engaged in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, making false arrests and lodging false charges, and conducting improper searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution."
No surprise there, either. Reading the testimony of officer after officer under oath, one gets the distinct impression that Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure and the 14th Amendment rights of "equal protection" of the law and "due process" are foreign concepts to the Columbus Division of Police—not fundamental American rights.
The Justice Department could have easily thrown in First Amendment violations as well, considering the police division’s storied history of suppressing free speech and organized demonstrations.
Following the L.A. riots over the Rodney King verdict in 1992, the U.S. Congress in 1994 gave the Justice Department jurisdiction to investigate allegations of federal civil rights laws against citizens by law enforcement officers. Only two other cities have been accused of similar misconduct since the law was passed: Steubenville, Ohio, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Columbus is now part of this unholy trinity primarily because Police Chief James E. Jackson and a small group of his cronies are stuck in a time warp. They still think it’s the 1950s, and certain protected cops can do whatever the hell they want as long as they’re the chief’s buddies. The overwhelming majority of Columbus police officers are not the problem. Some of them are the solution—and my best sources on police misconduct.
Lee wrote, "The officers involved in misconduct many times have a history of complaints against them, and failed to report accurately to their superiors what transcribed in the incident."
Political activists are all familiar with the notorious triple whammy that is routinely handed out against citizens engaging in constitutionally protected peaceful protest. Certain officers have on more than one occasion charged lawful demonstrators with "assaulting a police officer," "resisting arrest" and "disorderly conduct." During the Gulf War, I recall two of CDP’s finest standing around and laughing as pro-war demonstrators physically assaulted peace demonstrators in the OSU campus area. The police exchanged high-fives with the pro-war thugs as a clear sign of their approval.
In the spring of 1995, Antioch students were assaulted by the CDP during a peaceful demonstration at the federal building against cuts in student loans. The mainstream media hysterically repeated absurd tales of crazed hippies attempting to sodomize police horses with nonexistent icicles. Videotapes revealed no ice or snow present, but plenty of Mace spraying at fleeing students.
Of course, I speak here as a journalist who was Maced in my face by the CDP a couple blocks into a march against police brutality in the fall of 1996. I never sued over the incident, but I could have. The female officer who instigated the event made a terrible error in judgment when a demonstrator inadvertently stepped off the sidewalk into the street. She raced into the crowd of demonstrators to corral the alleged "jaywalker." The backup officers who Maced me were simply trying to save their comrade from the middle of a tug-of-war match with a pissed-off crowd over the "perpetrator."
Or I can mention the 1997 Aryan Nation rally where it took me 45 minutes to get through the metal detectors, and then I was immediately thrown out by a SWAT team officer under the direction of a Columbus police commander about whom I’d previously written in a way he didn’t like.
Most of the police who’ve recently been successfully sued for violating citizen’s rights are pitifully ignorant of the U.S. Constitution and civil rights and liberties laws. This points to the other key problem, also tied directly to Chief Jackson, which is the pathetic state of police training. Remember, it was police officers who leaked to the press that the CDP had reportedly hired 29 recruits who had admitted to felonies, including running a crack house and a prostitution ring. If anyone needed good training, these folks did.
The Justice Department letter noted that "Victims frequently are African American, or are young, female, or lower income whites." They might have thrown in the gay community, whose members were roughed up in a bizarre series of gay bar raids earlier this year.
To some degree, this behavior is tolerated by the public at large. Students "drunk walking" on campus—arrest them! But you’re tailgating at an OSU football game—thumbs up! When the police themselves broke their code of silence in the Exline case a few years back, it was a Columbus jury that sided with the cop charged with assault over the testimony of other officers.
James Moss and his organization Police Officers for Equal Rights should be given much credit for taking citizen’s complaints directly to the Justice Department. They took them to the city first, and except for Councilwoman Jennette Bradley, were pretty much ignored. Moss’ group also went to state Attorney General Betty Montgomery who refused to acknowledge their complaints. So the next time you hear Montgomery or Governor George Voinovich talking about "devolution" and "state’s rights," listen to the echoes of that old racist Governor George Wallace of Alabama.
As for Chief Jackson, his bogus claims of racism against the city and the mayoral investigation were thrown out last week, and then the Justice Department letter arrived as a damning indictment of his management style. But the chief’s denials continue.
8/13/1998
News Briefs
As federal investigators look into charges of abusive practices by the Columbus Division of Police, allegations surfaced last week that the police may be spying on law-abiding citizens. James Moss, a former Columbus Police officer and current president of the Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER), charged that the CDP routinely placed its critics under surveillance and that there are "secret files" in both the Intelligence Bureau and Internal Affairs.
Both the POER and Copwatch gave testimony to U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division investigators regarding alleged cases of police abuse against citizens. Two weeks ago, the Justice Department informed the City of Columbus that it had plans to sue the city unless they can reach agreement on how to end a "pattern or practice" of misconduct and abuse.
Earlier this year, two Columbus Police Intelligence Bureau officers admitted in sworn depositions that the OSU campus-based organization Copwatch is under surveillance by the Columbus police department’s Intelligence Bureau.
Contacted for comment Tuesday, Sherry Jones, spokesperson for Police Chief James Jackson, did not deny that the department conducts surveillance of individuals involved in these groups. She said that affiliation is not the reason for placing certain individuals under surveillance. "Affiliation with any group has nothing to do with surveillance. It [surveillance] is simply a tool," she said.
In a February 20, 1998 deposition, Police Officer Terry Woodland, a 21-year veteran of the Intelligence Bureau, answered "yes" when attorney James McNamara asked him if he had prepared reports about the organization Copwatch. Woodland described the Intelligence Bureau’s mission as "[To] investigate organized crime as far as criminal behavior or...any group or person that would be involved in criminal behavior."
Officer Woodland confirmed to McNamara that he’s only allowed to investigate individuals or groups that would be involved in criminal behavior and that it would be unlawful or unconstitutional to investigate persons not suspected of criminal activity.
When asked for an example of the types of groups under surveillance, Woodland offered "abortion clinic violence" and "motorcycle gang members." He admitted that the bureau spies on violent "right wing" political fringe groups like the neo-Nazis and Klan. He also stated that there was a classification for "left wing" political groups as well.
Left-wing groups need neither advocate nor actually commit violence to come under surveillance, according to Woodland’s testimony. When asked, "What would a group do to fit in the classification of left wing?" Woodland replied, "I would think if there was a potential for a large gathering... if that had the potential of growing to the size that might get into the street or be a public safety issue, then—then that might be considered left as opposed to right."
McNamara told Columbus Alive that Woodland’s comments are "profoundly disturbing. By his definition, Red, White and Boom is a left-wing event."
Woodland justified his surveillance of Copwatch and non-violent peace demonstrations at the federal building by noting, "Well, if they are in the street or if it becomes—if they become agitated to the point where it becomes criminal activity or if in the past they have been involved in criminal activity..."
Despite repeated complaints of police harassment of the peace movement during the Gulf War and numerous arrests of Copwatch members, Woodland had a different take on why the Intelligence Bureau monitors "law abiding citizens."
"If it turns into a march to the Statehouse and it’s larger than the sidewalks can accommodate, then we will need to make the necessary arrangements to get uniform protection maybe in the first lane of traffic if it’s a large group and they’re going somewhere, in order to protect them. And that’s basically what we would be doing, is—is coordinating," Woodland explained.
Woodland couldn’t recall his first contact with Copwatch, but admitted to preparing reports and sending "an information summary" to patrol units about the organization.
Woodland said he didn’t know how Copwatch came under surveillance and that there would be no paper trail as to who referred them to the Intelligence Bureau. He speculated that information "would have just been sent to the Intelligence Bureau as something that perhaps should have been catalogued as a group." Woodland continued, "I would imagine that it [information on Copwatch] was sent by a patrol officer."
Early in his deposition, Woodland claimed that he had "never been to a Copwatch demonstration...nor do I think I know anybody in Copwatch." Columbus Assistant City Attorney Patricia Delaney cut off Woodland’s testimony when McNamara confronted him with a Police Intelligence document incorrectly containing the name of this writer as one of the co-founders of Copwatch. McNamara was the other name in the surveillance report.
Asked if POER members or Copwatch members were under surveillance, Sherry Jones of the Division of Police, said, "Maybe some of the members had" been, but not because of their affiliation with these groups. She denied that the department collects information on POER in an effort to target certain individuals. "We obviously don’t conduct surveillance on officers just because they belong to a certain group."
On April 29, Intelligence Bureau Commander Stephen P. Gammill also admitted that "there were some summaries in there that discussed Copwatch." Gammill explained that "We basically keep information on anything that may result in the need for police presence in an area."
"If we receive information that there’s going to be a demonstration of any nature, whether it’s an anti-abortion demonstration, a labor demonstration or any demonstration where there’s going to be a crowd there and there’s a potential for violence or potential for disorder, we provide the information to patrol so they can provide necessary staffing to the area," Gammill said.
The Police Intelligence Bureau was once known as the Organized Crime Bureau, but in Gammill’s view, "there’s really no organized crime groups in Columbus per se as most people perceive—for example, Mafia or anything like that." This, according to Gammill, has moved the Bureau in the directions of conducting surveillance on "motorcycle clubs that were involved in the sale of narcotics" and groups like the Klan and Copwatch.
Local publications may be receiving the same treatment. A bureau officer previously admitted to surveillance of the Columbus Free Press and police sources have reported that Columbus Alive is also being monitored. The bureau has failed to respond to a more than a year-old public information request on any documents regarding whether Alive is being monitored.
Moss said that you can add POER to the list. "I know they’ve been keeping surveillance on the POER," Moss insists. "I’ve caught them following me in unmarked cars, and I know what an unmarked police license looks like. I used to work in that bureau."
McNamara said the widespread sharing of information between the Police Intelligence Bureau and patrol officers needs to be investigated, particularly when it involves nonviolent political activists protected under the First Amendment.
City Attorney Janet Jackson’s spokesperson Danita Jones declined comment on the police surveillance tactics "at this time."
8/20/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Insiders report that the top brass of the Columbus Division of Police are hunkered down in their police bunker in full-metal denial. If the experience of police in Pittsburgh is an indication of what’s in store for Columbus cops, they will soon have to emerge from that bunker into the light of public scrutiny.
The 83 stipulations in the consent decree between the United States Department of Justice and the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police (PBP)—one of only three cities, along with Steubenville and Columbus, to be threatened with a civil suit for police misconduct by the feds—looms as a harbinger of hard times to come for our top cops.
While denying all allegations of police misconduct, the Pittsburgh police entered into an iron-clad agreement on April 16, 1997 that reshaped the management and organizational structure of the police department. Pittsburgh’s no-wiggle-room agreement with the Justice Department was designed to stop the Pittsburgh police from engaging "in a pattern or practice of conduct by law enforcement officers of the PBP that deprives persons of rights, privileges, and immunities secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States."
Here in Columbus under Chief "Stonewall" Jackson’s administration, vital parts of the Constitution have been treated as null and void, specifically First Amendment rights of political expression, Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure, and 14th Amendment guarantees of "equal protection" under the law.
The Columbus police are facing the same allegations as those in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh consent decree dictates that they "shall...establish a database" that monitors "its officers, as well as a statistical model to identify and modify the behavior of problem officers." In Pittsburgh, this is known as "Early Warning System" to detect bad cops.
The city of Pittsburgh was given 12 months to put its computer warning system in place. The decree forced the PBP to store in the database every citizen complaint against a given police officer—including the text of the allegations, what section of the city the incident occurred in and all internal investigation reports. And that’s just the beginning.
The officers’ database would also include information involving any shootings; commendations and awards; and the officers’ disciplinary, training reassignment, transfer and mandatory counseling histories.
It gets even better for full-disclosure public-records junkies. The Pittsburgh database requires "a detailed description of all criminal investigations of possible officer misconduct; a detailed description of all civil or administrative claims filed against the city arising from PBP operations; a description of all other civil claims or suits that the officer is a named party to involving allegations of untruthfulness, physical force, racial bias, or domestic violence."
Moreover, Pittsburgh police are required to submit detailed data on every arrest in the city, the location of each arrest, the race of each arrestee, and the section of the criminal code that was violated. Pittsburgh’s Early Warning System is designed to detect patterns of police abuse by individual officers, police squads, zones, shifts and special units such as SWAT.
If such a system was in place in Columbus, it would clearly reveal a pattern of police misconduct on the near east side, the campus area and parts of the south side. It would also establish a practice of abuse against blacks, college students and poor whites. This is exactly what the Justice Department concluded after its three-year investigation here.
Of critical importance in the Pittsburgh agreement is the focus on police officers’ filing "discretionary charges of resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, public intoxication or interfering with the administration of justice."
Peaceful protesters in Columbus have long been abused by such discretionary charges. A special "drunk walking" ordinance exists just to harass OSU-area students. Some state senators and representatives regularly stagger out of downtown establishments drunk and the ordinance is never enforced. Ordinances against aggressive panhandlers are passed to harass the homeless and poor while billionaires legally beg for money from the public to finance private arenas.
In Pittsburgh, the officers can no longer use "strip searches" in a way to humiliate and harass minorities and the poor. Stipulation 14 in the Pittsburgh consent decree compels "professional standards" in strip searches and goes into specific details on how they must be conducted. Police conduct involving "the use of force," "warrantless searches" and the "warrantless seizure of property" are restricted in a similar detailed fashion. Every "traffic stop," "frisk," "pat down search" and every "racial epithet" uttered must be documented in detail. And all of it goes into the police data bank.
Three complaints in a given year or five in two years and an officer is given retraining, counseling or transferred and reassigned from the area. The agreement rightly holds the top brass accountable for changing the culture of the police department that they created. And all the time, a court-appointed auditor is looking over their shoulder making sure they comply with every aspect of the agreement.
The great irony, and beauty, of this is that Chief Jackson was not forced to resign, and so in the near future, hopefully, we can look to a figuratively hog-tied Jackson being forced against his will to rein in a police department that he allowed to run amok, provided they kissed his butt. Of course, there needs to be a special 84th stipulation for Jackson: Thou shall not spy on your critics.
8/27/1998
News Briefs
by Bob Fitrakis
Whatever happened to John Strange? Last February 18, the Columbus substitute teacher confronted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at OSU’s St. John Arena before 200 million worldwide CNN viewers over the issue of U.S. policy in Iraq. Albright promised Strange a personal audience after the raucous town hall meeting, but she failed to show up.
Michael Moore of Roger and Me and TV Nation fame recently had his TV production crew videotaping Strange in Washington, D.C., as he searched for Albright. A Madeleine and Me-type episode should air on the BBC in Britain and possibly on HBO in the U.S.
Yet, it’s been more than comedy episodes for Strange since his encounter with Albright. In mid-March, he joined forces with the Interaction Center in New York to openly challenge the U.S. embargo of Iraq in what he called "an act of civil disobedience." On May 5, Strange and 82 people associated with the center flew to Aman, Jordan, with $4.5 million in medical aid for the people of Iraq.
"Only one U.S. pharmaceutical company agreed to contribute, but backed out after pressure from the U.S. government," Strange told a recent Pastors for Peace gathering in Columbus. "The U.S. Treasury Department threatened to fine them $75,000 for each piece of medicine they contributed."
Because of U.S. sanctions, there are no flights from Jordan to Iraq. Strange detailed his "grueling 18-hour bus trip across the desert to Baghdad." He said the delegation stayed at the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad where the entrance is marked by mosaic tile floor forming the figure of President George Bush. Below his face the word "Criminal" is spelled out in English and the locals seemed to enjoy watching U.S. citizens walk on it.
But Strange is no fan of Saddam Hussein. He noted that "Saddam’s picture is everywhere. If you criticize Saddam, you disappear."
He called the medical conditions in Baghdad "completely overwhelming." At a local hospital, he recalls a line of 150 parents and relatives swarming the prescription window in hopes that the U.S. delegation had brought something of possible use for their sick and dying children. He described a large crowded hospital room full of sick children and a doctor’s prediction that "all but one will be dead within a month."
Strange made it clear that he feels all of these deaths are directly linked to the Gulf War and the subsequent U.S. embargo on food and medicine for Iraq. "There’s malnourishment and sickness due to unclean water from the U.S. bombing of the water and sewage plants," he said, adding that what they need most is anti-intestinal parasite medicine and chlorine pills. "Normal supplies of medicine would save these children.... There’s a lack of basic items like IVs, bandages and Tylenol."
He concluded that it is "unconstitutional to restrict the travel of U.S. citizens" and says he plans to continue his humanitarian efforts on behalf of Iraqi citizens. Whether he can eventually raise these issues again with Secretary of State Albright remains unanswered.
9/13/1998
News Briefs
by Bob Fitrakis
Those applying to be bail bondsmen in Franklin County will now find their pasts coming under closer scrutiny. Franklin County Municipal Court Clerk Paul M. Herbert has added a new section to the bond-writer application that seeks to prevent convicted criminals from doing business with local courts.
According to changes Herbert made to his court’s "Application to Write Bonds," anyone "convicted of a felony within the last 10 years," "convicted of any crime involving a weapon within the last five years," "convicted of any offense of violence within the last five years" or "convicted of any crime of dishonesty within the last five years" is now prohibited from writing bail bonds.
"I believe this new section addresses some legitimate concerns that have been expressed," commented Herbert.
Last year, Columbus Alive reported on questionable bail bonding practices in "The Gatekeepers: Striking it Rich in the Bail Bond Business" (May 1, 1997) and criminal convictions of certain bondsmen in "Who Are These Guys?" (October 1, 1997).
"After investigating the situation, I realized that the state of Ohio Department of Insurance did not have the resources to do a full background check on all bail bond applicants, so we’ve stepped into the gap and will be protecting the public interest," Herbert explained.
This is the court’s second major reform in bail bonding practices this year. Earlier, Herbert began returning court fees directly to defendants whose cases were dismissed in municipal court rather than to bondsmen who had posted the bond and fees.
Some individuals had complained in the past that their court fees had never been returned to them. "I asked for an advisory opinion from the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office and they advised that this was a legal and proper way to proceed," Herbert said in a recent interview.
Herbert conceded that the new changes in the bond writing application form legally does not affect the current bond writers, but will go a long way in creating a new atmosphere and direction in the profession. "People coming into this court need to know we’re not going to let them be victimized and that there’s equal justice for all," he said.
9/10/1998
FEATURED ARTICLE
Endangered beauty
Will M/I Schottenstein kill Pickerington Ponds?
by Bob Fitrakis
The unspoiled beauty of Pickerington Ponds must be seen in person to be appreciated. Amid a serenity that belies its proximity to the city—the only sound is that of leaves rustling in the breeze—geese, ducks and other waterfowl float on top of gently rippling, clear water. The pond is lined with reeds at the marshy edge of the water, surrounded by tall grass and a colorful display of wildflowers, all in front of a wooded backdrop.
Natural habitats like this are becoming more and more rare in central Ohio as commercial and residential development sprawls into the countryside. Do the math: Franklin County encompasses nearly 600 square miles of land. It has just one wildlife refuge, called, you guessed it, Pickerington Ponds.
Located on the far eastern border of Franklin County near the intersection of Wright and Bowen roads, Pickerington Ponds encompasses a mere 514 acres, less than a single square mile. Over 260 different species of birds are known to frequent the Ponds, which became a Metro Park in 1979. The wildlife refuge is famous among midwest naturalists because of its blue heron nesting area.
Those who care about this beauty and the ecological significance of the refuge have decided to draw a line in the sand: The encroachment of development stops here. This 1/600th of the county’s land mass represents an environmental Alamo for local residents as they take their last stand against the powerful and politically connected M/I Schottenstein Homes.
M/I Schottenstein has an option on about 250 acres of land where it wants to build the massive Allen Glenn apartment complex of 1,150 units in Columbus and 302 single-family homes in Fairfield County adjacent to Pickerington Ponds. M/I Schottenstein Homes reported building 3,246 homes in 1996 with a total sales value of $560 million. Its 1996 annual report called the company "the 19th largest U.S. home builder (based on total revenue) as ranked by Builder Magazine."
In July, a draft 77-page report by the Franklin County Water and Soil Conservation District found that the development could unbalance the water levels at the Ponds and contaminate them. The report documented an underground connection between the Ponds and the proposed Allen Glenn apartment complex site, meaning the development could "dewater" the Ponds.
Sixty southeast Columbus residents and neighbors of the Ponds, concerned about sustaining a viable and diverse wildlife habitat in the midst of booming urban development in the area, have organized against the proposed development under the name Planning Effectively for Tomorrow (PET). On August 11, Richard Sahli, attorney for PET, gave comments to the Metro Parks Board that the Schottenstein development as planned "implies some 6,000 people and over 2,500 vehicles...be allowed on the Ponds’ doorstep." He noted, "Now there will be only a 3-acre buffer of trees alone" to protect the Ponds.
Robert Schottenstein, CEO of M/I Homes, addressed the concerned citizens attending the August 11 Metro Parks Board meeting, assuring them that his company would never do anything to harm the Ponds. But, last December, M/I Schottenstein Homes issued a brief six-page report claiming that there was no problem with their planned development, which at its closest point is a mere 100 yards from the Ponds, although they promised to include additional artificial wetlands on some of the flood-prone land they owned.
The ultimate decision about M/I Homes’ bitterly contested Allen Glenn development, on Bowen Rd. about a half-mile north of Pickerington Ponds, lies with Columbus City Council, which will consider the zoning variance needed by M/I. Council now has a environmental impact report prepared by the Metro Parks Board; as no timetable has been set, M/I will be able to incorporate the report’s suggestions before proceeding with a revised zoning variance request if it chooses.
Nearby lots in Fairfield County are limited in density; each house must sit on three acres of land, specifically to protect the semi-rural nature of the area and the wildlife refuge. On the Franklin County side, by contrast, M/I is proposing a development with a density—when the 1,150 apartment units are factored in—that is staggering for the area.
Initially, PET members feared that with M/I’s enormous financial clout and its willingness to hire scientific experts, Columbus City Council would quickly cave in. But that hasn’t been the case, thanks in large part to PET’s tenacity.
The Ponds’ controversy started three years ago when Columbus City Council approved major developments south and east of the refuge. Ponds area residents were startled and shocked that such a major annexation into Columbus and a development rezoning could occur so quickly. Last year, when M/I Schottenstein Homes proposed its Allen Glenn development at the northwest corner of Wright and Bowen, area residents began organizing.
PET member Eileen Painter recalled that when she first began organizing, many of her neighbors "just laughed" at the thought of taking on the developers. She said some had received letters from developers warning that if they "actively opposed" developments near their property there wouldn’t be any "buffer zone" built into the project.
The citizens organization initially had two goals: to protect the Ponds from the proposed Allen Glenn development and to ensure that the city of Columbus completes its "Southeast Plan." This plan would serve as the city’s future guide in all development and rezoning matters, but little had been done with it in the two years following the original annexation and rezoning. PET activists saw the preliminary Southeast Plan lacking any regulations to rein in developers. Moreover, many feared that Mayor Greg Lashutka’s planning division lacked the political will to stand up to the likes of M/I Homes and other powerful builders swarming the area.
PET members actively opposed the Southeast Plan draft put forward by Lashutka’s staff. Last September, the Columbus Development Commission unanimously voted against approving the plan, citing the lack of specifics in the draft. The Southeast Plan is still pending. Meanwhile, PET members worry that this political vacuum places the Ponds in a precarious and vulnerable position by allowing developers to run rampant with no official oversight.
After Lashutka’s staff approved M/I Homes’ Allen Glenn proposal without reservation and sent it on to the City Council to be rezoned, PET members immediately escalated their activity. "We still have to fight the negative impression that we’re trying to stop development, that we’re NIMBYs [Not In My Back Yard]," Painter explained.
Last January, PET took issue with what they saw as M/I Homes’ six-page "non- study" of the Allen Glenn development. PET and Sahli won a substantial victory when zoning committee Chairman Matt Habash agreed that too many questions remained concerning the health of the Ponds and that a serious study was called for. Habash also insisted that work on the Southeast Plan resume.
On April 21, the Pickerington City Council adopted a resolution opposing any dense residential developments in close proximity to the Ponds. "The ecology of such wildlife habitat is extremely fragile and strong measures are necessary to maintain its unique character," the resolution stated.
Violet Township Trustees in Fairfield County had already limited development east of the Ponds to just one or two houses per acre. The Lashutka-approved Allen Glenn development allowed up to six units per acre.
Habash requested that the Metro Parks Board study the impact of the M/I Homes development on the Ponds. Despite PET’s highly visible role in securing the Metro Parks study, Sahli said he didn’t hear from the Metro Parks Board until late May when he called them. On June 4, PET members and Sahli met with John O’Meara, the newly appointed Metro Parks Director.
"We were told at this meeting that there had been many meetings between Metro Parks and the developer’s people...and that Metro Parks had no scientific data ‘to quantify’ the extent to which the density of the Allen Glenn development would affect the Ponds’ habitat," said Sahli.
Dismayed that they had been left out of the preliminary meetings and afraid that the board’s report would not address the density issue in a serious way, a PET research team began pulling its own data off the Internet. In just a few hours, according to Sahli, PET members found "several university professors who volunteered to help Metro Parks."
According to the academics PET contacted, there was more than sufficient data available on the impact of high-density developments on wetlands. Many of these reports dated to the 1960s.
On June 24, Sahli wrote the Metro Parks Board asking them to start the study over with an expanded committee of technical assistants and community representatives. He believed that the original Metro Parks study had relied too much on governmental and bureaucratic sources like the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Sahli and PET members received the Metro Parks Board’s initial draft report on July 7. The draft report did not accept two recommendations from the Water and Soil Conservation District report, recommendations that would have mandated the creation of a 10-acre wetland at the southeast corner of the proposed development and rerouted the Bowen and Wright Rd. intersection to the north of the Ponds. These were the "two most effective recommendations in the report," according to Sahli, since they would have "created a spatial buffer, a groundwater recharge site and an early warning system of any potential dewatering while rerouting the intersection would remove the worst source of surface water contamination at the Ponds."
The Board’s draft report instead accepted the "minimal" option recommended by the Water and Soil Conservation District report. Only three acres of trees would separate the last wildlife refuge in Central Ohio from the encroaching Columbus development and 10,000 potential new residents, if all the rezonings are approved.
On Tuesday, August 11—at 4 p.m., when most people are scheduled to work—the Metro Parks Board met as 60 concerned citizens packed the room. William C. Wolfe Jr., the Metro Parks Board chair and member of the powerful Wolfe family, informed PET members that Metro Parks’ draft report would be sent the very next day to Councilmember Richard Sensenbrenner, not to Habash who had originally requested it. Wolfe informed those present that the board would neither take comments nor deliberate on the report, but there would be a chance for a few questions after director O’Meara’s comments.
O’Meara took the position that the report had "no legal effect" and that since the Metro Parks Board was not a regulatory agency, they didn’t have any role in the zoning process.
As O’Meara and board members repeatedly insisted that they could do nothing to stop development, the crowd grew increasingly hostile. PET partisans accused the board of dereliction of duty, with the brief question period eventually lasting an hour. Metro Parks Board members, under heated cross-examination, promised to begin buying up land around the Ponds.
Finally, at the end of the meeting, Wolfe offered a small concession. The Metro Parks Board would hold off sending its report to City Council until it had reviewed the four pages of comments submitted by Sahli. As one activist put it, "No one is holding their breath for that to occur."
PET members privately complained that they had been "railroaded" since they didn’t buy the board’s argument that the board could do nothing. Sahli pointed out that "Metro Parks owns the Ponds and is the public trustee for that habitat and its inhabitants."
He also dashed off a letter to Habash on the meeting. "Needless to say, the community was very unhappy and disappointed. The general feeling is that Metro Parks, both board and staff, is dominated by Wolfe and he has made a political call not to ruffle the development community. Wolfe didn’t display the slightest sensitivity to the fact that he is responsible for a nature refuge," Sahli wrote Habash.
Sahli included a recent article from the Akron Beacon Journal reporting that songbirds are in decline in Ohio. The Ponds serve as a nesting area for many lesser-known birds that are growing increasingly rare. Marsh wrens, swamp sparrows, rails, coots and bitterns all nest at the Ponds. Sahli has argued that the refuge’s "most notable feature is that it’s a growing stopover place for migrating birds; as their habitat gets destroyed elsewhere, the Ponds become a major landing zone" in central Ohio.
Chairperson Wolfe proved to be a man of his word. On August 28, the Metro Parks board released a new version of its Pickerington Ponds report to Columbus City Council. Sahli called the "substantially amended" report "much better." He noted: "They now fully acknowledge their inadequate work on the density issue, but even better, add a great deal of narrative about their concerns on this point and flatly ask city council to discourage development of all kinds in the immediate environs of the Ponds which Metro Parks says it will buy."
Councilmember Habash, who had originally requested Metro Parks’ report, was pleased with the results, saying the report will be helpful. "They actually took the study a little further than just the Allen Glenn rezoning area and looked at a larger area," Habash said. "Basically, they’re suggesting that they need to protect their watershed, and probably over the course of time need to be acquiring more land."
"This gives us more information as we look at...trying to put the Southeast Plan back together and look at development pressures around there," he continued. "Allen Glenn did not fall into that watershed, but there are obviously other concerns that the community has about it."
Habash said he will ask the Metro Parks Board to present the report to council and answer questions about the report. Because the rezoning hearing has not yet been scheduled, M/I Schottenstein, if it chooses, can take time to incorporate the changes suggested in the report before submitting a revised development plan. Said Habash, "I’ll be waiting for the developers to get back to us as to how they want to proceed."
Telephone calls to M/I Schottenstein seeking comment were not returned by presstime.
How City Council and Robert Schottenstein respond in the near future greatly concerns PET members. But their clout is clearly growing, and they are likely to make this a long, nasty fight, a fight that M/I, for all its power, just might lose.
Says one PET supporter: "This could drag on and it’s really up to Bobby Schottenstein whether he wants to tarnish his family’s good name. Right now he can choose to be known as a heron killer or a hero."
9/10/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Yessir, America’s got a big ol’ important political scandal. The President had sex in the Oval Office and there was the immoral spewing of seed that rightly should lead to an Old Testament-type stoning. By gosh, by golly.
Thank God the Lewinsky story upstaged the documented fact that CIA operatives were responsible for the crack epidemic in America’s inner cities. If you can tear yourself away from the tabloids, you might want to pick up a copy of Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair and Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion by Gary Webb.
Once you’ve had enough of what Monica did with that cigar and her possible $6 million book contract on giving the President head, you might want to read the two above-mentioned books to put the word "scandal" in perspective. Hell, we’ve got a better sex scandal being covered up right now in the Ohio legislature, but those are Republicans like Dan "I Hate Scumbags" Burton, so we can’t go into those legislators on videotape.
Anyway, you may remember Webb, perhaps the most wrongly vilified and courageous journalist in modern American history. On December 13, 1997, Webb resigned from the San Jose Mercury News after being transferred from the state capitol bureau in Sacramento to someplace called Cupertino. Webb was being punished for his August 1996 series, Dark Alliance, that established the link between America’s crack plague and the CIA’s involvement with the Contras and cocaine smuggling in Nicaragua.
The Washington Post and the New York Times both used Webb’s departure as proof that the CIA was not involved in drug smuggling. A December 19 Times story ran under the headline: "CIA says it has found no link between itself and the crack trade." The story, citing unnamed sources, reported that a leaked CIA internal document found "no direct or indirect link" between the CIA and cocaine traffickers.
Curiously, Webb’s highly criticized original story relied on accidentally released government documents and grand jury testimony under oath. No wonder the New York Times questioned his journalism.
Early last year, while the Washington Post and elite journalists from the New York Times scrambled to verify the existence of a semen-stained dress, the CIA quietly released a declassified version of its official whitewash. The mainstream media duly reported CIA Director George Tenet’s absurd claim that "the damage to the CIA’s reputation may never be fully reversed." And that, "the allegations may have left an indelible impression in many American’s minds that the CIA was somehow responsible for the scourge of drugs in our inner cities."
Had the elite press managed to tear itself away from the Drudge Report and actually read the declassified document, they would have found that it verified Webb’s original Dark Alliance series.
The CIA confessed that it directly intervened in the so-called Frogmen case to prevent American citizens from learning of the relationship between "CIA assets," people that work for the agency and supply information, and cocaine traffickers. In the Frogmen case, the FBI popped "CIA assets" with 400 pounds of cocaine valued at $100 million.
In March, had the Times and Post reporters broken away from their regular illegal briefings by Ken Starr, or torn themselves away from Tripp’s illegally made tapes, they might have reported that CIA Inspector General Fred P. Hitz appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to update the "ye without sin" Congress on the agency’s continuing quest to investigate itself.
Hitz told distracted Congresspersons, more concerned with Monica’s real and imagined oral sex techniques, that "there are instances where [the] CIA did not, in an expeditious or consistent fashion, cut off relations with individuals supporting the Contra program who were alleged to have engaged in drug trafficking activities." Hitz also confirmed that the alleged drug trafficking occurred in the United States.
In what should have been a bombshell from coast to coast, more important than semen and cigars, Hitz told the Monica-fixated representatives that there was "a rather odd history... The period of 1982 to 1995 was one in which there was no official requirement to report on allegations of drug trafficking with respect to non-employees of the agency, and they were defined to include agents, assets, non-staff employees." Hitz testified that a secret agreement had been "hammered out" between U.S. Attorney General William French Smith and the CIA in 1982.
The highly moral Reagan administration had brokered a gentlemen’s agreement in the pursuit of godless communists—godless, I say—to look the other way on what Reagan called "the moral equivalent of our founding fathers"—Contra cocaine runners like Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses.
Now, if I can just get the Drudge Report or Ken Starr to leak to the elite press that Blandon and Meneses have the actual cigar used by Monica to perform indecent acts, maybe, just maybe, a few Americans will go out and read Dark Alliance and Whiteout.
Or maybe I could spread the rumor that Whiteout is about Bill’s attempt to sponge the semen off the dress. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
9/17/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
A recent article by a U.S. Justice Department official provides insight into the current negotiations between that department, the city of Columbus and its police department in the wake of a federal investigation into an alleged pattern of misconduct by Columbus police. The article by Steve Rosenbaum of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, adapted from his Congressional testimony, appears in the July-September issue of Rights, published by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"When Rodney King was brutally beaten by police officers, the Justice Department had the power to bring criminal prosecution against those officers. And we did, successfully prosecuting two of them," Rosenbaum reminds readers. "But we did not have the power to reform management practices of law enforcement agencies that countenance such misconduct."
In response to the 1992 King beating, the Democratic-dominated Congress authorized the Justice Department in the Omnibus Anti-Crime Bill of 1994 to file lawsuits to eliminate a pattern and practice by law enforcement officers that violates federal civil rights laws. Laws relevant to police misconduct and brutality are few and far between in U.S. history. The only previous relevant legislation that addressed police brutality was the Civil Rights Act of 1871 that allowed, for the first time, federal intervention into local police matters where a record of abuse existed.
While legislation dealing with police brutality has been rare in U.S. history, several court cases have clarified the issue. In 1989, the Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor ruled that excessive force during an arrest or stop falls under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1985, in Tennessee v. Garner, the Supreme Court determined that the use of deadly force to an apparently unarmed fleeing suspect also violated the person’s Fourth Amendment rights.
But not all Supreme Court rulings have served to curtail police abuse and brutality. In Anderson v. Creighton, the Supreme Court established the concept of the "qualified immunity" defense for police officers. In defense of their actions, police may argue that a trained officer would not have known that his actions would violate a person’s constitutional rights at the time of the incident. In 1986 in Whitley v. Albers, the Court held that unreasonable force in and of itself is not a constitutional violation; only "unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain" constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment.
Rosenbaum writes that the 1994 statute "is still new, and these are not simple investigations. The exercise of our pattern and practice authority must be based on competent, concrete evidence of systematic problems of great magnitude."
The first city to be charged under the law was Pittsburgh. The second was Steubenville, Ohio. Both entered into extensive consent agreements with the Justice Department. Both consent agreements established mandatory guidelines for police training, supervising and disciplining of officers. The agreements also established methods for investigating and responding to civilian complaints of police misconduct.
Columbus is just the third city charged under the 1994 Statute. Both the local Fraternal Order of Police and Police Officers for Equal Rights have pointed to Police Chief James Jackson and top level police managers as a key part of the police problem. Rosenbaum confirms this critique: "Our investigations on the civil side in our lawsuits are very different from criminal investigations and prosecutions which are focused on bad apples, isolated acts of misconduct. Our focus is on police management."
"We are finding that where a department has systematic problems, management systems exist that could help better train, supervise, and monitor and discipline police officers. What we try to do in our cases is require implementation of these kinds of systems," Rosenbaum reveals. "If the police chief deserves credit for a drop in crime, the chief must also bear the blame when officers engage in police brutality. The key is accountability."
Paul Chevigny, Professor at New York University Law School and one of nation’s leading experts on police abuse, recently argued that politicians are to blame as well as police managers. "It’s a disease of western democratic governments to appeal to voters on the basis of their fears for their security. ‘We’re gonna protect you’...that kind of rhetoric and that kind of populist politics is really calling on the police to do justice themselves without the intervention of the rest of the criminal justice system," Chevigny stated. "It’s really a call for vigilantism."
Gerald LeMelle, executive director of Amnesty International, asked Congress for "greater transparency in the investigation of complaints of ill treatment against police officers in order to ensure police accountability and confidence in the process."
Rosenbaum concludes that, "The managerial task I’ve outlined can have enormous impact, not just on civil rights abuses, but on effective crime fighting. A bedrock principle of effective law enforcement is community support for the work of the police."
9/24/1998
News Briefs
by Bob Fitrakis
Black leaders are calling it the "public lynching" of Ben Pittman. While Columbus Dispatch editorial writers have led the charge for his ouster, the mystery continues as to why a slender majority of Columbus School Board members is so insistent on the school treasurer’s termination.
School Board President Karen Schwarzwalder and members Mary Jo Kilroy, Bob Teater and Mark Hatch favored the non-renewal of Pittman’s contract as treasurer, while Dave Dobos and the board’s two African-American members, Loretta Heard and Bill Moss, supported retaining him when the board voted 4-3 on Monday in favor of Pittman’s termination. The September 21 meeting was disrupted several times by the noisy protests of several Pittman supporters.
Moss then called for a public hearing, to be held under his community relations committee, to investigate Pittman’s allegations that his ouster is the result of fraud and discrimination. The board voted 4-3 in favor of holding the hearing, with Hatch joining Pittman supporters in calling for the investigation.
"Mr. Pittman is being forced out or lynched because he dared to stop some major banks, contracting companies and other businesses that our district purchases services from, from overcharging or ripping off tax dollars," Heard said at the meeting.
Letters obtained by Columbus Alive between Schwarzwalder and Pittman’s attorney, Dennis M. McGuire, add to the saga by revealing a strange buy-out attempt. A week ago, in anticipation of "the possibility of non-renewal" of Pittman’s contract, school board meeting, Schwarzwalder made him a last-minute "offer."
"The Board of Education certainly wishes to find a way for you to obtain your 30 years service credit for retirement purposes," wrote Schwarzwalder in a letter to Pittman dated September 14. Schwarzwalder offered to "pay your employee share and the Board of Education’s employer share of the SERS [State Employees Retirement System] contribution to purchase what we understand is your 3 years of military service."
The Board President also offered to "employ you, upon your resignation as treasurer effective December 31, 1998, as administrative assistant to the treasurer at your current salary of $95,000 per year for calendar year 1999."
Schwarzwalder gave Pittman until the next day at 3 p.m. to accept her offer. With a host of black ministers and community activists packing the school board meeting in support of Pittman, the school board opted to go into a closed-door executive session that included State Auditor Jim Petro. Two school board members supporting Pittman claim that other school board members seeking Pittman’s ouster cited the appeasement of Dispatch Publisher John F. Wolfe as a key reason for Pittman’s termination.
On July 9, the Columbus Dispatch ran a negative article on Pittman’s performance titled "School treasurer not at head of the class." On September 11, Pittman accepted the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting that was awarded to the Columbus Public Schools by the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada for its comprehensive annual financial report. Pittman personally received an Award of Financial Reporting Achievement as the individual responsible for preparing the award-winning report. Pittman’s report was cited for its "spirit of full disclosure."
Moss said Petro admitted in the executive session that most of the school’s financial problems are historical in nature. "I don’t know why they want to hang all these problems on a black face when Ben Pittman’s the man who’s been cleaning up the mess," Moss insisted.
The Columbus Post recently noted that "For the first time in 19 years, State Auditor Jim Petro conducted an audit of the Columbus Public Schools [CPS] and was critical of Pittman for not erasing some practices that had been in place for one to two decades, even though changing such practices would involve changes in other departments of CPS."
"Jim Petro let Oddi steal all that money and never did anything, but he’ll investigate a black man or a Democrat at the drop of a hat in an election year. Petro’s office is the one that needs to be investigated, preferably by the FBI or federal government," said Moss.
The board’s other African-American member, Heard, stresses Pittman’s accomplishments. "He saved this district over $5 million the last few years, $3 million in health care, over $2.5 million because of his investment decisions and he saved us hundreds of thousands in our accounting system," Heard explained.
On September 15, Pittman’s attorney responded by writing CPS attorney Gregory Scott and asserted that the treasurer’s forced resignation "has the potential to open Pandora’s box at the Columbus Public Schools. We do not want to do that."
McGuire wrote, "We believe there are race, public policy, misconduct in office and fraud issues in this matter. I would rather not discuss those at this point, but if you wish, I will detail them upon your request. Once such issue would involve Columbia Gas and another would involve insurance. I am sure that you have knowledge of these issues."
Scott told Alive that he had responded last Thursday to McGuire’s letter: "I wrote him that ‘If you or Mr. Pittman have any knowledge regarding violations of ethics laws or fraud with regard to the Columbus Public Schools, you and he should take these concerns to the Ethics Commission or to law enforcement officials.’"
"So far Mr. McGuire’s not been able to specify any specific areas of wrongdoing and he’s terminated talks on a settlement with Mr. Pittman," said Scott.
9/24/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Next time you see one of those nauseatingly slick campaign ads touting Voinovich for Senate, ask yourself where he got the millions of dollars to pay for the propaganda.
Harken back to 1990. Remember Governor-to-be Voinovich in a canoe claiming to be the "green" candidate? Voinovich’s real legacy is one of utter corruption and environmental degradation.
Earlier this month, Voinovich’s Ohio Environmental Protection Agency allowed 25 businesses—all under orders for mandatory environmental clean-up—to "voluntarily" clean up their highly polluted properties. The program will work as well as allowing people to "voluntarily" pay taxes.
In central Ohio, Georgia-Pacific, best known for voluntarily blowing up its facility on a regular basis, was given the right to voluntarily comply with the state’s environmental laws.
Throughout the Voinovich administration, the governor systematically destroyed the enforcement power of the OEPA, turning it into "Every Polluter’s Advocate," particularly those who donate big money to the governor’s campaign coffers.
After weakening the OEPA, the Voinovich administration pushed through the so-called Ohio Audit Privilege Law. That’s an Orwellian way of spinning what in reality is the Polluter’s Secrecy Law. The basic thrust of the law provides Voinovich’s big donors with immunity and secrecy if they complete an "environmental audit." In essence, companies that are spewing toxic waste can secretly assess and calculate the environmental destruction. If their neighbors happen to find out that the large tumors growing in their bodies are linked to the toxics, the "secret" contamination data can’t legally be used against the company.
By self-auditing, the companies, in effect, insulate themselves from the most severe penalties in Ohio’s environmental protection laws. The state’s biggest polluters gave more than $567,000 to winning proponents of the Polluter’s Secrecy Law in the 1996 election. That’s chump change compared to the cost of lawyers and one large verdict in favor of a dead kid against one of these polluters.
Our "environmental" governor created total self-regulation for his corporate polluter buddies while the Ohio Environmental Council, the Ohio Chapter of the Sierra Club, Rivers Unlimited and Citizen Action filed a legal petition in January 1997 asking the U.S. EPA to take over the enforcement of federal environmental law in Ohio. The action by real environmentalists, as opposed to the phony guy in the canoe, held up the polluter’s dream law and forced some minor changes in it.
On July 1 this year, Governor Voinovich signed into law a modestly amended version of the Polluter’s Secrecy Law. Just in time for it to go into effect on September 30—and just in time to allow companies like Georgia-Pacific, Rockwell, Ashland Chemical, Ford Motor, Cooper Tire and Rubber, Ullman Oil and others to get to "auditing" themselves. And just enough time for those corporate officials to write those big checks to the Voinovich for Senate campaign.
The governor also had time to steer a few last multi-million dollar contracts to dear old friends. Just last month, the highly touted $272 million Multi-agency Radio Communication Systems project was awarded to TRW/Motorola by Voinovich’s Department of Administrative Services. The final cost of the contract is almost $100 million over the original estimates. But that’s not a problem for Governor Voinovich. He’ll just collect a few more large campaign donations and run some of those hypocritical "I’m just an efficient tax-cutting guy" commercials.
Daniel Slane, a Columbus developer with his hooks deep into the governor, stands to make more than $160 million off the project. Slane’s fees are in addition to the $272 million project, making the total cost to taxpayers $432 million. Slane also happens to be a fund-raiser for Governor Voinovich and a Voinovich appointee to four state boards. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Slane’s company stands to reap $8.1 million a year for 20 years by leasing radio towers to the state if officials exercise all the lease options available."
The guv’s crony, Slane, conveniently entered the cellular telephone tower construction business at the same time the project was being bid three years ago. The radio communications system is one of Ohio’s largest state-funded public projects this decade. Voinovich has denied that Slane’s role as a political fund-raiser and hack for the Voinovich administration had anything to do with the contract. Many critics claim the project will be obsolete upon completion and should have used more high-tech digital technology.
Regular readers of this column won’t find it surprising that ubiquitous lobbyist Phil Hamilton, one of the Guv’s main political squeezes and fixer, represented Motorola. Motorola’s partner in public largess, TRW, happened to contribute more than $100,000 to promote Governor Voinovich’s much-scoffed-at unsuccessful sales tax increase for school funding that lost by 80 percent in May.
Senate Finance Chairman Roy Ray, a Bath Township Republican, assured Ohioans that he would be taking a close look at the contract as a member of Ohio’s Controlling Board that just approved $25 million for the first phase of the project. Ray, you recall, was exposed earlier this year for secretly taking hundreds of thousands of dollars in "consulting fees" from Ohio utilities lobbying for deregulation. Oh, by the way, the Department of Administrative Services disqualified Ericsson Inc. on their lease bid, which was $14 million, and instead accepted the TRW proposal, which was 11.5 times higher.
Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure the governor’s got a commercial in the can telling you not to worry, that he ran a clean administration, a moral administration—but in reality, he screwed us without ever unzipping his fly.
10/01/1998
News Briefs
Tax dollars at work
by Bob Fitrakis
Sister Marge Eilerman reported to federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, this past Monday, September 28. Eilerman, a 61-year-old Franciscan nun from Ft. Loramie, Ohio, is serving a 14-month prison sentence: six months for trespassing with an 18-inch white cross at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and eight months for participating in spray-painting the words "School of the Assassins" on a welcome sign at the military base.
Ft. Benning is the home of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (SOA). Since its inception in 1946, SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American and Caribbean troops in counter-terrorist and counter-insurgency tactics to "stabilize" their nations. Critics, including U.S. Representative Joseph Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) and Senators Richard Lugar and John F. Kerry, have long charged that the SOA soldiers are not taught to defend their borders from invasion, but to repress their fellow citizens.
SOA trains between 1,000 to 2,000 foreign nationals a year. Army officials claim that its curriculum promotes democracy and includes human rights instruction. Sister Eilerman disputes this statement.
"Teaching democracy at a military installation? I don't believe so," countered Eilerman, who spoke to Alive the day before her incarceration. "Look at the school's history. The military is no place to teach democracy, nor is it a democratic institution."
Founded in Panama in 1946, the school's reputation for training military dictators quickly earned it the nickname "Escuela de Golpes" or "School of Coups." In 1984, SOA relocated to Ft. Benning after being forced out of Panama under terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Panama's President Jorge Illueca denounced it as the "biggest base for destabilization in Latin America" and a major Panamanian newspaper gave it its infamous nickname, the "School of Assassins."
Eilerman said she peacefully violated the law on two occasions--a year ago September at the spray-painting, and trespassing last November with 600 other demonstrators--because SOA is "one of our best kept secrets; people would be shocked if they knew what our tax dollars are going for."
In 1991, a scandal erupted when the Bush administration admitted that it had "discovered" SOA training manuals produced by the Pentagon that recommended interrogation techniques including torture, execution, blackmail and the arresting of relatives of those being questioned.
The National Security Archives, a Washington-based research organization, noted in its analysis of the manuals that non-violent and even strictly oppositional electoral organizations were equated with terrorist activities and targeted for repression. One manual warned that subversives might "resort to subverting the government by electoral means." Another manual described Tom Hayden, currently a California State Senator, as "one of the masters of terrorist planning."
Eilerman pointed out that in the small country of El Salvador alone, SOA graduates were responsible for the massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter; the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero; and linked to the rape and murder of three U.S. nuns and a Catholic layworker, among other atrocities.
The United Nations Truth Commission Report on El Salvador released March 15, 1996 supports Eilerman's claim. Of the 60 Salvadoran officials cited for the worst atrocities during El Salvador's brutal civil war, 48 were alumni of the SOA.
Other SOA alumni have similar records: 100 of the 146 officers in Columbia cited for "war crimes" by a 1993 International Human Rights Tribunal; 19 high-ranking officers linked to the notorious Honduran "death squad" Battalion 316, including its founder, General Luis Alonso Discua; former President General Manuel Noriega, now serving 40 years in a U.S. prison for drug-trafficking; Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, implicated in the torture and murders of U.S. citizen Michael Devine and Efraim Bamaca in Guatemala; and General Juan Lopez Ortiz, commander of troops responsible for the 1994 massacre in Ocosingo, Mexico.
In September 1996, a New York Times editorial said of the SOA, "An institution so clearly out of touch with American values and so stubbornly immune to reform should be shut down without further delay." A former SOA instructor, Joseph Blair, a retired U.S. Army major, claimed "The School of the Americas is a cold war dinosaur and should be closed." A Veterans of Foreign Wars resolution noted, "The SOA runs contrary to the very principles of human rights and democracy for which our nation's veterans have sacrificed."
Sister Eilerman said she has no regrets about going to prison. "I'm glad--very, very glad I did it. I admit it. We went there and wrote on their sign. `Home of School of Assassins.' `School of Shame.' `SOA=Torture.'"
Eilerman ended her interview by urging Alive readers to attend a vigil and memorial service at the main gate of Ft. Benning on November 21-22. "Last November, 600 people crossed the line onto Ft. Benning property in a funeral procession," she said. "This year, I'm hoping it's a thousand. It's to commemorate the slaughter of the Jesuit priests."
Eilerman concluded, "Make sure you call me in prison and tell them you're with the media. If I call you, they limit the amount of time I can talk."
10/08/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
I recently woke up in a parallel bizarro universe. My first clue that I wasn't in Columbus as I know it anymore was when the bizarro world's Democratic candidate for governor, Lee Fisher, announced his educational policy for the bankrupt and "unconstitutional" Ohio public education system.
Bizarro Fisher--sounding significantly to the Right of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Benito Mussolini--was promising to cut over a billion dollars in property tax with the money going disproportionately to the wealthiest homeowners. The bizarro Republican candidate Bob Taft--sounding like the great commoner William Jennings Bryant--quickly and correctly scolded Fisher for his unconscionable policy that hurt poor and oppressed schoolchildren in Ohio. Hmmmmm. Taft was clearly right, I mean Left, I mean rational, thoughtful and intellectual. And Fisher? A gutless, unprincipled panderer.
In this new bizarro universe, the Republican Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien was a kickass crime fighter recommending a 10-year prison sentence for a tearful and repentant bizarro Jesse Oddi. What happened to the old Oddi we knew, the odor of Oddi, "the little stud that could?" And what about the long-standing Franklin County tradition where Republican county prosecutors "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" when it comes to evidence against fellow Republicans?
Then I saw an actual attack ad against corrupt Franklin County Republican officials, put out by the Franklin County Democratic Party. I couldn't sleep.
Tossing and turning in the middle of the night I realized that I wasn't in a bizarro universe but that I should check under my bed for those big ugly pods last seen in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A little voice in my head kept screaming "He not my Party Chairman. He not Denny White!" I knew the pod people had snatched the docile, mushy-mouth Denny White and replaced him with Terry Casey's guts and brains.
White's commercial is right. Oddi's not the only thing the pod people are hiding. They've also snatched Municipal Clerk of Courts Paul Herbert and replaced him with a pod Herbert who now spends most of his time thoughtfully reforming his court.
There are unexpected moments of joy on the new pod planet/bizarro world. Like when I was driving down Third Street and saw the giant red sign with a couple burnt out lights that said, I swear, "Ohio's Greatest Ho_ _ Newspaper." Finally, truth in advertising. I always knew Voinovich was the Dispatch's Mack Daddy.
National Association for the Advancement of Certain People
To continue the theme, expect to see the unexpected spectacle of grassroots African American activists like Bill Moss, James Moss and Jerry Doyle picketing this Friday's NAACP banquet at the Hyatt Regency.
On Tuesday night, a group calling itself the Boycott Columbus Committee met and planned their demonstration against the country's oldest civil rights organization. Their signs read: "The NAACP of Columbus has sold us out," "Boycott the NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet" and "NAACP selling out as usual."
School Board Member Bill Moss and the committee are urging a boycott of Columbus until "this city can be persuaded to support a decent, fair and equitable school system for the city's children and to refrain from oppression and exploitation for personal gain." In an open letter sent to thousands of companies, organizations and individuals, the committee points out that before busing and white flight, "the [Columbus school] district enrolled 110,000 pupils,
77 percent of whom were white. [T]he Columbus schools now have only 64,000 students enrolled of whom 60 percent are black."
Moss said, "As the nasty downtown Columbus lunchtime joke runs, the suburban and `urban gentry' kids will work in the skyscrapers by day and the city kids will clean them by night."
The committee's message comes through loud and clear on their website: "If you or any of your family or friends belong to a church group, service organization, professional society or trade association that holds conferences or conventions, we earnestly request that you not choose Columbus, Ohio, as your choice city. If your organization has already planned to come here, we ask that you cancel such plans." The NAACP refused to comply with the committee's agenda by holding their event at the downtown Hyatt.
Bill Moss told those present that the NAACP's long-standing traditions aside, the current organization in Columbus is acting like "a corporate media front for the downtown power structure." The committee claims that Friday's protest is just the start of a continuing campaign that they hope will force the city of Columbus to "do the right thing and act justly."
10/15/1998
MISSING
10/22/1998
Picks and pans
Bob's election day guide to the candidates
by Bob Fitrakis
It's that time of year: the mass media is flying political sorties in your face day in, day out. Most of us know that the worst way to debate public policy is through 30-second propaganda attacks disguised as political advertising. We all know from such propaganda that George Voinovich is the greatest guy in the history of Earth: he heals the sick, raises the dead, and "de-evolves" everything to the state level.
If I was just passing through town and didn't know his administration's actual record of corruption, his role in defunding education and weakening environmental laws and his dream of making Ohio a multi-state nuclear waste dump site, I'd be tempted to vote for him. Plus, de-evolution ain't a new idea. The racist George Wallace ran on it 1968 and called it "state's rights."
So, if you're incredibly wealthy, have some factories you want to move to Mexico to exploit 58-cents-an-hour labor and like environmentally destructive mega-hog and chicken farms, Governor V is your choice for U.S. Senate.
Cuyahoga County Commissioner Mary Boyle doesn't have King George's gold, but she does have the endorsement of Ohio's Sierra Club. She's called for legislation to protect Ohio's communities and family farms from waste generated by factory farming. Also, the Columbus Dispatch called Voinovich "uniquely qualified" to serve in the Senate. I've always seen him uniquely qualified to serve in prison like his Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud. Of course, we could adopt the old "pass the trash" approach and vote for Voinovich just to get him out of Ohio.
Remember when the Lee Fisher vs. Bob Taft for governor race was supposed to be bland and boring? It's de-evolved, so to speak, into the key issue of our day: "liar, liar, pants on fire." Taft's an awful campaigner, heir to a conservative political legacy not to my liking. But, he's also got a reputation for clean government and if he won, he would no doubt disinfect the governor's office after the last two regimes. A lot of Lysol's going to be needed when the V Group leaves town.
Sure Lee Fisher's smarmy and a shameless political huckster. But hey, what do you expect from a career politician? I wasn't even surprised when he staked out political territory far to the right of Taft--that's conservative President Howard Taft--on tax cuts. The man wants to win, and in Clintonesque fashion he's jettisoned some of his principles. Yet, he's dead right on health care, good on the environment and he's got a decent Lieutenant Governor in Michael Coleman. Recently, Coleman was the only elected official invited by grassroots environmental groups to address local issues at a public hearing on the south side.
If you want to make Franklin County less corrupt--ending the decades-long one-party monopoly on county government--the election of Anthony Celebreeze III for clerk of courts and Mark Pfeifer for auditor are essential. Now, I'm not vouching for Pfeifer, bcause I don't know the man, but his campaign produced the single best political cartoon this year. In it, 11 elephants are sitting in chairs from county auditor to county prosecutor and treasurer and the caption reads: "Who's checking who??" In Pfeifer's case, it's simply a case of knowing when to "turn the fat hogs out and let the lean hogs in."
Celebreeze's another matter. When he served on staff for then-State Senator Dennis Kucinich, Tony worked closely and diligently with C-PRO (Citizens Protecting Ohio) in opposing Voinovich's six-state nuclear waste dump. Most environmentalists and progressives are comfortable with his ethics and politics.
Virginia Barney--hand-picked by Columbus' fattest cats to replace the odious Jesse Oddi--is the current clerk of the Common Pleas Courts, where felonies are heard. Barney, not to be confused with the more benign purple dinosaur, has a disturbing legacy. She led the charge to get taxpayers to cough up a quarter of a billion dollars for a private arena to be built for the billionaire Lamar Hunt. She also was Board President of SWACO (Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio) when it clashed with local residents of the trash-burning power plant over some of the highest levels of toxic emissions ever reported. She's the good ol' boys' good ol' gal.
The best way to keep the ever ambitious John Kasich in check, and to break up his current romance with the Christian Coalition, is to vote for his opponent Ed Brown, even though Brown's a lifelong Republican running as a Democrat.
In the judges' race, don't buy the hype. Guy Reece is a "quitter" who left last time without finishing his term. He also was presented with compelling evidence that a police officer in Powell unnecessarily shot a pizza deliveryman through a closed car window and he found the officer not guilty. The pizza driver is now paralyzed and can't speak, and Reece brags about being "police endorsed."
Finally, a vote for the Republican-endorsed Justice Paul Pfeifer is a vote well cast for courage and integrity. His principled swing vote led to the Ohio Public School funding system being declared unconstitutional. Bless him for telling the truth.
And always remember, when in doubt on Election Day, consult your Stonewall endorsement sheet, still the best general reference guide in town.
10/29/1998
ELECTION ‘98 SPECIAL SECTION?
Ballot bulldozer
Mayor, Michael, MORPC and many more say "no" to Issue 39
by Bob Fitrakis
"Let me see if I got this straight--used car dealers, a discount furniture store, a political consultant and a small band of folks, most who don't even live in the neighborhood, put this on the ballot without a study, without any community input and without any concern for the families living in the 39 homes that this would destroy," Clintonville Area Commissioner Tom Erney wondered aloud prior to last Thursday's Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) meeting. "Sure seems like a bizarre way to make public policy and spend $17 million."
MORPC board members unanimously agreed later that evening and recommended against Issue 39, the Rathbone Avenue extension across the Olentangy River, better known as the Morse-Bethel connector. The next morning in a joint press conference, Republican Mayor Greg Lashutka and Democratic City Council President Michael B. Coleman urged voters to vote "no" on Issue 39.
Paid political consultant Bob Lidle, spokesperson for Citizens for a Morse-Bethel Connector, sees it differently and argues that ballot initiatives are part of a democracy. "My response to whether this is a bad way to make public policy is simple: 'we the people.' This is how democracy works." Lidle, despite MORPC's recommendation, is still urging voters to vote for Issue 39.
The vast majority of citizens speaking at the MORPC meeting fear that Lidle, while lining his own pockets, is playing a dangerous game with one of the city's last pockets of undisturbed river green space.
Joanne Leussing presented a position paper for Priorities Partners, Inc. (PPI), a non-profit group formed after the completion of the Priorities '95 environmental project sponsored by the city of Columbus. PPI members are dedicated to promoting the recommendations of the final Priorities '95 report.
"The citizens that participated in drawing up that comprehensive environmental plan for Columbus were very clear what our greatest natural resource and natural attraction is in central Ohio. We don't have an ocean, we don't have mountains, all we really have is these two rivers and they must be protected," she said.
The draft MORPC problem statement dated August 27 put the river up front: "The Olentangy River is a barrier to travel."
The PPI paper points out that the $17 million Morse-Bethel connector runs counter to seven specific recommendations in the Priorities '95 report: both MORPC and the Franklin County Soil and Water Conservation District are charged with developing a Greenways Plan; Columbus' "green space policy" will emphasize the "protection, maintenance and enhancement of waterways and parks;" city zoning is to protect and "preserve Clintonville ravines;" neighborhood groups are to be developed "to restore and protect stream corridors;" city agencies and citizens' groups would "work together...to identify areas along water courses that could be restored to natural riparian [river] habitat;" the city would "acquire floodplains;" and also "use conservation easement along riparian corridors."
Another citizens' group, NICE (Neighbors Interested in the City Environment), vehemently stressed that before they vote, voters should take a trip to the Delawanda/Kenny Park area that the Morse-Bethel connector will destroy. NICE members Saira and Jim Priest produced a stunning set of postcards from photos they took at the park. Passing the postcard around last Thursday, they asked all who would listen, "Does this look like a place they should pave over and build a road through?" The postcards depict tranquil scenes of ducks floating on the river, vibrant yellow flowers, trees with red berries and August wildflowers at the entrance of the park.
Saira Priest said the quality of the Delawanda/Kenny Park is "every bit as scenic as the Metro Parks, it's that pristine. We have very high water quality there."
That last fact is not lost on yet another citizens' group, FLOW (Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed), which sponsored a Delawanda/Kenny education day on October 12. FLOW called the section of the river where the bridge would cut through "one of the most beautiful sections of the Olentangy."
NICE activist Chris Kasselmann pointed out that a recent EPA sampling found 15 species of fish, including small mouth bass not usually found in urban rivers, in the area slated for a Morse-Bethel bridge. "There's a variety of habitat for fish and other river species because of the alternating riffles and pools that occur from a normal, natural river. If they go in there and channelize it with concrete, those species won't be there," said Kasselmann.
"What people need to realize is that construction of a bridge would take large, heavy equipment into the river, causing a heavy sediment load which would impair these natural habitats, filling in crevices where fish and mussels feed and breed," she added.
Kasselmann said there are six state endangered species, one state threatened species and four federally endangered species among the fish, plants, birds and mussels in Issue 39's targeted area. Citizen and environment activists have strongly hinted that Issue 39 could be tied up in federal courts for years to come, adding additional costs to the cautious $17 million price tag.
Others, like Clintonville Area Commissioner Sandra Simbro, stress the human cost of the project. "Perhaps lack of planning with development has led us to the 'crossroad' where we find ourselves today.... It's really all about money--not people or their homes," she recently wrote.
While the Northland Community Council has endorsed the Morse-Bethel connector as a possible panacea for the economic decline of the Northland Mall area, Peggy MacElroy, president of the Northwest Civic Association, is strongly opposed to Issue 39. "Our association unanimously opposes the issue. It will undo and impact all the development standards we fought for over the years," MacElroy said. "If it goes through, the Refectory, one of the city's finest restaurants, will be gone. They'll have to widen Bethel and all the work that we've done that we're so proud of could be destroyed."
Tom Pappas, chairman of Citizens for Columbus Neighborhoods, which opposes the Rathbone route, called MORPC's decision a victory for the northside of Columbus. He argued that Issue 39 backers are masquerading as traffic engineers and drawing up bizarre schemes on their kitchen tables.
"You just don't do that to citizens and residents in Columbus. One day TeeJay's Restaurant is gone, then it's 45 homes where people live. Oops!--the next day they meant only 41 homes. It's absurd," Pappas insisted.
Paul Carringer, the chairperson of the Clintonville Area Commission and a self-described conservative, stated that the area the connector would destroy is where people "live, work and play... Letting Northland Mall and car dealers decide the future of communities is just wrong."
In his remarks to MORPC members, he noted, "We stand tonight at the edge of a new era in Columbus, a defining moment in the history of our city. The proposed Morse-Bethel connector as set forth by Issue 39 destroys a neighborhood, a place where people live.... It completely ignores the absolute requirement of dialogue between we the people of Columbus in order to develop real solutions for real problems."
Erney shares that sentiment: "Look, in 1999, the city, through our elected representatives, has already earmarked neighborhood projects that enhance our quality of life, make our streets safer and improve city services. These projects will have to take a back seat for one small connector that services only one neighborhood and saves a few minutes of travel time. Almost 20 percent of planned projects will have to be cut to make room for the almighty Morse-Bethel connector because a handful of people have rented a political consultant, who last time was pushing casino gambling, who's now dressing up as a traffic engineer for Halloween. Tell your readers to vote 'no.'"
10/29/1998
ELECTION ‘98 SPECIAL SECTION?
Bail jumpers
Barney fails to collect on reform promises
by Bob Fitrakis
Despite her funding ties to the Republican political machine that placed her recently convicted predecessor Jesse Oddi in office, Franklin County Clerk of Courts Virginia Barney has been running as a "reform" candidate since her appointment last May.
Oddi pleaded guilty to all 49 counts of his indictment last month in the common pleas court he used to control. He admitted stealing more than $448,000 from the Franklin County Juvenile Court account.
Oddi was also repeatedly criticized by Columbus Alive for not immediately collecting large amounts of bond forfeitures as required by Ohio law. In a recent statement to the League of Women Voters, Barney pledged "to collect every dime due the county." The most current Bail Bonds Forfeiture Report obtained by the Alive, dated September 30, reveals that bail bondsmen owe on 56 bonds totaling $422,700 to county taxpayers. A local banker told the Alive that the money owed by the bondsmen would yield $151 a day in interest--or $55,150 a year--roughly the cost of employing two additional clerks at the court.
But Barney has continued the practices of her predecessor, Oddi, by giving bondsmen up to a year, interest-free, to pay forfeited bonds on accused defendants who jump bail and do not show up for court.
According to the Ohio Revised Code ORC, bondsmen are given "not less than 20 nor more than 30 days" from the date that the court notifies the bondsmen that the defendant failed to appear in court, to forfeit the posted bond or show just cause why it should not be forfeited. The ORC further requires that if a bail bondsman can't produce "the accused...the court or magistrate shall thereupon enter judgment."
The purpose of bonds and the job of bondsmen is to ensure that the accused appears in court. State lawmakers crafted the law to punitively punish bondsmen who couldn't produce their accused clients. By requiring bondsmen to immediately pay forfeited bonds, the law creates an incentive to prevent bondsmen from bonding out the most high-risk defendants. A potential bail-jumper loses only 10 percent of a large bail bond if he can get a bail bondsman to secure his release from jail.
One of the unpaid bonds secured the release of Norman Wallace Jones Jr., reputed leader of the Linden Avenue Crips gang. Jones was originally arrested for assaulting a police officer and released on a $5,000 bail. He failed to appear before the court on May 1, 1997. Oddi's office ordered that 20 percent of Jones' forfeited bond due by July 11, 1997 and the bondsman was given a year to pay the remaining 80 percent. As of September 30, 1998, the 80 percent remains outstanding and owed to Barney's office.
Jones, while a fugitive from justice, was charged with a 16-count indictment on May 14. The charges included two counts of involuntary manslaughter, several robberies and other gang-related offenses. One of the manslaughter charges accused Jones of planning the kidnapping, robbery and slaying of Capital University student Anthony Kacir. The other linked him to the fatal shooting of store owner Mustafa (Steve) Rabia during a hold-up at Don's No. 1 Quick Stop in 1997. Jones skipped bail for more than 15 months until he was picked up on August 21, 1998.
John L. Buckner is another current bond fugitive. He was convicted of aggravated robbery for driving the getaway car in the February 11, 1987 slaying of Edith Marcum, a Rite Aid Pharmacy employee. After his release from prison, Buckner was charged with a felony count of drug abuse. After posting bond, Buckner fled November 7, 1997 and remains at large. On December 4, 1997, the bondsman was ordered to pay 20 percent of Buckner's $2,500 bond and was given a year to pay the remaining $2,000. All $2,000 is still outstanding as of September 30, 1998.
One of the accomplishments that Barney is touting in her "reform" campaign against Anthony Celebreeze III is her office's computerization of the bail bond forfeiture collections. The Alive was able to obtain the figures in this article from this computer database as well as verify the failure of her office to collect the forfeited bonds.
Barney continues to campaign on her "Barney Reform Agenda," pledging, among other things, an "electronic data management system and much more." She has promised voters "to demonstrate her ability to transform the Clerk of Court's office" and her literature says "she is well on her way." Results of the election on November 3 will reveal whether Barney's "reform" campaign strategy was successful.
11/05/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
You've had a day or two off since the election--quit your slacking. It's time to "get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights!"
There's already a tentative plan for a December 5 meeting in Columbus of Senator Paul Wellstone's Presidential exploratory committee. Wellstone's economic populism and social liberalism is just the antidote to this year's sorry electoral debate.
Don't expect Al Gore, busy shaking down Buddhist monks for donations, to point out that the average chief executive of a major corporation has seen his income go from 40 times that of his average employee in the 1970s to 195 times larger than employees' income today. Wellstone, like Jerry Brown, could be the last man standing against the New Democrat Gore. But unlike Jerry Brown, Wellstone will likely establish grassroots social justice organizations across the U.S.
Yes, my brothers and sisters, there's work, so much work to do. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently denied Mumia Abu-Jamal's appeal for a new trial. Abu-Jamal is facing the death penalty for allegedly killing a police officer, a charge he vehemently denies. What is clear, whatever your position on his guilt or innocence, is that police and prosecutors conspired to railroad him in his original trial. In a statement from death row, Abu-Jamal writes, "Once again, Pennsylvania's highest court has shown us the justice that FOP money can buy. Ignoring right reason, their own precedent and fundamental justice, they have returned to the stranglehold of death."
The best single comment in this year's gubernatorial race came from Reform Party candidate John R. Mitchel, who noted that he could not support the death penalty until the poor had equal access to those $400-an-hour Gucci-wearing attorneys who speak for the rich.
Abu-Jamal writes that "Every time our nation has come to a fork in the road in regards to race, it has chosen to take the path of compromise and betrayal." Hyperbole? Hardly. African-Americans, who constitute 14 percent of our nation's population, make up 51 percent of the 1.1 million inmates in state and federal prisons. In 1997, a report by the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C. documented that 14 percent of all African-American men are currently or permanently barred from voting due to current incarceration or previous felony conviction. This is the intended consequence of the all-too-obvious racial disparity in who gets locked up in this country, primarily because of the government's bogus "war on drugs."
On October 8, the long-anticipated second volume of the CIA's Inspector General's report was released. Not surprisingly, the Columbus Dispatch ran a small blurb on page 11A with the headline: "CIA says it didn't tell all about Contra trafficking." Guess they forgot to insert the words "drug" or "cocaine" in between Contra and trafficking. Oh, I forgot, semen is a front page story. The CIA's involvement in drug trafficking needs to be kept from us for our own good.
The short of it is that the CIA now admits, among other things, that 14 of its pilots in the Contra resupply network, coordinated by Columbus' own General Richard Secord, were flying drugs into the United States.
Hey, forget about the story of the century. There's some black male predators that need locking up. And what are conditions like in Ohio's prison industrial complex, where there's much profit to be made in the interstate convict market, courtesy of the Voinovich family and the Corrections Corporation of America? Remember the lesson of Youngstown, where a so-called medium security prison turned into a dumping ground for some of Washington, D.C.'s most violent felons. In barely over a year, more than a dozen stabbings and two murders occurred. It took a court-ordered study to reclassify and transfer 113 of the inmates to maximum security.
And there's plenty that needs to be read these days. The Rampac (Republicans Against Montgomery's Political Action Committee) website includes unneeded "rumors" about Betty Montgomery's private life, but does a good job of summing up the real legacy of the first four years of the attorney general's administration.
Of course, inquiring minds will want to take a look at the recently filed complaint by court employee Diane Cossin against former Franklin County Clerk of Court Jesse Oddi and his former Assistant Deputy Kenneth Griffith. Here's a brief sampling: "Oddi sexually propositioned and harassed plaintiff and other female employees at work by stating, for example, that he would 'love for her to come and sit on his face.' Oddi had an 'Italian Stallion' plaque on his desk to boast about his real or imagined sexual prowess."
Exposing corruption and fighting for social justice doesn't pay well, but it's steady work. And once a year, you get to celebrate. This Saturday, I'll be hosting the Free Press "Libby" Awards dinner. We're honoring some of Columbus' finest community activists and freedom fighters: Roberta Booth, Southside activist extraordinaire; Local District 1199 SEIU President Dave Regan; hunger and poverty fighter Lisa Hamler-Podolski; Art and Cindy Strauss, environmental and peace advocates; and the late Selma Walker, founder of the Native American Indian Center.
The values, organizations and constituencies that these people speak for could be the embryonic progressive coalition much needed in Columbus politics. The dinner is a 6 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Rd. Hope to see you there.
11/12/1998
News Briefs
Money machine
Inside the V Group's pattern of alleged laundering and contract steering
by Bob Fitrakis
The recent money-laundering allegations against Governor George Voinovich should come as no surprise to readers of Columbus' alternative newspapers. The lame duck governor and U.S. senator-elect allegedly approved a $60,000 illegal payment from his 1994 gubernatorial campaign fund to the V Group, an architectural and construction company headed by his brother, Paul Voinovich.
In a sworn deposition, Vincent Panichi, the governor's 1994 campaign treasurer, told investigators that he was present at a meeting when the governor authorized an allegedly illegal reimbursement to his brother's company and former Columbus lobbyist Anthony Fabiano for Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) for hiring labor leader Ray Gallagher, a Voinovich partisan. Allegedly, the money was to be laundered through a third party, the political firm of Mamais & Associates.
On May 7, 1997, FBI and IRS agents raided Fabiano's Columbus office and seized his files and financial records as part of a secret grand jury investigation in Hamilton County.
Panichi, who the Columbus Dispatch called a "longtime friend" of the governor, has served as Voinovich's campaign treasurer since 1978. In 1995, Panichi formed the Friends of Voinovich Exploratory Committee with the Federal Elections Commission to launch the governor's successful Senate bid. Panichi is a senior partner in the Cleveland accounting firm of Ciuni & Panichi Inc.
This is not Panichi's first brush with money laundering allegations. On June 30, 1996, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that an obscure construction company, Banks/Carbonne, had "hired the governor's campaign treasurer [Panichi] as its accountant" in 1993. On April 5, 1993, controversial minority contractor Thomas Banks, his brother Robert, his brother's wife and his nieces Kelli and Jennifer all contributed $1,000 to the Voinovich campaign on the same day. Since Panichi served as Banks/Carbonne's accountant and the governor's campaign treasurer, allegations arose that the governor was financing his re-election bid through a money-laundering "pay-to-play" scheme.
Banks/Carbonne Construction Company was founded in February 1991, one month after Governor Voinovich took office. Members of the Carbonne family of Cleveland are longtime financial supporters of the governor. Banks, then a 30-year-old former city "parking officer"--or meter reader--established the company as a minority business enterprise. Despite Banks' scant experience in major public construction projects, Police Chief James Jackson, OSU President Gordon Gee and Mayor Greg Lashutka appear on his 1991 resume as references.
By mid-1996, Banks/Carbonne had secured at least $3.7 million in no-bid minority construction contracts from the Voinovich administration. The company was part of nine out of 16 largest state projects, including OSU's Jerome Schottenstein Center.
A Columbus Alive cover story on September 4, 1996, stated: "All evidence suggests that since the onset of the George Voinovich administration in January 1991, the governor's recently resigned chief of staff and former V Group vice president, Paul Mifsud, systematically engineered the steering of contracts and public funds to political backers and Voinovich family members." Mifsud spent six months in prison in 1997 and '98 as a consequence of a sweetheart construction deal from Banks. He also took the "Fifth Amendment" against self-recrimination in Inspector General Richard G. Ward's 1996 investigation of an alleged political contribution for state construction contract steering schemes to finance Voinovich's 1994 re-election bid.
On July 22, 1991, Voinovich's Criminal Justice Administrator Joe Gilyard was fired after writing a memo claiming that Phil Hamilton and Paul Voinovich were pressuring him for illegal jail and prison contracts that the then-Voinovich Company planned to build during Voinovich's tenure in office. Former State Inspector General David Sturtz was investigating whether or not Hamilton, the governor's original transition chief and V Group lobbyist, had helped engineer the creation of Banks/Carbonne to steer money into the governor's political coffers. He was fired while pursuing these allegations.
Voinovich's strange bedfellows
From the beginning, the Voinovich administration and the V Group have faced allegations of money laundering and questionable associations with suspected organized crime figures. Voinovich appointed Umberto Fideli(?) to the Ohio Turnpike Commission; he nominated Carmen Parisi to the same commission and later withdrew the nomination after public outcry. According to law enforcement sources, Fideli(?) has reputed ties to the Mafia and Parisi is a reputed mobster and loan shark.
In 1990, Voinovich ran on a campaign promise to "streamline" Ohio's environmental regulations. One of his first acts as the self-proclaimed "Environmental Governor" was to allow the start-up of the world's largest hazardous waste incinerator 1,100 feet from an elementary school in East Liverpool, Ohio. The man behind the toxic waste incinerator, according to an April 1992 Columbus Free Press article, was Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens, who also introduced the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) into United States financial markets. BCCI later collapsed and left a trail of paper linking it to drug dealers, international terrorists, black market arms merchants and the U.S. national security apparatus.
The CIA admitted using BCCI for its own secret financial transactions. In 1983, David Melocik, the DEA's congressional liaison, informed a congressional committee that Afghanistan rebels backed by the CIA were making "their money off the sale of opium." The opium revenues were traced into BCCI accounts. A Pakistani, Agha Hasan Abedi, reportedly founded BCCI with the opium revenue.
In April 1991, the Free Press reported that the Swiss firm Von Roll Ltd. was simultaneously being investigated for illegally supplying war materials to Iraq while building the incinerator in East Liverpool. WTI, which operates the incinerator, became a subsidiary of Von Roll. On March 20, 1991, the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitgung reported that Von Roll had declared materials to be forging presses that had actually been intended for construction of the Iraqi "supergun" to attack Israel.
Recently, a grand jury investigated ties between Paul Voinovich and two former employees of the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA), Vincent Zumpano and Pasquale "Patsy" Deluca. Zumpano and Deluca were investigated for telling people that they had pull with the Voinovich administration to get environmental regulations waived for a price.
In April 1997, Zumpano, a former toilet paper salesman who also happened to be at dinner business meetings with Paul Voinovich, was convicted of offering a bribe to a Jefferson County Commissioner in exchange for the V Group getting a construction management contract for the county jail. Zumpano's defense was that he was drunk at the time and didn't remember his illegal activities. Jefferson County Prosecutor Steven(?) Stern portrayed him as a "bagman" for the V Group.
The federal grand jury and Internal Revenue Service investigation into the recent Voinovich money laundering allegations took depositions from Panichi, Fabiano, Gallagher and Frank Fela, a V Group vice president. Fabiano, a lobbyist for Von Roll and the hazardous waste incinerator WTI, allegedly arranged to pay the Voinovich campaign money to Gallagher and claim it was for non-existent "voter program development." On Sunday, the Akron Beacon Journal reported that "in late 1993, WTI paid Fabiano $28,000 a month plus expenses to lobby the Voinovich administration in Columbus. Around the same time, Fabiano started paying the V Group a $6,000 monthly retainer; those payments ended around the same time Fabiano stopped lobbying for WTI in 1997."
Gallagher, no stranger to controversy, runs a political consulting firm, Ray Gallagher & Associates. The Cleveland pipefitter remains the chairman of Pipefitters Local 120's "regulative committee," according to his deposition, and admitted to a felony conviction for "theft in office."
Gallagher helped secure labor endorsements for Voinovich in his initial 1990 gubernatorial campaign. In 1991, Voinovich rewarded Gallagher with an appointment to a regional board of the Ohio Industrial Commission, a $34,500 a year job, and made him chair of his Labor Advisory Board.
In late 1993, Voinovich appointed Gallagher to the Ohio Industrial Commission's statewide governing board, a job paying $79,780 a year. As Gallagher awaited confirmation, news broke of his felony conviction, torpedoing his final appointment.
As Gallagher tells it, he approached Fabiano about a job: "I let him know I wanted something. I knew he--you know, I don't know, he was looking like he was successful, whatever he was doing."
Gallagher said that Fabiano "told me that he had a contract for campaigning for Voinovich." In 1994, Fabiano & Associates paid Gallagher $25,000. He recalls that when he worked for Fabiano, "I was? never used--I never had no desk or anything like that."
When asked about Voinovich Company (a V Group subsidiary) activities, he replied, "The only two people that I knew was Paul Voinovich and Frank Fela that you asked me about."
The U.S. Merit Systems Board barred Fela from holding public office for 18 months after he coerced Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority employees to give money to the Republican Party. Fela served as an authority personnel director until 1986. He later became the finance director of the city of Cuyahoga Falls, but the federal order forced his resignation in July 1988.
In 1989, while barred from public office, Fela was the treasurer of Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart's re-election bid. The mayor rewarded Fela by appointing him Cuyahoga Falls development director. That same year, the Summit County Board of Elections pressured Fela to resign amidst a scandal involving $2,700 in anonymous donations to the campaign. Fela resigned in July 1990.
In January 1991, Fela emerged as a vice president for the V Group (then known as the Voinovich Group), at the same time as the Ohio Elections Commission leveled a $500 fine against Mayor Robart's election committee.
Before he was fired by Governor Voinovich, Gilyard claimed that Fela was the Voinovich Company point man who was pressuring him to meet with Phil Hamilton, the company's lobbyist. As director of criminal justice, Gilyard had bonding authority. Three times a year, he could sign and the state of Ohio would issue $50 million in bonds for prison and jail construction. On Gilyard's sixth day as director, he alleged that Hamilton lobbied him to illegally "divert $30 million in bonds to the V Group."
In 1993, Franklin County Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker reportedly accompanied Fela and other Voinovich Company employees to Russia to meet with sculptor Zurab Tsereteli who wanted to locate a more than 300-foot-tall statue of Christopher Columbus in Columbus, Ohio. Shoemaker became the project's strongest public advocate. Fela lobbied Franklin County Commissioners for an unbid contract to renovate the Franklin County Jail. Voinovich-Sgro, the architectural firm associated with the V Group, initially estimated a $2.2 million renovation. On May 9, 1995, the V Group later signed a contract to renovate the jail for a little less than $5.4 million. The Voinovich Companies, also part of the V Group, was hired by Shoemaker and her fellow commissioners to "act as construction managers" and keep the cost of the V Group contract under control.
By October 1995, the project's costs rose to $9 million. Final costs were approximately $13 million. In 1996, V Group Vice President Clark Miller gave Shoemaker a $900 contribution for her re-election campaign.
In 1997, State Auditor Jim Petro's investigation of the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District detailed some $2.7 million in illegal or improperly spent public funds. Once again, the V Group was involved in the scandal. Petro's audit showed that the V Group was paid $2.6 million by the Gilbane Construction Company as a consultant on the first phase of a district project. Petro estimated that the V Group's profit margin on the project was 80 percent.
If Governor Voinovich is found guilty by the Ohio Elections Commission of campaign money laundering, he could be removed from office, barred for life from ever holding public office in Ohio and fined $10,000. The punishment does not apply to the U.S. Senate seat he won last week.
11/19/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Trying to figure out the "big picture" concerning the recent complaints filed against Senator-elect and current lame duck Governor George Voinovich? Wondering just exactly who Vincent Panichi (pronounced pa-nicky), the Governor's campaign treasurer, is? Here's another piece of the puzzle about the man who testified under oath that the brothers Voinovich allegedly agreed to launder campaign money to pay Cleveland labor boss Anthony A. "Ray" Gallagher.
Last week, Alive readers were reminded that Panichi was also the accountant for the controversial Banks-Carbone Construction Co. But equally interesting is the fact that Panichi was also on Ohio's Development Financing Advisory Board. A September 4, 1996 Alive article outlined the "payers and players" in Governor V's 1994 re-election bid. One example of an apparent quid pro quo is the case of Orlando Baking Company of Cleveland. On September 30, 1993, the company received a state 166 Direct Loan under the Ohio Enterprise Bond fund for $3.57 million to purchase equipment and machinery and to expand its existing facility.
Per usual, just two months earlier, the company's owner, Nick Orlando, contributed $4,000 to the Voinovich for Governor Committee, campaign Treasurer Vincent Panichi. The Advisory Board justified the loan on the grounds that the Orlando Baking Company was building a bakery that would lead us "into the next century." And guess who was listed as Orlando Baking's accountant? The accounting firm of Cuini & Panichi, Inc. Remember, he was also on the Development Financing Advisory Board that granted the loan, although he was absent from the meeting when the Orlando application was approved.
Here a Panichi, there a Panichi, everywhere a Panichi-niche.
Gilyard's back and the Guv could take a beating, hey now, hey now
The Guv's former Director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services (GOCJS) is back and has said that he may personally file charges against the brothers Voinovich for corruption. Ironically, in 1990, Gilyard prepared an extensive Memorandum of Law for Paul Pfeifer outlining the "Common Law Powers of the Ohio Attorney General" in his race against Lee Fisher for Attorney General that year. Pfeifer barely lost to "Landslide Lee" and now sits on the Ohio Supreme Court. Gilyard's memorandum--originally designed to attack former Attorney General Anthony J. Celebrezze for not ferreting out corruption during Governor Richard Celeste's administration--stands as the last best hope in exposing the far worse practices of the Voinovich years.
Gilyard's argument--embraced at the time by Secretary of State candidate Bob Taft, soon to be sworn in as Ohio's governor--is that "Ohio, like many other states, has vested its Attorney General with not only statutory powers, but also `constitutional' or `common law' powers that are inherent to the office. As such, Ohio's Attorney General has the power to initiate suits and investigations independent of, but not in contravention of the General Assembly's dictates."
Moreover, Ohio Revised Code 109.83 authorizes that the Attorney General "may" investigate any organized criminal activity in Ohio when "directed" by the Governor or General Assembly. Gilyard noted that "organized crime activity" as defined in ORC 177.01(E)(1) includes "'any criminal activity that relates to the corruption of a public official.'"
In 1992, Gilyard, Taft, Pfeifer and Voinovich charged that Attorney General Celebrezze "`aided and abetted' in any public criminal wrongdoing that went undiscovered in the Celeste administration...."
Gilyard hints that he may personally file charges against the Voinovich administration. When asked how a private citizen could do this, he quickly points to Ohio Revised Code 177.02 Complaint Alleging Organized Criminal Activity. "Let me read you the law, Bob," Gilyard explained. "`Any person may file with the organized crime investigations commission a complaint that alleges that organized criminal activity has occurred in a county.' What do you suppose `any person' means?"
On October 26, Columbus officials agreed to fork over $150,000 of taxpayers' money to west side resident Carl Lampart. It seemed a little light to me for the victim of a "wrongful shooting" by Columbus police officer Dennis Prestel. After all, Lampart, according to his attorney, has a hole in his scrotum and bullet fragments in his penis.
Lampart, a Hilltop resident, was stopped for a suspected "traffic violation" in front of his own home in the middle of the day. Officer Prestel exited his police cruiser with his gun already drawn, according to public records. This is a direct violation of Columbus Division of Police directive that specifically limits an "unnecessary or premature display of firearm."
In a sworn deposition, Prestel testified that he was unaware of this directive. He cited the street practice that officers can draw their guns "anytime they wish." So many jaywalkers, so few bullets.
Following Officer Prestel's shooting of the unarmed Lampart, the Columbus Police Detective Bureau issued a media information statement purporting to tell the public the truth of the justified shooting. The Columbus Dispatch dutifully reprinted the police version that "As Mr. Lampart exited his vehicle he had his hand in a pocket." Big problem for Officer Prestel: it turns out Lampart was wearing sweatpants at the time that didn't have any pockets. A Lieutenant Ralph Casto has since acknowledged that he wrote the fictitious version of the event. A second version came forward and was quickly discredited by eyewitnesses including the sworn statement of Prestel's partner, Officer Patricia Gibson.
Good thing you can count on the Dispatch to uphold the thin blue lie.
FEATURED ARTICLE
11/26/1998
by Bob Fitrakis
Joe Gilyard, a larger-than-life political figure, died of a massive and sudden heart attack at 3:04 p.m. on Friday, November 20. Gilyard, 47, the chair of the Worthington Community Relations Board, was at Worthington City Hall interviewing candidates for promotion to police sergeant at the time of his death.
As reported in Columbus Alive last week, Gilyard, formerly head of the state's Office of Criminal Justice Services, said he was preparing to file criminal charges against Governor George Voinovich and his brother Paul Voinovich for "organized crime activity" as defined in the Ohio Revised Code 177.01(E)(1).
Joe Gilyard, a larger-than-life political figure, died of a massive and sudden heart attack at 3:04 p.m. on Friday, November 20. Gilyard, 47, the chair of the Worthington Community Relations Board, was at Worthington City Hall interviewing candidates for promotion to police sergeant at the time of his death.
As reported in Columbus Alive last week, Gilyard, formerly head of the state's Office of Criminal Justice Services, said he was preparing to file criminal charges against Governor George Voinovich and his brother Paul Voinovich for "organized crime activity" as defined in the Ohio Revised Code 177.01(E)(1).
In January 1991, then-newly elected Governor Voinovich appointed Gilyard to his cabinet as director of Criminal Justice Services. As a "cluster director," several state departments reported directly to Gilyard, including Corrections, Youth Services, Liquor Control, the state Highway Patrol and the Ohio Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services. Additionally, Gilyard controlled Ohio's multi-jurisdictional drug task forces and the state's jail-building program. These last two responsibilities proved his political undoing.
In an unpublished manuscript that Gilyard completed just prior to his death, he recalled how the U.S. Justice Department became "strident in their demands for an audit" because of allegations of impropriety by then-Franklin County Sheriff Earl Smith's Drug Task Force. Then-Lieutenant Governor Mike DeWine, now a U.S. Senator, urged an audit of Smith for "political capital," or so Gilyard believed at the time. Gilyard's 1991 memo detailing alleged illegal activity by the drug-enforcement network, together with his accusations that the governor's brother was using his sibling's office for professional gain, proved to be Gilyard's political undoing.
Gilyard recounts the height of the "audit war" in his manuscript: "Earl was now fully ballistic," he said. Smith brought criminal charges against Gilyard for allegedly using a state car to visit a girlfriend in Cleveland. "[Smith] called me to say he knew of the illegal campaign contributions Voinovich had taken from the waste hauling companies and if we did not back off, he would expose it to the media. As a warning shot across our bow, Earl had his deputies stop garbage trucks on the street, charge them with being overweight, making them dump their excess right there on the street," Gilyard wrote in his manuscript.
Voinovich and DeWine appeared to offer Gilyard as a sacrificial lamb after Gilyard wrote a memo to DeWine claiming that Paul Voinovich and Paul Mifsud, then the Governor's chief of staff, were pressuring him to illegally release $30 million in bond money to the Voinovich Cos. The governor fired Gilyard on July 22, 1991; Gilyard was tried and acquitted on all criminal charges. Still, both his health and political career were shattered by his tumultuous six-month tenure in the Voinovich cabinet.
But the political dirt was not as easily shaken off by the governor and Mifsud. In 1997, Mifsud went to jail for ethics violations in connection with a sweetheart deal with a local contractor who went on to win several million dollar in state construction management fees. The governor, who was recently elected to represent the state in the U.S. Senate alongside DeWine, is currently being investigated by the Ohio Elections Commission for alleged money laundering in connection with his 1994 election campaign.
The pursuit of allegations of corruption in the Voinovich administration may have begun with Gilyard, who in the early 1990s turned to then-Ohio Inspector General David Sturtz to investigate Governor Voinovich. As Gilyard tells the story, "The first FBI agent we were assigned blew us off. He said it sounded like a bunch of petty political squabbling to him. He filed his report and was out of here right now. The second agent was not much better. Sturtz said the guy was `whistling through the cemetery.'
"Sturtz continued to investigate...at one point he told me he believed his life was at risk. He also told me he went undercover and was in a certain residence that he expected might explode at any moment," wrote Gilyard.
While Sturtz' final report on the Gilyard affair failed to bring criminal charges against key players and friends of the Voinovich administration, most political observers believe it did prompt the governor to remove Inspector General Sturtz from office in 1995.
A week before his death, Gilyard called Earl Smith and told the former sheriff he was right about the governor's alleged corruption. "He [Gilyard] knew that I knew what was really going on. When he came in to audit me, he gave me a wink. It's a sad commentary, what happened to his political career. He was very intelligent and faithful to his bosses. When he wouldn't go along with their corruption, they destroyed him," Smith told the Alive.
When asked to comment on his passing, Sturtz stated, "Joe Gilyard was hard-working, intelligent, politically astute, but made the mistake of swimming with some sharks. He tried to swim with the real big sharks and when he drew the line in the sand on corruption, they made him pay for it. He thought he had some very powerful friends, but they left him hanging."
The Sunday before he died, Gilyard was a guest on my local political talk show on WSMZ radio. He commented on recent allegations of money laundering by the 1994 Voinovich re-election campaign. As a former writer for the Cleveland Call and Post newspaper and media man for Cleveland City Council President George Forbes, Gilyard was a perceptive media analyst. The last page of his manuscript summed up his view of Columbus political coverage: "The newspapers, particularly the Columbus Dispatch, pilloried the Celestials [the Celeste administration] for their corruption," while he characterized the Voinovich administration as getting away with much worse. Gilyard, in particular, felt that the Voinovich administration and its alliance with the Voinovich Companies and their lobbyist were unethical and illegal. "To that end, the federal and state RICO statutes should brought to bear in the interest of the people of the state of Ohio."
As Gilyard saw it, "I began my political career as a poet, prospered as a gunslinger, and died as a whistleblower."
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12/03/1998 by Bob Fitrakis
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12/11/1998
Excessive force
Verdict finds "custom" of abuse at police department
by Bob Fitrakis
The Columbus Division of Police received another black eye last week in its fight against allegations of civil rights abuses when a state appeals court awarded a huge verdict to a local man who was the victim of excessive force at the hands of an off-duty Columbus police officer. The court's decision stated that the abuse was in part caused by the department's and the city's "deliberate indifference to the excessive use of force by CDP officers."
In a separate action, the city is currently negotiating a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice, also in regards to an alleged pattern of civil rights abuses within the Columbus police department.
Ohio's 10th Appellate District Court of Appeals issued an opinion on December 1 that awarded approximately $1.6 million to Gregory L. Miller, one of the largest judgments ever against the city of Columbus in such as case. "We had a mountain of evidence, 33 witnesses. The city basically failed to mount a defense," John Jaklevich, Miller's attorney, said of the judgement.
Miller sued the city of Columbus over civil rights violations when he was shot in Worthington by an off-duty Columbus police officer who flashed his badge. The officer later emptied his gun at a car Miller was driving and left Miller with bullet fragments in his shoulder and permanent nerve damage. Miller offered to settle his claims against the city for $330,000, Jaklevich said, but the court record indicates that "Columbus never responded to this offer."
The city is expected to appeal the case to the Ohio Supreme Court.
Miller's saga began during the early Sunday morning hours of July 23, 1989--his long-time friend Terry S. Hunt's wedding night. Following the wedding reception at the Delaware Eagle's Lounge, Miller agreed to drive Hunt, who had been drinking, back to his wedding suite at a Worthington hotel. Neither Miller nor the groom made it to the hotel that night. Miller ended up with a bullet in his shoulder from the gun of off-duty Columbus Police Officer Jeffrey Leesburg.
Miller was driving his wife's 1981 Toyota Tercel when he encountered Officer Leesburg on Wilson Bridge Road. According to Miller and Hunt, Leesburg was following closely behind the Tercel in his own car and repeatedly flashed his headlights as Miller drove. Hunt, the groom, admits that he made an obscene gesture to the unmarked car. After crossing a series of railroad tracks, Miller--thinking it might be someone from the wedding party--pulled the car over.
Hunt got out of the car and approached Leesburg, who was dressed in civilian clothes. A confrontation ensued between the newlywed and the off-duty police officer. Leesburg, according to all parties, flashed his badge and ordered Hunt back into his car. When Hunt refused, he claims Leesburg flicked a burning cigar in his face. Hunt responded in kind with his cigarette. Hunt claimed that Leesburg then shoved him, and he shoved the officer back.
Hunt said at that point, Leesburg punched him at least four times in the face and knocked him repeatedly to the ground. Documents of the newlywed's swollen face support Hunt's version of the incident. Miller, seeing his just-wed friend being pummeled on his wedding night, exited the Tercel in an attempt to break up the altercation. He said Leesburg proceeded to shove him to the ground as well. Miller said that after being knocked to the ground, he believed the best course of action was to get Hunt into the car and drive away as quickly as possible.
Miller returned to the Tercel and began slowly backing up to where Hunt lay beaten on the road. Officer Leesburg left where Hunt was laying and ran toward the Tercel. In Miller and Hunt's version, the slowly moving car backed into Leesburg's left leg and broke it. This was also Leesburg's original testimony to public safety personnel. Leesburg then pulled his 9mm semi-automatic pistol and fired 15 shots at the Tercel. At least six of the bullets struck the auto and, according to the appeals court decision, "one of which entered near the rear license plate, passed through the backs of the rear seat and driver's seat, and lodged in Greg's [Miller's] left shoulder."
Hunt, who was still laying on the road as shots were fired, managed to get to his feet and flee into a nearby field. Eventually, with Hunt now driving, a wounded and unconscious Miller arrived at the Ohio State University Hospital at approximately 2 a.m. They were met by Ohio State University police officers who immediately notified the Columbus police. Officer Leesburg had instructed his son, a passenger in his vehicle, to call 911 and report the incident.
Leesburg later testified under oath that Miller had turned the Tercel around and attempted to run him down "at a high rate of speed." Leesburg swore that he was struck in the left leg by the Tercel's front bumper. He claimed that he fired his weapon only because he feared that Miller "might make another attempt to run him down." Fearing that the Tercel was backing up for an alleged second attempt to hit him, he fired "six or seven rounds at the Tercel" in self-defense. After the initial shooting, Leesburg contends that the crazed Miller first drove forward and then defiantly attempted to run him over again so he was forced to shoot his "remaining eight or nine rounds at the Tercel."
The appeals court noted that "the evidence presented at trial discredited much of Officer Leesburg's version of the events." Jeffrey Bookwalter, a mechanical engineer specializing in trajectory analysis and interior and exterior ballistics, pointed out that at least one of the six bullets that hit the Tercel could not have been fired from the position described by Leesburg. Columbus Police Detective Fred Kaufman testified that he could not find the powder burns on the road surface that should have been left as a result of Leesburg's version of the event. Moreover, testimony indicated that Leesburg had told Worthington Police Officer James Moran, Worthington Paramedic Lieutenant Jay Arnholt and his treating physician at Riverside Hospital that his leg had been injured in a low-speed impact when the Tercel was backing up.
A warrant obtained by the Columbus Division of Police on July 24, 1989, to search the Tercel stated that the Tercel had "back[ed] into and over" Leesburg's leg. These facts did not stop Leesburg from swearing out a criminal complaint against Miller charging him with felonious assault on a police officer and "knowingly" causing "serious physical harm" by "willfully running him down."
On June 4, 1990, after a six-day trial, the jury found Miller not guilty on two counts of felonious assault. On July 23, both Miller and Hunt filed separate legal suits against Officer Leesburg, the city of Worthington and the city of Columbus. The suits languished in the court system until February 1997, when the combined cases finally went to trial. The jury awarded Miller $750,000 and Hunt $250,000. A trial court judge later reduced Hunt's award to $100,000.
The court decision also speaks to an alleged pattern of civil rights abuses on the part of Columbus police, a pattern that extends to the department's top "policy maker," the city of Columbus. Both Miller and Hunt sued under Section 1983, Title 42 of the U.S. Code arguing that Leesburg had acted "under the color of state law" by using his badge and gun in the incident and that his conduct had deprived Miller and Hunt of a "federal constitutional or statutory right."
In order to win their case, Miller and Hunt had to prove that "a government custom exists where government employees engage in a practice which, although not expressly authorized, is so persistent or widespread that it can be said that the government's policy making officials had either actual or constructive notice of the practice, but failed with `deliberate indifference' to correct the practice." Also, they had to prove that the city of Columbus "had a custom of tolerating misconduct prior to the incident in question."
Both the trial jury and the appeals court found that Miller and Hunt had proved their case against the Columbus police officer and the city. The appeals court reminded the city of Columbus that, "it is well established that a municipal police officer is without authority to detain or arrest a person outside the geographic boundaries of the municipality by which he is employed for a traffic offense committed outside such geographic boundaries." The appeals court decision stated: "As a result, Officer Leesburg's `seizure' of Terry [Hunt] and Greg [Miller] was per se unreasonable for purposes of the Fourth Amendment."
"Plaintiff's testimony, Leesburg's statements immediately after the incident, and the testimony of a ballistics expert, all indicate that Officer Leesburg fired 15 shots from his pistol at Greg [Miller] in response to an accident which was itself caused by Leesburg's misconduct, and that Leesburg's use of such deadly force continued long after anyone could have reasonably believed that Greg's [Miller's] operation of the Tercel presented any threat to Officer Leesburg," the appeals court decision states.
The appeals court also noted that "Plaintiffs presented statistical evidence that CDP officers reported 202 uses of force during the 1988 calendar year, and that only one of the 202 reported uses of force resulted in any disciplinary action." From January 1974 until the confrontation on Hunt's wedding night, Officer Leesburg reported more than 50 uses of force. The appeals court stated that, "Although most of the reports involve minor or moderate uses of force, the reports do suggest a pattern of Officer Leesburg losing his temper and becoming verbally and physically abusive. Nonetheless, every report was resolved in Officer Leesburg's favor."
In a particularly damning passage, the appeals court noted: "Under the IAB [Internal Affairs Bureau] system, even credible complaints regarding a Columbus police officer's excessive use of force are rendered meaningless, while at the same time, the weight given to the involved officer's statements are enhanced based solely upon his status as a police officer." The court continued, "Additional evidence of the CDP's policy maker's deliberate indifference to the excessive use of force by CDP officers is found in the department's complete failure to seriously investigate Officer Leesburg's conduct, or to punish him in any manner."
Of particular interest to the appeals court was the fact that "no one ever inquired into the obvious inconsistencies between Officer Leesburg's statements immediately after the incident and his subsequent formal statement to police." Leesburg, instead of being investigated for perjury, was promoted to sergeant. "The CDP's reaction to Officer Leesburg's gross abuse of his authority and utter disregard for the public safety speaks volumes about the existing disposition of the CDP's policy maker towards his officer's use of excessive force," concluded the appeals court.
In letting the jury's $750,000 verdict in favor of Miller stand, while adding on 10 percent interest from the date of the incident almost a decade earlier, and reasonable attorney fees, the city and taxpayers are charged with a $1.6 million verdict.
Why? Because the appeals court believes that the jury correctly found "that the effect of this flawed investigatory and disciplinary scheme was to encourage the use of excessive force by Columbus police officers, and that the CDP's policy maker perpetuated and acquiesced in this custom with deliberate indifference when he failed to take action to correct the situation."
12/17/1998
Carpetbaggers
The out-of-town mayoral race
by Bob Fitrakis
As an enthusiastic political activist and commentator, I've always marveled at the blatancy of the Columbus Dispatch's agitation/propaganda campaigns. Surprisingly, the Other Paper is mimicking the howl of the Wolfes in two of the more absurd recent schemes.
The first--which really goes to the heart of the Dispatch's unashamedly plantation-style rule in Columbus--is to convince citizens of the city that affluent white suburbanites are the best candidates for mayor. Now, what if I told the people of, say, Upper Arlington or New Albany, that a black urban activist like Bill Moss was the best candidate to be their mayor? You know, Ben Espy should be mayor of Grove City if you think about it.
But, the ministers of propaganda at the Dispatch and the sound-alike wannabes at the Other Paper are busy writing headlines like "3 potential mayors live outside of city" (Dispatch Metro section front, December 3) and "Mayor's race '99: Buck the sequel" (Other Paper cover, December 3). Their stories tout such candidates as U.S. Congressperson Deborah Pryce, a Perry Township Republican; former Republican mayor Buck Rinehart, who's resided in Dublin for years; or Franklin County Commissioner Dewey Stokes, a Republican from Galloway.
Now, we're going to hear how greatly honored less-fortunate Columbusites are to have the likes of Congressperson Pryce move from her suburban splendor into the deep, dark city. White woman's burden, so to speak. The Dispatch went so far as to quote Rinehart as saying it would be "no problem" to pack up "some boxes" and move back to the city. Stokes assured Columbusites that he "could be in the city in 24 hours." Thanks, oh great B'wana! You would do that for us?
The thought of gays, people of color, poor whites and the urban riffraff running amok without the guiding lily-white hand of our "betters" is just too much for Suburban News Publications and the Dispatch owners to bear. Did I tell you there's a really good Ohio Senator candidate living in Kentucky? And a really good potential U.S. President living in Canada?
The second campaign involves using any means necessary to justify Columbus Public School Superintendent Rosa Smith's unconscionable raise. The December 3 Other Paper, in seeming acceptance of the $30,000 raise, compared Smith to a sports star: "Are they crazy giving her that kind of money? Don't they know it takes Albert Belle almost two entire games to earn that much?"
The real question is, does the Other Paper know that the medium income in Columbus is $26,000 and that 44 percent of city families earn less than $21,000 a year? The children in the Columbus school system are the poorest of the poor, the truly disadvantaged. Remember, 40 percent of the school children in Columbus, overwhelmingly from more affluent and predominantly white families, go to suburban schools under the Orwellian-named "Win-Win Agreement." Meanwhile, more than 60 percent of Columbus public school kids are minorities. What gives Rosa Smith the right to renege on a four-year contract she signed a little over a year ago and demand to re-negotiate, as if she's some millionaire prima donna sports star? $120,000 a year isn't enough? One thing that permits this behavior is the attitude of the Other Paper.
The Dispatch used a Sunday, December 6, editorial titled "Just compensation" to sell Smith's raise to the ignorant and unenlightened masses. The editorial gave Smith credit for raising 1998 test scores by 5 percent. The problem is that Smith has only been on the job since late September 1997, and it's hardly likely that she had much impact on the '98 scores. Most shocking is the Dispatch's visible campaign against the school board's only two African-American members, Bill Moss and Loretta Heard.
Both Moss and Heard had voted against Smith's raise, mostly because of recent revelations that she tried to push through a quickie unbid $30 million computer contract to a firm where her son works. The Wolfe family editorial writers called Moss and Heard's act of conscience and courage "an embarrassment to Columbus schools, and their criticisms of Smith and fellow board members are seldom, if ever, grounded in fact and rational thinking."
Now, let me see if I understand "facts" and "rational thinking" here: According to the Dispatch, I should care less whether Ms. Smith breaks her word and her contract and sends her lawyer to blackmail the school board into renegotiating her contract on the threat she'll leave after a year. I should completely ignore the unbelievably high, 22 percent rate of poverty in Columbus and the fact that her raise is $4,000 more than the total household incomes of half the families in the city. Not only that, it's wrong to think of her as a public servant and educator; rather I should compare her salary to what "a chief executive of a $460 million private enterprise would earn."
And, if the two black school board members, who recognize the real plight of Columbus school children, dare speak up against the official party line or Columbus' version of Pravda, then, just as in the former Soviet Union, I should question their sanity and ability to reason.
I think I understand. It is the manifest destiny of the rich from the shining shores of Buckeye Lake, Bexley and New Albany to control and dominate all of Columbus from the north city limit to the south. From the east to the west. Long live neo-colonialism! All power to the carpetbaggers!
12/24/1998
News Briefs
White power
Electing the supremacists among us
by Bob Fitrakis
How does the local daily newspaper cover the retirement of a "stalwart conservative" state representative? By overlooking ties to white supremacist groups, of course. The December 20 Columbus Dispatch featured a Section C front-page story covering the retirement of House Speaker Pro-Tem William G. Batchelder, a Republican from Medina. The article, written by Dispatch Statehouse reporter Lee Leonard, described Batchelder as "a rock-ribbed conservative."
Leonard followed the next day with a laudatory Forum piece on Batchelder's retirement as the second most powerful man in the Ohio House. In Leonard's analysis, "Batchelder longed to be Speaker of the Ohio House and might have been, except that he refused to exchange his conservative principles for today's go-along practical politics." Leonard's articles are vague on the specifics of Batchelder's vaulted "conservative instincts."
Leonard ended his opinion piece by quoting Republican House Majority Leader Randall Gardner, who claimed, "There are few people who can't be replaced. Bill Batchelder is one of them."
Leonard's article and Forum opinion piece failed to mention that in April 1997, Columbus Alive revealed that Batchelder was listed as a member of a little-known and highly secretive far-right Council for National Policy (CNP). Author and investigative reporter Russ Bellant and Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates both told the Alive that the CNP had ties to white supremacists. Berlet described CNP members as "not only traditionally conservative, but also [ascribed to them] nativism, xenophobia, theories of racial superiority, sexism, homophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, reaction and in some cases outright neo-fascism."
Well-known CNP board members include: the Reverend Pat Robertson, a right-wing TV evangelist and former Republican presidential candidate; the Reverend Jerry Falwell, leader of the now-defunct Moral Majority; Phyllis Schlafly, leading anti-feminist; and Joseph Coors, whose family finances an interlocking network of ultra-conservative and far-right institutions.
Less prominent members of the CNP are more telling of the organization's politics, according to Bellant. For example, one member is R.J. Rushdoony, the theological leader of America's "Christian Reconstruction" movement that advocates that Christian fundamentalists take "dominion" over America, abolish secular humanist democratic government and institute strict Old Testament law. Rushdoony argues that to restore morality in America: "Homosexuals...adulterers, blasphemers, astrologers and others will be executed." White supremacists like Richard Shoff, a former Ku Klux Klan leader in Indiana, and John McGoff, a well-known supporter of the former South African apartheid government, are also members.
Bellant says that the Council's creation was inspired by business and political leaders who are also leaders of the John Birch Society. Founded in 1958, the John Birch Society was initially identified by scholars as a racist and anti-Semitic organization. The Birch Society and the CNP had been intertwined since the Council's inception in 1981. Tim LaHaye, a Moral Majority leader, received backing from the late Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, who is a member of the Birch Society's National Council, to found the CNP.
In 1982, Tom Ellis succeeded LaHaye as CNP President. Ellis formerly served as director of the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that finances efforts to prove that African-Americans are genetically inferior to whites. Eugenicists William Shockley, Arthur Jensen and Roger Pearson are recipients of past Pioneer grants. Pearson is on record advocating that "inferior races" should be "exterminated."
Bellant and Berlet warned Alive readers that while Birchers are regarded as "extremists," their allies in the CNP, like Batchelder, are routinely accepted as mainstream Republican Party leaders, despite the company they keep.
Similarly, the Washington Post reported on December 11 that one of President Bill Clinton's most ardent foes, Republican Representative Robert L. Barr Jr. of Georgia, acknowledged that he had given the keynote address earlier this year at the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) national board meeting. The CCC has a racist and anti-Semitic agenda similar to the CNP.
"Take 10 bottles of milk to represent all humans on Earth. Nine of them will be chocolate and only one white. Now, mix all those bottles together and you've gotten rid of the troublesome bottle of white milk. There too is the way to get rid of the world of whites. Convince them to mix their few genes with the genes of the many. Genocide via the bedroom chamber is as long lasting as genocide via war," reads a paragraph on a CCC website.
Barr, an ardent supporter of impeachment, recently said, "I came to the conclusion long ago that this President has brought disgrace to the office of the presidency and that something had to be done." Barr voted yes on all four counts of impeachment against Clinton on Saturday.
Batchelder, after 30 years in the Ohio House, will become a Medina County judge.
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1/07/1999
Wright stuff
The alleged conflict of interest involves some familiar faces
by Bob Fitrakis
Politicians and wannabes take note: The best time to get caught in a political scandal is on Christmas Eve. Columbus City Councilwoman Les Wright conveniently announced her resignation from council on Tuesday, December 22. Two days later, on Christmas Eve, the Dispatch ran a copyrighted story reporting that the Ohio Ethics Commission had recommended to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien to file felony conflict-of-interest charges against her.
Wright offered the standard lame excuse politicians use when under investigation. She, of course, was resigning to spend more time with her family and, being a Democrat, to help the poor and needy. You may remember the governor's former chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, resigned to "spend more time with his family" shortly before being convicted and spending six months in the pokey.
Wright's attorney, Larry James, confirmed that the ethics commission had finally acted on a June 1995 complaint from John W. Hay Jr., a local construction consultant and former Columbus Alive contributing writer. James, a high-profile lawyer and reputed political fixer, is the former safety director for the city of Columbus. As luck would have it, he belongs to the same political party as Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien. James told the Dispatch that "he expects the issue to be resolved without felony charges." Do I hear the whispers of a first-degree misdemeanor plea?
As James explained it to the Dispatch, "It depends on how you read the facts and how you read the law... the ethics commission saw them one way; we saw them another. Now we'll have to address that with Ron." That would be Mr. O'Brien, or Prosecutor O'Brien to us less well-connected citizens. The Wright affair and its bizarre history places O'Brien--who served as the Columbus City Attorney at the time of Wright's alleged ethics violation--in a difficult situation.
Unlike Jesse Oddi, who was caught on video with his hand in the till and abandoned by his real or imagined friends, Wright's situation is tied to some very powerful people who may wish to exert pressure to protect her. Here's why: Wright's criminal referral from the ethics commission involves allegations that she had an "unlawful interest in a public contract," and she benefited from a real estate deal involving public funds.
In 1995, Wright initiated and voted for a $59,285 grant from the city to the non-profit Metropolitan Residential Services. Metropolitan, some three weeks later, turned around and bought a 20-unit apartment building for $340,000 that was co-owned by Wright and former council President Jerry Hammond, her close political associate and a political asset of central Ohio's only billionaire, Les Wexner.
Now, if we're to believe Larry James and Les Wright, we would have to believe that the large grant that she sponsored did not serve in some way as a hefty down payment on a building she co-owned. But the building, located at 2085 W. Broad St., had a curious and checkered past. Wright and Hammond purchased the building in 1984. The building was used as collateral for a $250,000 loan to help finance Hammond's Major Chord Jazz Club in the Short North, according to the Dispatch.
On July 16, 1998, Alive reported that the city division of police's "Shapiro Homicide Investigation: Analysis and Hypothesis" document linked the names of billionaire Leslie Wexner, developer John W. "Jack" Kessler who co-founded the New Albany Company, and the names of Jerry Hammond and Les Wright. In looking at the mob-style slaying of prominent local attorney Arthur Shapiro, Elizabeth A. Leupp, an analyst with the Columbus Police Organized Crime Bureau, speculated that Wexner and Kessler invested in Jerry Hammond's jazz club hoping to influence variable zoning and annexation considerations for Wexner's mammoth multi-use development in New Albany.Under the direction of Mayor Sensenbrenner in the 1950s, Columbus had historically used its water and sewage department in an imperial manner to force new developments into the city unless they were tied to a pre-existing contract. Under such a policy, Wexner and Kessler's elitist dream known as New Albany would have been forced to become part of the city of Columbus in exchange for water and sewer services. Thanks to Hammond and another former City Council president, Cindy Lazarus, who later admitted to secretly taking $10,000 for PR services from Wexner to help promote the New Albany deal, the wealthy of New Albany were liberated from the Columbus riff-raff. They got their water and sewage from Columbus and got to live in their very own private Wexleyville.
The Shapiro report noted that "SNJC Holding, Inc. is named as an investor in the [Major Chord] Jazz Club." Attorney James H. Balthaser, formerly a partner in the now-defunct law firm of Schwartz, Kelm, Warren and Rubenstein--Shapiro's old law firm--incorporated SNJC on August 6, 1987. "This law firm was/is legal counsel for the Limited," according to the Shapiro document. The Wexner Investment Company and SNJC Holding shared Suite 3710 at the Huntington Center.
Hammond lined up prominent businesspeople, including associates of Wexner and Kessler, to invest $10,000 in limited partnerships to finance the club. Les Wright, co-owner of the building put up for collateral, was also a vice president of the company that owned the Major Chord. When Hammond resigned in September 1990, to spend more time with his club, he was under investigation, an investigation that later led to a grand jury probe regarding the night club and Wexleyville.
A source familiar with the Ohio ethics investigation said that the commission also looked at alleged property acquisitions by Hammond and Wright involving a Kessler development in North Carolina.
Old land deals, whether they're Whitewater or Wexley, tell us a lot about politics. The way Ron O'Brien handles this potentially explosive political situation will tell us a lot about his character. Right, Larry?
1/14/1998
Legal defenders
POER plans for the new year
by Bob Fitrakis
"The conscience of the law enforcement system," Police Officers for Equal Rights, will swear in its new executive board on Friday. No one knows what the new year has in store for the POER, but if it's anything like 1998, there will be plenty of controversy involved.
Former police sergeant and current POER President James Moss was instrumental in pushing the U.S. Justice Department's investigation of the Columbus Police Department in the last year. The investigation found a pattern of civil rights violations against certain types of Columbus citizens: African-Americans, young people, females and lower-income whites. The city is currently negotiating with the Justice Department over a possible consent decree--a legal agreement that would change police practices in Columbus.
When asked what his organization is planning for the new year, Moss pointed to a petition drive demanding that the case of escaped prisoner Simmie Weaver, who was shot to death by Columbus Officer James Jardine on December 28, 1997, be resubmitted to the Franklin County Grand Jury. The original grand jury that heard evidence against Jardine declined to indict the officer.
"We've got about a thousand signatures already. We're requesting that Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien appoint a special investigator to both re-examine the evidence and collect new evidence for the prosecution of Officer Jardine. The POER believes that Officer James Jardine should be charged with murder under the Ohio Revised Code 2903.02(A)," Moss said. The POER petition reads in part: "We believe it is your duty as an elected official of Franklin County to use all means at your disposal to search and find evidence that is relevant to this case."
POER also recently submitted a public records request regarding the shooting and subsequent paralyzing of a pizza delivery man by a Powell police officer. "We'll be looking at that case as law enforcement officers and issuing our own report," Moss explained.
Moss told Columbus Alive that the position taken by the Fraternal Order of Police Capital City Lodge Number Nine, concerning the negotiation of a consent agreement between the U.S. Department of Justice and the city of Columbus regarding police conduct, needs to be more publicly debated. "The FOP's position is that somehow the citizens of Columbus will suffer setbacks to their privacy and freedom, and that crime protection will suffer if the city police are held accountable by a consent decree," Moss said. "That's an absurd position. If police are forced to document the race, gender and age of who they're stopping, searching, Macing and beating, it's not going to affect the public's privacy."
Moss recently outlined his position on a consent decree in a six-page letter to the Columbus Dispatch. "The local FOP has a history of negativism when it comes to positive changes in the Columbus Police Department. This is the same organization that stated, if African-Americans were hired because of the federal lawsuit Haynie vs. Chupka in 1993, the police standards would suffer. At the same time, the federal court found the Columbus Police Department guilty of hiring discrimination," his letter reads.
"In 1975, the F.O.P. stated women could not perform the discriminatory field agility test [and] should not be hired because they would present a safety factor to male police officers," Moss noted. He argued that not until 1978, when the city of Columbus was ordered by the federal court to bring its minority representation up to 14.9 percent, was "the color line of the Columbus Police Department" broken and this "provided an opportunity for African-Americans to be hired without discriminatory practices."
He told Alive: "I challenge the citizens in Columbus to investigate the history of the FOP when it comes to African-Americans, women and other categories of citizens."
Moss indicated that he would not be attending the traditional Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast event and march out of respect to Dr. King's legacy. "Look who they have as one of the sponsors, Nationwide Insurance. You know their recent troubles regarding red-lining in the black community," he observed. Last Sunday on WSMZ radio, Moss insisted that to really celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, people must take history seriously--not only of the national civil rights movement, but of the local struggle for equality here in Columbus.
Moss urged fellow law enforcement officers not to buy into "the so-called code of silence." In his letter to the Dispatch, he insisted, "Breaking the `code of silence' in police departments will ensure openness and accountability becomes a reality to ensure safeguards from abusive police power. In no area of government responsibility is accountability more critical than in police power."
"We at the POER have already documented over 300 instances of police abuse. Chemical Mace has been used on hundreds of Columbus citizens and the police refuse to classify it as a `use of force.' I think we're going to have a very busy year in 1999. There's a lot of work to be done," Moss said.
Deborah O'Neill, Franklin County Common Pleas judge, will swear in the executive board of the POER at 5 p.m. on January 15. The ceremony will be held at 701 E. Long St. and a reception will follow from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Call Police Officers for Equal Rights at 253-4005 for more information.
1/21/1999
FEATURED ARTICLE
by Bob Fitrakis
When 19-year-old Michael Hiles died in the early morning on September 11, 1998, while incarcerated in a medical isolation cell at the Franklin County jail downtown, his parents demanded to know why.
More than four months later, Bob and Ruth Hiles refuse to accept the "official" version of their son's death. Aided by Michael's aunt Cynthia Lee Hiles, the family has raised a multitude of questions concerning the practices of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department and the events surrounding Michael's mysterious death. As far as the family is concerned, the answers to their questions, and the investigation's sometimes contradictory evidence, have yet to be explained.
When 19-year-old Michael Hiles died in the early morning on September 11, 1998, while incarcerated in a medical isolation cell at the Franklin County jail downtown, his parents demanded to know why.
More than four months later, Bob and Ruth Hiles refuse to accept the "official" version of their son's death. Aided by Michael's aunt Cynthia Lee Hiles, the family has raised a multitude of questions concerning the practices of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department and the events surrounding Michael's mysterious death. As far as the family is concerned, the answers to their questions, and the investigation's sometimes contradictory evidence, have yet to be explained.
Franklin County Sheriff Jim Karnes declined to comment for this story. "I can't comment due to pending litigation," he said.
On January 11, Cynthia Hiles, a freelance journalist, sent a massive report titled "Preliminary Investigative Brief on the Deaths and Beatings in the Franklin County Jails, Columbus, Ohio (state capitol)" to nine federal agencies including the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI (see sidebar). She also forwarded a copy to the Franklin County Prosecutor's office. Columbus Alive obtained a copy of the brief and a videotape shot by a sheriff's deputy at the county jail death scene in our attempt to investigate Hiles' death.
Michael Hiles is the mixed-race son of Ruth Hiles and his adoptive father, Bob. "I met Michael when he was two. I'm the only father he ever knew and I adopted him when he was nine," his father explained.
As Bob Hiles tells the story on his website, "My son was an alcoholic and a drug addict. His teenage years consisted of inpatient and outpatient therapy at various facilities across central Ohio."
His latest problem began last spring when Michael, "after a binge of intravenous cocaine use," robbed a gas station "with a TV dinner box on his hand" and no gun. His take: $87 and three packs of cigarettes. Facing up to eight years in prison for robbery, Hiles' attorney arranged a deal whereby Michael would spend two months at the Orient State Correctional Institute and six months at the Maryhaven Adult Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Facility. Michael was released on a recognizant bond and resided with his parents in Grove City awaiting incarceration.
On August 11, 1998, Bob Hiles "made the hardest decision of my life. I called our family attorney...and requested to have my 19-year-old son's recognizant bond revoked." In an interview with Alive, Bob Hiles stressed that he was practicing "tough love" and had his son's best interests at heart. On the family's website, he wrote: "My son Michael had been getting up during the night and taking the car after we had fallen asleep. He was out driving drunk and high on drugs in the Columbus area. I feared that Michael was going [to] hurt himself or an innocent bystander."
Bob Hiles, fearing for the safety of his son and others, drove his child to the Franklin County Courthouse on August 14, where he was placed in the custody of the Franklin County Sheriff's Department and incarcerated in the downtown jail. "On September 11, 1998, three days before my son was to appear in court, the Franklin County Jail gave me back my son in a body bag," Bob Hiles wrote. "This was my thank you?"
Love letters from the edge
By all accounts, Michael was positive and upbeat when he headed off to jail. The troubled youth saw his imprisonment as a turning point in his life. In a series of "silly poems" and letters "Mikey" sent home to his wife Cindy and their two young children Allexis and Nicole, his attitude seemed well-adjusted. In a poem titled "New Beginnings," he wrote: "In the next year or so, I'll be known as `Mike the Goalsetter.'" In another, "Peek-A-Boo," he sent his "three beautiful girls" a picture he drew with a poem that ends: "And one last thing to my baby girls Allexis and Nicki-poo, Peek-a-Boo, I wish I could see you too."
Described by family and friends as "bright," Michael occupied his time by constantly reading while in jail. He wrote his wife the day before his death that "I have read more books in these past three weeks than I've read [in] my whole life. I will come out smarter at least. That I'm sure of. If I keep going at the rate I'm at now, I will have read 80 books by the time I get out. 80!"
Michael Hiles would never meet his projected goal. Two unmailed letters in his cell, both dated September 11, suggest a dramatic shift of mood. A letter to the judge, written earlier that evening, said, "I now have started to find God in my life. It seems like he is my last hope within myself. Hopefully with his help and blessing I will conquer and overcome the `bad Mike.' Mam [sic], I just ask that the time you give me somewhere...will help me with my problem and not keep my away from the reason I keep myself alive, my family."
The other letter had timelines beginning at "11:45 p.m" and ending at "2:55" a.m.--this last time is just 40 minutes before Franklin County Deputy Timothy Mace claimed he found Michael hanging from the door of his cell by a sheet with both feet on the floor. The letter begins: "Hello honey, I'm in tears right now, again. I can't take this crap anymore, Cindy. Now I am a snitch, that's why I am in here, because I snitched on some drug dealers. That is what these two punks are telling everybody. Now I'm really gonna have problems with people. This guy is telling these lies because he thinks he is cool or something."
Michael was in a medical isolation Cell 10 because of a past history of hepatitis B, not because he had informed on anyone. Tony Alexander occupied Cell 13 and later told the family on tape that inmate Jeffrey Jackson was "taunting" other inmates and claimed to have "some inside information about your son's girlfriend and her kids."
"I don't know what to do. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! I hate it. These people are all uneducated bastards. I'm down in my cell trying to mind my own business and they are all talking crap about me. Trying to get me worked up.... He said he is going to wreck my home life. That [when he] gets out he is going to rape you. How stupid is that. It is 3-4 guys verse [sic] me," Michael wrote his wife.
At "1:30," Michael wrote: "These guys say how there [sic] gonna get your name and address from the envelope when they set it out on the counter. They keep saying they heard me say where you worked and they are gonna send someone up there. God! They won't quit.... They keep calling you a bitch and whore and that all women cheat and that your [sic] out screwing right now. It is not that I believe them but it's just that they keep going and going. They call me a sissy and this and that."
Alexander later told the Hiles, "Yeah, he [Jackson] was up there talking about he was going to take his girl and he said that his kids wasn't his anyway 'cause they didn't look mixed."
Rickie Cook in Cell 3 West 11, the cell next to Michael, told Lieutenant Larry Winters, the detective who was investigating Hiles' death, that Jackson "was talking about um, fucking his woman and doing this for his kids and doing this to his kids and I'm like, it was wrong."
The last words Michael Hiles wrote were: "I only spoke when he mentioned grandpa. Other than that since the deputy was last around I have shut up. I don't know why he's on there [sic] side. They are all assholes, Cindy. Well I'm gonna go. I'll write you back tonight. I love you baby."
Hiles' final seconds
A Franklin County Sheriff's Office routing sheet for correspondence, dated September 11, 1998, recorded that Deputy Mace responded to a Code Blue medical "hanging." Mace's incident report states that he found Michael Hiles at "0335 hours."
Mace reported that "I noticed inmate Michael Hiles #9828170 standing with his back to the door of his cell. Upon closer examination there was a sheet tied to the bars above the door and around his neck. I climbed up on the bars and untied the rope from the bars. I contacted the Control Center to open cell door after inmate Hiles had fallen to the floor and I untied the sheet around his neck. I attempted to awaken inmate Hiles."
The computer cell gate logs do not show this activity. The third floor west area was reset at 2:32:49 a.m. and not activated again until 6:30:06 a.m. Bob Hiles wondered why the computer logs of gate activity could be so inaccurate.
Bob Hiles also finds it interesting that Mace used the terms "sheet" and "rope" interchangeably to describe what was hanging his son. "The marks on his neck didn't look like they were from a sheet. The supposed sheet marks are only around the front of his neck, not the back. Plus, he had bruises all over his body including a deep tissue bruise on his back," Bob Hiles remarked.
Records indicate that Deputy Mace was ordered off the scene at 3:41 a.m. and he never returned.
"EMSA [jail staff] started CPR 03:36," the routing sheet noted. "CFD [Columbus Fire Department] arrived 03:47 and pronounced [Hiles dead] 03:59." The Columbus EMS report says that Michael Hiles was "found hanging from cell door by sheet at 3:30," six minutes earlier than the deputy's report--crucial minutes when you're going without air.
The Hiles family, despite a less than forthcoming sheriff's department, has managed to piece together an amazing assortment of evidence portraying Michael's final moments.
Bob Hiles wonders why, just after midnight, the computerized logs that record the deputy's rounds show that a deputy spent 81 minutes on the west wing of the third floor between 12:47 a.m. and 1:28 a.m., two hours before Michael's death. The next three listed rounds were all in the two-to-three minute range, although there was no entry on the third floor west at the time of Michael's death. Bob Hiles told Alive he wants to know whether the computer report was faulty or whether there was a way to manually generate or alter the report.
When sheriff's deputies initially contacted Alive to talk off the record about Hiles' death, they repeatedly referred to a videotape which showed, in one deputy's words, "They stood around and let that kid die. It's right on the tape."
The videotape obtained by Alive shows Michael laying on his back on the floor halfway out of the door of his cell. Curiously, he's clad in plaid boxer shorts with white underwear underneath and white socks. There's no sign of the orange institutional jumpsuit or of the reported sheet that his parents were told he used to hang himself.
At 3:37:28 a.m., one deputy asks, "Is he breathing?" Another responds, "Not sure" and says that Michael was "hanging from the door, [and] had his feet on the ground."
At 3:38:08, a male nurse, Pearley Gable, arrived. At 3:38:54, a white female nurse, Pam Martin, enters the scene. A few seconds later, the male nurse says "Yeah" when asked if Michael has a pulse. A deputy barks "Call squad."
At 3:40:43, the male nurse clearly states, after examining Hiles with a stethoscope, "He has a pulse. A slight pulse." At 3:40:58--more than three minutes after the first nurse arrived--mouth-to-mouth resuscitation begins. At 3:41:31, the male nurse begins chest compressions as the female nurse watches. At 3:44:38 the male nurse stops CPR and the video camera is clicked off at 3:46 exactly. The tape begins recording again 32 seconds later as deputies stand around. At 3:47:21, a voice asks, "You want our people to do CPR?"
At 3:47:58 a.m., an order is given: "You can discontinue tape."
The videotape is turned off for nearly three minutes, but video resumes at 3:50:55 as an EMS squad arrives from the Columbus Fire Department. At 3:51:54, an EMS medic asks, "Did you bag him or anything?" in reference to a breathing bag used in the CPR procedure. The answer is "no." At 3:53:09, the EMS medic asks the male nurse, "Want to help...out here bagging or compression ...?"
At 3:59 a.m., Michael Hiles is pronounced dead.
In an interview with Detective Winters, Gable said Hiles' body "was still fairly warm." Martin, who did little to assist Gable even after he said he had a "pulse," wrote a brief report including the sentence: "Other nurse began CPR."
On the original routing sheet under "Follow-Up Remarks," a note reads: "Appears all procedures and policies followed by deputies." According to the State of Ohio, County of Franklin Administrative Regulations no. AR820, "All personnel at the correctional facility shall receive or have received American Red Cross or equivalent training in emergency first aid and life-saving techniques within 60 days of employment." In the American Red Cross' publication "CPR for the Professional Rescuer," a subheading titled "When to Stop CPR" states, "Once you begin CPR, try not to interrupt the blood flow you are creating artificially." It also spells out procedures for "Two-Rescuer CPR" and notes that "When two professional rescuers are available, give two-rescuer CPR."
Bob Hiles wants to know why, when his son was found with a pulse, did the deputies who were presumably trained in CPR stand around and why did only one nurse attempt to resuscitate his son. "Anybody watching that tape is going to see that they didn't care whether he lived or died. They're just standing around and the one nurse is doing little or nothing."
Deputy coroner recommends autopsy
Franklin County Deputy Coroner Patrick Fardal, M.D., ruled the death "suicide," writing that the "victim allegedly hanged himself" and the immediate cause of death was "suspension hanging." As he explained during a meeting with the family (which the family recorded on audiotape), "This ruling was `based on police report.'"
Fardal, according to the Hiles, persuaded the family to have an autopsy and call an attorney to protect their rights. When the family asked the deputy coroner why, he told them, "I'm a realist.... When you're in jail, you're under a different type of care.... Are they following the rules and regulations and doing all the stuff they're supposed to do?"
The grieving father has more disturbing, unanswered questions. He pointed out to Alive that on the original incident report, there is no mention of a bedsheet, nor is it listed on the impound form. "It's not on the [video]tape, it's not on the incident report and it's not on the impound form. Suicides are supposed to be treated as crime scenes until the coroner rules otherwise," Bob Hiles said. "Watch that tape. They never treated this as a crime scene. The deputies weren't concerned about evidence. Where's the sheet?"
When the family asked Fardal directly how he felt about the marks around Michael's neck and whether it was consistent with a sheet hanging, the deputy coroner replied, "It's not as consistent with the sheet as I'd like it to be, per se. But I don't say it's not a sheet." Fardal is clear what evidence he would have preferred to have in making his ruling: "The actual sheet."
According to a report signed by Corporal John Myers, the bedsheet was impounded with personal items from Michael's cell by Sergeant Paul Theodore at the request of Detective Winters. Still, the impound form did not list the sheet. There are two nearly identical impound forms. The first lacks an evidence log number; a second has number 98-1044. When the Hiles family pressed for the sheet as evidence, a third impound form finally appeared, number 98-1044-A. The form, allegedly dated September 11, 1998, lists a "white sheet" and a different time of death. The first two forms list the official time of death as 3:59 a.m. but the third form lists time of death nine minutes earlier at 3:50 a.m.
Odder still, while the third form is clearly dated "9/11/98," the writing on the form appears upside down and backwards. When the other side of the form is held up to a light, the numbers are right side up, forward and read: "9/18/98." Bob Hiles called this "suspicious," as if the third form was altered or pre-dated.
In Detective Winters' investigative report #9808390, the report the coroner consulted in his finding of suicide, Bob Hiles pointed out several "misrepresentations of facts." Winters wrote that ligature marks appear on the neck, evidence that the medics had been working on the subject." Deputy Coroner Fardal refers to Winters' ligatures as "nine abrasions that are several inches in length," according to Bob Hiles. Fardal told the family on audiotape that they could have been made by fingernails and that there was superficial bleeding from them. "This means Michael's blood would have to be on the sheet," his father remarked.
Winters also incorrectly wrote, and the videotape shows otherwise, that "When [Columbus] medics arrived, they stated they thought they had a slight pulse; however they could not revive him." This is not factually supported by the tape or the EMS report, although it tends to shift the blame away from the inactive deputies and nurse Pam Martin toward the EMS medics.
Winters specifically refers to "the actual sheet" and claims in his report it's impounded--two months later, Fardal told the family he would like to see the "actual sheet" to see if it was consistent with the abrasions on Michael's neck.
"The body of Mr. Hiles was rolled to check his back, legs and arms; and we found no signs of any trauma, no bruises or scratching," reads Winters' report. The autopsy, however, found a deep tissue back injury: "There is an ecchymatic area along the right lateral thorax measuring three-and-a-half by three inches." There were also contusions on Michael's right hand. Bob Hiles ponders whether the imprint on Michael's back was someone's heel, since the deep tissue bruising would most likely be caused by blunt force.
Winters' report also included the following oddity: "He [Michael] had on a set of green and red plaid Tommy Hilfiger shorts, white shorts underneath those, no other clothing." Jail inmates by policy are only allowed to have white underwear. "Where did this pair of plaid underwear that Michael wore the day he was taken into custody come from?" Bob Hiles asked. "By their own reports, he's not on a suicide watch. Where's his orange jumpsuit? Where's the bedsheets? It's like someone took his clothes off to hide evidence and put him in the plaid underwear he surrendered the first day he came in. It's absurd."
The absurdities, contradictions and apparent procedural irregularities have made the Hiles family more determined to uncover the facts surrounding their son's death. While they concede that certain evidence points to Jackson's taunting possibly inciting Michael's hanging, that's an all-too-convenient answer. Many questions remain unanswered concerning the policies and practices at the Franklin County Jail. But Michael's family pledges to keep on pushing for answers.
Maybe Michael sensed this when he wrote the poem "Love Is," which ends: "So in the end when I pass away and my last breath, you can turn to our kin and say, Love is there still, even in his death."
"He ain't faking it"
In exploring the as-yet unproven possibility that Michael Hiles died from either a severe beating or lack of medical attention, journalist (and Michael's aunt) Cynthia Lee Hiles presented a massive report to nine federal agencies. As part of that report, Cynthia Hiles put together a list of nine inmates who have died in the Franklin County Jail since May 1994. Four of the inmates were in isolation cells.
Perhaps none of Cynthia Hiles' findings is more alarming than the 1996 case of Gregory Chesney, whose story was leaked by deputies from inside the jail. A report by Lieutenant Robert West on November 23, 1996, noted that "The medical staff at CCH [Columbus Community Hospital] were saying the inmate had been beaten while in jail.... One officer stated he was told by a nurse the inmate had a bruise on his chest that appeared to be a shoe print."
Detective James W. McCall interviewed CCH nurse Mici Petrovic. His report stated, "She informed me that inmate Chesney was suffering from malnutrition, dehydration, a punctured lung and had been beaten up. She then showed me his right leg which had some bruising and his left thigh which had been bruised severely. Inmate had various small and large bruises on lower part of back, left bicep, left ribcage. She also informed that inmate had a swollen groin. I then asked her if he could have received these injuries from falling down."
Chesney, like Michael Hiles, was found in an isolation cell.
After McCall's damning report, Lieutenant Larry Winters took over the Chesney investigation. After interviewing a severely injured and disoriented Chesney, who provided "a 15 minute rambling statement," Winters concluded that "Mr. Chesney is unable to give any answers to these questions and gave no indication that he did receive these injuries from anything but self-inflicted injuries. At this time I'm going to clear this report unfounded. There is no criminal activity."
Chesney died some months later from his injuries.
In her brief to federal agencies, Cynthia Hiles wrote: "I saw the eight photographs of Gregory Chesney's body and I went through the autopsy of my nephew, Michael Jason Hiles, with Dr. Patrick Fardal, Franklin County [Deputy] Coroner. I am not an expert in this field, but common sense shows an unlearned individual such as myself that these individuals were beaten, yet Detective Larry Winters closed the cases as he did many of the other cases of abuse I read."
In addition to details of the nine dead inmates, Cynthia Hiles supplied data on four alleged gang-style beatings by deputies on inmates and 32 allegations of deputies using excessive force and picking fights with inmates in 1998. There were also five cases last year where deputies reported other deputies for abusive behavior towards inmates.
Cynthia Hiles also forwarded four cases involving the alleged lack of medical treatment for inmates. This includes the shocking case of Ronnie Valentine, who died at Franklin County's Jackson Pike jail after "the subject basically bled to death through his esophagus and intestinal tract," Cynthia Hiles' report states.
Valentine's cellmate, Tony Marcum, told Detective Winters that Valentine had been throwing up "a fountain of nothing but blood...for two days through." Marcum claimed a deputy ignored his plea for help and it was so bad that he gave Valentine trash bags to throw blood up into. "He didn't want to go to court and the nurse come in, took his blood pressure and says, oh, he's capable, and then a deputy was standing there and said, c'mon, quit faking it," Marcum stated. "I was like man, he ain't faking it, man, I'm telling you he's been throwing up blood all night."
1/21/1999
Les' plea
The real reason Wright resigned
by Bob Fitrakis
What should we make of former Columbus City Council member Les F. Wright's "no contest" plea to an ethics code violation? The original offenses referred by the Ohio Ethics Commission to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien involved both the ethics code violation and a charge of unlawful interest in a public contract, a fourth-degree felony. So Les isn't a felon. That's O.K. A one-notch-down plea bargain is pretty good by today's political prosecution standards.
The ethics commission charges stem from a 1995 real estate deal involving public funds. As previously reported by Alive, in 1995, Wright initiated and voted for a $59,285 grant from the city to the non-profit Metropolitan Residential Services. Metropolitan, some three weeks later, turned around and bought a 20-unit apartment building for $340,000 that was co-owned by Wright and former council President Jerry Hammond.
But how could you convict Les on a felony after Mike White of Mid-America Waste was recently able to pay a $5,000 fine to avoid up to 100 years in jail for campaign funding violations? White's now-defunct company served as a conduit to pass oodles of cash to Ohio's most prominent politicians from Senator Mike DeWine to John Glenn to our former beloved guv George Voinovich, and both major parties.
The best part of Ron O'Brien's plea bargain with the affable Ms. Wright is Point 4: "The defendant will resign as a member of the Columbus City Council prior to the date of sentencing." Recall that Les and her cronies had insisted that her resignation had nothing to do with the Ohio Ethics Commission investigation. Now she has to admit in front of the world that speculation to the contrary was right all along. The good news here is that Les' friends and political supporters can stop calling me a liar and uttering the party mantra: "Les didn't resign because of that!"
Who knows what would have happened if Les, as friendly as she is, would have gone before a grand jury. Hell, they wouldn't indict a ruthless political hack like Jerry Hammond a few years back, how could we expect them to indict Les?
I know, you're thinking they had her dead to rights. An open and shut case. Neither Grand Juries nor not-so-grand-juries work that way in the real world. As cynical as I am, I have to give myself a pep talk and pore over the facts before I can believe that Les wasn't a victim of some evil conspiracy.
So I'm satisfied with her plea agreement, but I still hope that the people of Ohio catch those real big sharks, the great whites, the Voinovichs.
2/04/1999
Managed waste
The ballad of Billy Joe Brown
by Bob Fitrakis
Another big--and I'm talkin' humongous--pile of dung was swept under Columbus' notorious political compost rug last Friday. As the Dispatch reports it (although you'd never know from its headline, which deals with another matter), the Ohio Elections Commission "approved a $5,000 fine that brings to a close the long saga of tainted political contributions by now-defunct Mid-American Waste Systems of Canal Winchester."
As part of the deal, Mid-American's former President, Chairman and CEO Christopher L. White refused to admit to any wrongdoing, but admitted to creating an environment in which employees felt they would be reimbursed from the waste hauling and management company for contributing to political candidates. To laypeople, that's political money-laundering. White, who was only fined $5,000, could have gotten up to a hundred years in jail.
Michael H. Igoe, the former chair of the Ohio Elections Commission, was hired at $125 an hour to pursue justice and investigate White. Igoe blamed the refusal of "federal investigators" to share information as a reason for the slap on the wrist and peck on White's butt. But, as usual, there's a little more to the story.
The December 18, 1997, issue of the Dispatch reported that the Ohio Elections Commission--a notoriously toothless tiger that can't even give a good gum job anymore--selected Igoe. Near the end of the story we find the following: "Igoe, a Democrat, says he expects no conflicts in handling the case, even though White is represented by former Attorney General William J. Brown and Roger P. Sugarman. Igoe served with Sugarman as an Assistant Attorney General under Brown."
Thank God for the great investigatory powers of Columbus' "greatest home newspaper." Had they dug a little deeper, they might have found out that Igoe and Sugarman were classmates at the University of Toledo. Sugarman graduated from Vanderbilt in 1972; Igoe from Notre Dame the same year. Both graduated from the University of Toledo in 1975. Both worked for Attorney General William "Billy Joe" Brown during the period of 1979-82.
So what, you say. Well, there's more. The big D forgot to tell you that Igoe also currently happens to be Brown's personal attorney. Look up case #98CVH-03-2109 pending in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. So, Igoe was "investigating" Chris White and his Mid-American Waste, while his former boss and current client, Billy Joe, was representing Mid-American Waste. And, his former classmate and colleague, "the Sugarman," is representing White. Hell, I suppose we're lucky. Igoe could have recommended that instead of fining White $5,000, the state pay him $5,000 for the admitted "$30-40,000" money-laundering that went on at the waste company.
You recall that Billy Joe Brown was elected Ohio Attorney General in 1970, 1974 and 1978. During the course of those campaigns, it was revealed that his real name was Billy Joe Barone or Baroni, from Cadiz, up Steubenville way. As I understand it, they know a thing or two about waste hauling and money-laundering in the Steubenville-Youngstown area.
In 1982, old Billy Joe was favored to win the Democratic nomination for governor and take over the state of Ohio, until he was upset in the primary by Richard Celeste. A quick perusal of the public record showed that at the end of November 1981, Billy Joe had nearly $800,000 on hand, more than any other candidate. You may have heard of Barone's top individual contributors, some of our finest corporate magnates: Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., described by the Dispatch as a "developer and sportsman" and John J. and Anthony M. Carfaro of Youngstown. Fast Eddie kicked in $35,000. He's just that kind of civic-minded guy.
Billy Joe's path has taken some strange twists since his 1982 Democratic gubernatorial primary loss. In 1983, Billy Joe made news when Republicans on the state controlling board "approved payments of $2.2 million to the Ohio Attorney General's office for outside legal counsel." The Dispatch reported, "Much of the legal business went to Democratic lawyers once associated with the office of former Attorney General William J. Brown." John C. McDonald, of the Columbus-based Emens, Hurd, Kegler & Ritter, received $180,000 from Attorney General Anthony Celebrezze's office.
Brown later became a named partner in that same firm because of his "rain-making" ability with such clients as Mid-American Waste. In September 1993, Brown--now of Emens, Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter--announced that he was "considering" running for Governor in 1994. By mid-December he had decided against such a run. But that didn't stop him the next year from managing Mary Boyle's Democratic primary campaign for U.S. Senate against eventual winner Joel Hyatt.
So how did that good Democrat, ol' Billy Joe, spend 1996? He was raising money for his favorite politicians. He gave $10,000 of his own funds, and the Emens, Kegler, Brown PAC and their individual attorneys kicked in another $44,500. Strangely, the lifelong Democrat suddenly began giving money to Republican candidates: $500 to Betty Montgomery on May 23 of that year; $2,500 to the Ohio House Republican Campaign Committee on May 24; $1,000 to the Republican Senate Campaign Committee on June 11; $1,500 to the ultra-conservative William Batchelder; and so on.
Allegations are now emerging that Billy Joe may have been playing fast and loose in raising campaign money for Republicans in 1996. Sources have told Alive that law- enforcement officials are looking at buildings owned by William J. Brown and Lee Smith regarding allegations of free rent in exchange for political contributions. Don't expect much to come of it at the state level. If Chris White and his Mid-American Waste money-laundering machine can get away with a $5,000 fine, anything goes in Ohio.
Of course, allegations that former Governor George Voinovich laundered money in the 1996 campaign are still being investigated. They've got a hotshot "independent investigator" on it. And he's a good Democrat. He used to work for Billy Joe. His name--Michael H. Igoe. Go, tiger, go.
2/18/1999
Right to life
Ohio prepares to murder a mentally ill man
by Bob Fitrakis
Wilford Berry--one of God's most wretched creatures--is scheduled to die on Friday, February 19. If the state of Ohio murders Berry, charges should be brought against Attorney General Betty Montgomery for crimes against humanity.
Berry, diagnosed in the past as delusional with a schizophreniform disorder and chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia, is using the people of Ohio to commit suicide. Shockingly, Montgomery is all too willing to play the obedient German from the Nazi era. Remember, it was the Nazis who rounded up the disturbed and mentally ill and gassed them. Betty, after consulting the pollsters, prefers lethal injection. Pick your poisons, I suppose.
Where are the so-called "right-to-lifers" and the Christian Coalition? Well you can find one, the most Reverend David Chase, on the front page of Saturday's Dispatch Metro section. Chase, in the name of Jesus, is serving as a cheerleader for Berry's suicide. The Dispatch duly reports Chase's religious hypocrisy in their steady drumbeat to keep the dead man walking.
The Reverend Chase described his role as "lead[ing] people to Jesus" and "into eternal life." He might have simply called himself Reverend Kevorkian.
The Dispatch quotes Chase as saying, "I told him [Berry] I'd see him in about 80 years up in heaven." Let's see. The holy man is encouraging a mentally ill and brain-damaged convicted killer to waive his constitutional rights and commit suicide. I doubt it'll be in heaven when they finally meet again.
Chase, working with his co-conspirator, the Dispatch, cites Paul's letter to the Romans in defense of the death penalty. Chase, the Christian minister, conveniently fails to cite the words of Christ. Why? Because there's no true Christian theological justification for his born-again heresy.
But the real culprit here is the Dispatch. As the hour of execution approaches, it repeatedly fails to refer to the basic fact surrounding Berry's crime--the killing of Charles J. Mitroff Jr. on December 1, 1989. An accomplice of Berry's, now serving life in prison, reportedly fired the first and fatal shot. The deranged Berry, under the misguided assumption that Mitroff wanted to kill his sister, agreed to confess to the murder only if he could receive the death penalty.
If you doubt my indictment of the Dispatch, let me refer you to Sunday's paper, with the blaring headline: "Mother of slain guard wanted to see Berry die." We are told in a subhead that "Wanda Vallandingham pushed for the execution of `the Volunteer' before her death." A quick glance at these headlines implies that Berry had something to do with the slain guard at Lucasville. Of course he didn't. Rather, death row inmates broke out of their cells and savagely beat Berry because he was "the Volunteer." Berry was a victim of the Lucasville riot as was Vallandingham's son.
Why would any responsible newspaper in America run such scurrilous yellow journalism with an execution pending? The only story here is that the grief-stricken, emotionally distraught Wanda Vallandingham sought vengeance and wanted to see somebody--anybody--die before she did. Why is the Dispatch exploiting a deceased woman in the paper's crusade to whip up public fervor to kill Berry?
Hate, fear and vengeance are hot buttons that sell newspapers. Being tough on crime and oral sex is just about all the Republican Party has left on its agenda. And it helps that Berry puts a white face on the death penalty. Only 87 of the 191 men on death row in Ohio are white--and every single one of them is indigent.
On Monday, the former evil empire, Russia, announced that it is doing away with the death penalty. In Ohio, we're moving in the opposite direction. Of the 200 or so nations on earth, only a handful would dare kill a brain-damaged mentally ill man--perhaps Burma and Iran, and of course, the most uncivilized country of all, the United States.
What's different is that in Burma and Iran they would try to hide their gross violations of human rights from the scrutiny of the more civilized nations of world. In the U.S., politicians like Betty Montgomery turn it into a public spectacle and will no doubt set up "I kill the mentally ill" political action committees (PACs) to capitalize on Berry's extermination.
Polls show most Ohioans only support the death penalty because there's no true life in prison sentence. Politicians have rigged the sentencing so they can use the carnival atmosphere of a death sentence to suck you into their political freak show. Many lemming-like Ohioans mouth the phrase, "If he wants to die, we should grant him his wish." I suppose if prisoners on death row just wanted a big-screen TV we should buy them one, too. It would be cheaper for taxpayers than the $3 million to $7 million cost of a typical execution.
Berry needs to be institutionalized for his mental illness and brain damage and not let out until he poses no threat to society. If that means locking him up for life, so be it. In killing the "evil" Berry--who was sexually molested in our state-run institutions as a youth--we become the worst evil: a demented and bloodthirsty society parading around in a clown suit called Christianity, ignoring one of its main tenets: Thou shalt not kill.
02/25/1999
MISSING
03/04/1999
The good, the bad and the ugly
by Bob Fitrakis
Sources close to the various investigations of Paul Voinovich and the V Group report the legal noose is tightening. Up in Jefferson County, Prosecutor Stephen Stern relentlessly pursues justice by squeezing former V Group bagman and convicted briber Vince Zumpano.
Reportedly, Zumpano's memory keeps getting better and better when faced with the possibility of dying in prison. Allegations of meetings, long suspected, involving Paul Voinovich--brother of U.S. Senator and former Governor George Voinovich--and movers and shakers at the WTI incinerator and North Ohio Valley Air Authority officials will most likely surface. A trail of evidence strongly suggests that Pauly Voinovich and V Group cronies were involved in the irregular securing of permits for the horrendous dioxin-producing trash incinerator built next to an elementary school in East Liverpool, Ohio.
Inspector General Tom Charles is reportedly in hot pursuit of Voinovich administration insider Bill Vasil. If Vasil can be pressured to talk like Zumpano, law enforcement officials will be kept busy for years investigating the scandal. The FBI's Cincinnati office is still on the trail and said to possess mountains of potentially damaging evidence regarding the V Group operation during the Voinovich administration.
With former Governor Voinovich now playing the role of august junior Senator from Ohio, the Dispatch actually scooped somebody for a change on the Voinovich scandal last week regarding the civil suit in Jefferson County. We'll see if the big D is in it for the long haul.
Back to the feds, sources say that the Cincinnati FBI office will be looking into the mysterious death of Michael Hiles. Recall that Hiles allegedly committed suicide while in a isolation cell in the Franklin County jail last year (Columbus Alive, January 21). Word is that Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien is taking the matter seriously--and is reexamining the case of Gregory Chesney, who was found badly injured, again in a Franklin County jail isolation cell, and later died of his injuries. According to sources, O'Brien is looking into reports by the medical staff at Columbus Community Hospital who claimed that Chesney "had a bruise on his chest that appeared to be a shoe print."
When a much bigger male Community 21 board member grabs a young female reporter's tape recorder and elbows her to keep her out of an "open" board meeting, there's a word for it--assault. What exactly is the board trying so desperately to hide?
We already know that the station discriminates against people in wheelchairs and that they falsely reported in past city contracts that the public access facility was accessible. If the city continues to look the other way while a city contractor, Community 21, denies access to the handicapped, illegally censors programs and tramples on the First Amendment rights of the press, it actually says more about city officials' values and beliefs than it does about the bizarro non-profit. Immediate and punitive measures must be taken against Community 21 if public access is to be saved in this city.
As someone who has co-hosted a public access show for more than nine years and as a co-founder of Friends of Public Access, I want the city to pull the plug on Community 21. (Full disclosure: I also have a personal relationship with Suzanne Patzer, a former Community 21 employee who filed a National Labor Relations Board complaint against the station last fall.) The stench of that non-profit is unbearable. Public access is not Community 21. Public access can and will survive in Columbus as a thriving, democratic, people-oriented organization. The council has to realize that there are plenty of non-profit institutions in this city with competent and effective boards that could easily take over the city's public access contract.
03/11/1999
MISSING
3/18/1999
Vasil-ating
You can keep my $80
by Bob Fitrakis
Let's assess the early record of the new Taft administration. The governor appears to be suffering from political schizophrenia or some sort of Sybil syndrome. This is not dissimilar to the mentally ill and brain-damaged Wilford Berry, the first person killed on Ohio's death row in 36 years, thanks to the guv. Unconscionable and a violation of human rights, Berry's state-assisted suicide was no doubt politically popular.
Then, the governor showed some real political courage by pledging the state's $400 million surplus to improve education. In a strangely laughable front-page news article, the Columbus Dispatch recently questioned whether Ohio's public schools could actually absorb that much money. Ever willing to help the Dispatch editorial board, which has a fondness for back-to-basics in education, I'll do some simple math. The state estimates that it will take $16.5 billion just to bring existing Ohio public school facilities up to present-day building codes. At the current rate of spending, that will take 55 years.
Try this as a story problem. Could a state public school system rated the worst in the United States in public facilities--facilities in need of $16.5 billion in repairs--absorb $400 million in a budget surplus? Circle one: YES or NO.
Not as difficult as it seems, huh? Of course if your kids go to private schools or affluent suburban schools, the test may be biased against the socio-economic elite, causing a higher-than-average error rate.
Speaking of averages, the so-called "conservatives" can keep the $80 or so that they want to give me in a tax cut. I'll send them another $80 if they quit insulting my intelligence and spend the money on the kids. During the socially vicious George Voinovich administration, money for schools took a back seat to the prison industrial complex championed by the Voinovich family and the Voinovich companies. Another math question: If you lock up one in three African-American males between the ages of 18 and 30, how many jails and prisons does the governor's brother Pauly get to build?
What probably tells us the most about the new Taft administration is that Voinovich cronies continue to be appointed to office despite serious questions about their ethics. He's kept the ethically impaired Jim Conrad at the Bureau of Workers' Compensation, despite a scandal that resulted in the ouster of the ethical number-two man (and whistleblower) Steve Isaac.More disturbing is the recent appointment of Bill Vasil as director of the Wage and Hour Division of the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services. With Ohio's Inspector General hot on Vasil's smelly trail, the current administration is providing aid and comfort to the former governor's gofer and chauffeur.
Vasil goes way back with former Governor Voinovich. Billy boy was such a trusted vassal of King George that he was given the number two spot in the Ohio Department of Public Safety in 1991. There he distinguished himself by tooling around in a confiscated BMW 535i and generally being loathed by Ohio state troopers. Occasionally he found time to open investigations, based on anonymous complaints, of people whistle-blowing on the Voinovich administration.
In 1996, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that "a Voinovich administration policy had required written summaries of most patrol investigations to go through Mr. Vasil. The policy has offended some patrol officers who question the wisdom of giving a close ally of the Governor sensitive information that sometimes involved others close to the Governor."
In December 1996, Voinovich rewarded Vasil by making him the state Liquor Control Director. Law-enforcement sources say that Vasil is currently being investigated in relation to the issuing of liquor permits to convicted felons while Vasil served as director. At least one liquor permit in the Columbus area is under investigation.
Now Taft, masquerading as Mr. Integrity, wants to do political favors by hiring Voinovich's chief flunky. Maybe Vasil can take a look at sweatshops in the Cleveland-Youngstown area and make sure they're following state wage and hour laws.
Off the hook?
Don't be confused by the hype surrounding City Attorney Janet Jackson's announcement that the police department was cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice on the issue of employment discrimination. Columbus Alive, and for that matter, the rest of central Ohio's media, never believed there was a "pattern or practice" of racial discrimination in hiring and promotion in the Columbus Division of Police.
Whether a "pattern or practice" of discrimination exists against critics of Chief James Jackson may be another matter. A seeming practice of favoritism and cronyism for Jackson's favorites and retaliation against the Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER) still needs to be investigated.
While Janet Jackson is quick to note that an "exhaustive federal investigation" of the Columbus police found no employment discrimination, it is also important to note that an equally "exhaustive federal investigation" found a "pattern or practice" of Fourth and 14th Amendment Constitutional violations against Columbus blacks, the poor, women and young people. In her press release, the city attorney mentions "separate allegations of police misconduct," but fails to note that the Justice Department found the allegations to be true. She's merely dickering over a consent decree which will allow her to say, "We didn't do what you know we did." Clintonesque in its simplicity.
4/08/1999
FEATURED ARTICLE
by Bob Fitrakis
The Ohio Elections Commission is not the only entity concerned with sorting out the relationship between former Ohio Governor George Voinovich's two-term administration and the scandal-plagued V Group (formerly the Voinovich Companies), owned and operated by his brother, Paul. As now-U.S. Senator Voinovich testified last week about allegations that he approved a money-laundering scheme in connection with his 1994 gubernatorial re-election campaign, the only thing that is apparent is how difficult it is to distinguish between the V Group's operations and those of the Voinovich administration.
The Ohio Elections Commission is not the only entity concerned with sorting out the relationship between former Ohio Governor George Voinovich's two-term administration and the scandal-plagued V Group (formerly the Voinovich Companies), owned and operated by his brother, Paul. As now-U.S. Senator Voinovich testified last week about allegations that he approved a money-laundering scheme in connection with his 1994 gubernatorial re-election campaign, the only thing that is apparent is how difficult it is to distinguish between the V Group's operations and those of the Voinovich administration.
Take, for example, that George Voinovich's chief gubernatorial fundraiser, chair of his transition team, and his chief of staff was Voinovich Companies Executive Vice President Paul Mifsud. And that V Group lobbyist and former company Vice President Phil Hamilton coordinated personnel matters for the incoming Voinovich administration.
In fact, the Voinovich Companies' prominent role in Cleveland politics during George Voinovich's decade-long stint as mayor of Cleveland forced him to promise during his initial 1990 gubernatorial campaign that his family members, specifically Paul, would not be allowed to bid on state contracts. But this promise was later circumvented by giving state money to county and city governments, allowing the V Group and its associates to secure local government contracts, which eventually led to it being entangled in political scandals throughout Ohio.
The Ohio Elections Commission is currently investigating allegations that the 1994 Voinovich campaign laundered money from the governor's re-election fund, funneling $60,000 to Paul Voinovich and former lobbyist Michael Fabiano. A long look at the company's operations in Ohio provides a glimpse of how the V Group--and Senator Voinovich--ended up embroiled in the current elections commission inquiry and investigations by the IRS, FBI and state and local officials.
Geauga County construction questions
As Mayor George Voinovich geared up to run for Senate in 1988 against Democratic incumbent Howard Metzenbaum, brother Paul was making headlines. In December 1987, a Geauga County grand jury indicted Paul Voinovich, two Voinovich companies and the chair of the Geauga County Republican Party, Dean Schanzel, on charges of allegedly soliciting improper compensation in a construction project--ironically at the Metzenbaum Center School for mentally retarded people in Chesterland, Ohio.
The charges against Paul Voinovich and the Voinovich companies were dismissed in March 1988, after a Geauga County Common Pleas judge ruled that the law allegedly violated by Paul Voinovich wasn't on the books at the time his activities occurred. Schanzel, a member of the Geauga County Board of Mental Retardation, received a $2,241 check from the Voinovich-Sgro firm before the board granted the construction management contract for the Metzenbaum School.
Mifsud applauded the judge's ruling, according to United Press International: "Throughout this ordeal, the company and its officers cooperated to the fullest extent with the Geauga County grand jury, the special prosecutor and the court in the faith that this truth would finally prevail."
When contacted by Columbus Alive this week, Mifsud declined to comment for this story.
When George Voinovich campaigned for governor in 1990, the Voinovich Companies were again embroiled in controversy. In January 1990, Voinovich Companies Chief Financial Officer Dale A. Bissonette submitted fake leases to the Columbus-based Mid-America Savings and Loan in order to get a $138,000 loan installment. Additionally, Paul Voinovich was a partner in the Gateway Manor Congregate, which defaulted on a $6.8 million construction loan from Mid-America to build an apartment complex in Euclid, Ohio.
Mid-America later failed and was taken over by the federal Resolution Trust Corporation. Federal investigators sought to find out why more than a million dollars of the savings and loan money was diverted for purposes other than construction. After a four-year investigation, Bissonette pleaded guilty, was fined $2,500, placed on probation for two years and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service, and the case was closed.
As Roger Synenberg, attorney for Paul Voinovich, explained to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, "We knew any wrongdoing was the misplaced act of one ex-employee and we were confident that the investigation would not lead to any other person associated with the Voinovich Companies."
Former Voinovich cabinet member, the late Joe Gilyard, wrote about the Mid-America Savings and Loan debacle in an unpublished manuscript: "Apparently, the firm [Voinovich Companies] was in financial straits when Voinovich took office. Paul [Mifsud] and Pauly [Voinovich], as we called them in Cleveland, had collapsed a savings and loan behind an erstwhile real estate development scheme. [Vice President] George Bush, up for election, was not happy with the national savings and loan fiasco as many of the participants were Republicans."
The jailhouse "inside track"
In order to solve the company's reported financial plight, V Group employees aggressively sought local jail construction contracts, according to Gilyard. After George Voinovich's election to governor, Gilyard, appointed director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services, found himself in the Voinovich administration/V Group inner circle. Gilyard claimed in interviews with Columbus Alive and in his unpublished manuscript that Mifsud was the architect of a scheme to have Gilyard, through his bonding authority, sign off on the state issuing $50 million in bonds to build non-violent misdemeanants jail facilities and divert $30 million to the V Group.
Gilyard's interpretation of events--denied by "Paul" and "Pauly"--led to the first major scandal of the young Voinovich administration. Gilyard wrote a memo to Lieutenant Governor Mike DeWine alleging that Voinovich Companies executive Frank Fela pressured him to meet with Phil Hamilton, Voinovich Companies lobbyist, six days into Voinovich's term. Gilyard alleged that Hamilton wanted the "inside track on all county jail building contracts."
Gilyard outlined the pressure from Mifsud and the Voinovich Companies' agents in a July 12, 1991, memo to DeWine. On May 21 that year, Gilyard met with Fela and Bennett Cooper, both of the Voinovich Companies, and told them that no bond money would go to any company owned by Paul Voinovich "unless an opinion from the Ohio Ethics Commission was obtained," according to the memo. He also wrote, "I have been informed by Candace Peters on my staff that Hamilton and Associates has been contacting various local jurisdictions with regard to the construction of the minimum security jails. Ms. Peters informed me, for instance, that she was told by a Columbiana County Commissioner that Phil Hamilton of Hamilton and Associates had led them to believe his county may have the `inside track' on funding."
Hamilton did not return telephone messages seeking comment this week.
In the wake of Gilyard's allegations against Hamilton and Mifsud, he was fired on July 22, 1991, and criminal charges were brought against him for theft in office. He was later acquitted of all charges in a sensational trial.
Public pressure forced the newly inaugurated governor to order a State Highway Patrol investigation of his brother's company. During the course of the probe, investigators found that Hamilton, on behalf of Hamilton and Associates, had entered into a contract on October 3, 1990, with Columbiana County Commissioners. Fortunately for Hamilton, such a contract--where he was paid on a contingency fee basis for his lobbying services--was not illegal at the time he signed it. It became illegal on January 1, 1991.
In October 1991, the patrol found no wrongdoing by Hamilton, Fela and Cooper in pressuring Gilyard for jail contracts. One investigator told Columbus Alive that everyone suspected what Gilyard was saying was true, but the Voinovich Companies people are as "slick as they come."
A month later, the state Board of Examiners of Architects charged that the Voinovich Companies violated Ohio law when it accepted architectural contracts in Summit and Medina counties without a state architectural license. Under Ohio law, only architects or companies headed by architects are allowed to perform architectural work. As Governor Voinovich began his second year in office, the Voinovich Companies entered into a consent decree with the State Board of Examiners of Architects to avoid criminal charges.
Still, business was picking up for the company. In September 1991, mayors and officials from five northeast Ohio communities announced that they were preparing an application for state financing for a regional jail. Prior to the Voinovich administration, the Voinovich Companies were prohibited from receiving state funds for local projects under an Attorney General's ruling on nepotism, but a new ruling from Governor Voinovich's appointees on the Ohio Ethics Commission had cleared the way for brother Paul's participation. "Two Voinovich consultants attending the meeting said state funds could be available to finance up to half of the cost of the minimum-security facility," according to the UPI.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer later discovered that the Voinovich Companies had "hit a no-bid bonanza" at Cleveland's Water Department in early 1993. The Voinovich Companies and their partners--hired on an unbid contract to oversee a $124 million city water project--had written into their contract the ability to act as "middlemen" and take eight percent on a variety of unbid purchases. They were also allowed to bill 45 cents a mile, twice the city's standard rate for mileage, per a "verbal" agreement. City officials did not require itemized mileage receipts. Paul Voinovich was able to unload some of his old office furniture by selling it to the project. His partner in the project, Ralph C. Tyler Inc., charged the city an eight percent mark-up for Paul's old furniture, according to the Plain Dealer.
"The contractors are allowed to buy and mark up hundreds of items, charging extra when they buy lunches for city employees, rent meeting rooms at the city-owned Cleveland Convention Center, submit charges for mileage and parking, buy project vehicles, make cellular or long distance phone calls and buy computers for the city's own use," the Plain Dealer reported. In less than two years, Paul Voinovich, Tyler and partners had marked up an additional hundred thousand dollars on their "cost-plus" guaranteed profit unbid contract.
A group called SVMT--for Sverdrup Associates, Voinovich Companies, Morse Diesel International and Tyler--even purchased $108,000 in unbid computer hardware and software for the city water department and marked it up eight percent, skirting the city's competitive bidding rule for computers.
Critics of the Voinovich Companies suspected foul play, but no one could seem to prove it. That is, until Jefferson County Commissioner Scott Krupinski wore a concealed wire and taped Vince Zumpano--a former paper products salesman, friend of Paul Voinovich's, and recent air filter changer at the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA)--attempting to steer the Jefferson County Jail construction-management contract to the Voinovich Companies on December 6, 1993. "Just let me know how much you need, the only thing we got to do is we got to give them that management contract," Zumpano told Krupinski.
Krupinski's tape and Zumpano's later indictment and conviction for attempted bribery would open an examination by the FBI, IRS and state and local officials into what one prosecutor called "a web of relationships" linked to a Steubenville landfill and the Jefferson County Jail that earned the V Group more than $2 million.
The Franklin County connection
The V Group's 1993 problems in Jefferson County were offset by its popularity in Franklin County. That year, Franklin County Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker accompanied Fela and other Voinovich Companies officials to Russia to meet with sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, who longed to locate a 330-foot-tall statue in Columbus. Shoemaker became the project's strongest advocate despite public ridicule.
The Voinovich Companies had outlined a $2.2 million renovation of the downtown Franklin County Jail back in 1990. Four years later, the Franklin County Commissioners paid the Voinovich Companies an additional $17,500 to dust off and update their old report on the renovation. The Columbus Dispatch noted in September 1994 that, "Officials suspect the jail may need $3 million or more in renovation." It would ultimately prove to be much more expensive.
In early 1995, Voinovich-Sgro completed its update of the Franklin County Jail renovation plan. Franklin County Commissioners decided against "competitive bidding" because Voinovich-Sgro "had performed satisfactorily on the study and was familiar with the jail" according to the Dispatch. On May 9, 1995, the Voinovich Companies signed a contract to renovate the jail for $5.4 million, up $3.2 million from their initial estimate. In October, the project's cost rose again, to $9 million.
The next year, construction bids came in $3 million higher than Voinovich-Sgro had estimated, as the Voinovich Companies was awarded the jail construction contract. Voinovich-Sgro was awarded a $1 million unbid contract to design and manage the project. The $2 million "renovation" was now a $10.4 million Voinovich project. The final costs were an estimated $12.9 million.
When critics questioned the unbid contract, Commissioner Shoemaker told the Dispatch, "I don't see where we've done anything wrong." A $900 contribution from Voinovich Companies official Clark Miller found its way into Shoemaker's campaign coffers.
Franklin County Commissioner Dorothy Teater told Columbus Alive this week, "We've completely resolved all our business dealings with the V Group. The jail is working fine. The only problem we had is they didn't have a full-time construction manager."
Referring to the expansion of the project that was designed, built and managed by the V Group, Teater added, "In hindsight, it was a mistake to hire them as construction managers."
Attempts to contact Shoemaker for this story were not successful.
In the 1994 election, Governor George Voinovich won in the largest landslide in modern Ohio history over State Senator Rob Burch. So successful were Mifsud's fundraising efforts--he brought in $7 million--the Voinovich campaign was able to donate more than $800,000 to help elect an all-Republican statewide ticket from attorney general to state treasurer to state auditor.
Zumpano allegations grow
But problems mounted elsewhere for the governor's brother. An August 8, 1996, contract between the Jefferson County Board of Commissioners and the Voinovich Companies was later found to be illegally obtained, in State Auditor Jim Petro's opinion. He ruled the V Group, formerly Voinovich Companies, should be paid anyway, since they had done the work.
Petro's audit of the Jefferson County Jail project turned up some 600 telephone calls between convicted attempted briber Zumpano, Paul Voinovich and V Group lobbyist Hamilton. The jury had failed to buy Zumpano's argument that he wasn't offering a bribe on behalf of the V Group, but that he was simply drunk.
Problems mounted for other V Group associates that month. Mifsud resigned as Voinovich's chief of staff as allegations of a sweetheart construction deal on his fiancee's home in Marysville surfaced.
In October 1996, Zumpano was indicted on charges that he had attempted to bribe Krupinski to secure a $1 million jail construction management contract for the V Group. Zumpano pleaded guilty to attempted bribery charges in April 1997.
According to V Group spokesperson Tom Andrzejewski, Zumpano was "totally acting on his own and fabricating the entire scenario, and admitted to doing this" in the Krupinski bribery case. "He was not acting on behalf of the V Group. There was absolutely no connection between his activities and the V Group," Andrzejewski told Columbus Alive.
While the V Group, founded in 1936 by Paul and George's father, George S. Voinovich, had been indicted in the past, investigated by the FBI and state and local law-enforcement officials for influence peddling, none of the charges had ever stuck. A pattern of allegations existed, along with convictions of company employees, but the Voinovich family and company had escaped unscathed.
In August 1997, V Group Vice President Fela was busy denying allegations of political payoffs to Edward Flask, former official at the Mahoning Valley Sanitary District (MVSD), in exchange for reaping excessive profits on a water construction project. Another audit by Petro concluded that the V Group made an estimated 80 percent profit--or $2 million--on a $2.6 million construction consulting project. The V Group worked as a subcontractor for Gilbane Building Company of Rhode Island.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, "Gilbane executives also have close business and personal ties to George Voinovich. Top-ranking officials in the firm have donated at least $21,000 to his campaigns for Governor, and the firm has received at least three major state construction projects. The contracts were awarded in 1994, 1995 and 1996, and fell under the offices of then-chief of staff Paul Mifsud, who used to work for the V Group." In November, state lawmakers from Mahoning Valley accused Governor Voinovich of killing a bill that would have reformed the MVSD. The bill had passed the state House by a 96-1 vote, but died a slow and quiet death in the Senate after only one hearing. Representative Robert F. Hagan accused the Senate committee of having "buckled under to the wishes of the governor."
In 1997, a federal grand jury in Mahoning County began looking into contracting practices and political contributions of the V Group in relationship to the MVSD. Last week, the FBI took over Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery's probe into the MVSD scandal.
Jefferson County officials sued Paul Voinovich and the V Group for the $22 million cost of the jail in January 1997, claiming the firm used fraud to gain the building contract.
The V Group-designed Jefferson County jail opened in the fall of 1997. Its $22 million cost was roughly $6 million more than the original estimate. The Jefferson County prosecutor told the Dispatch that "overruns benefit the company because as the jail's architects, the V Group collects 7 percent of the total project cost."
On September 3, 1997, Mifsud was convicted in connection with the $100,000 sweetheart construction deal with controversial Columbus minority contractor T.G. Banks. In October, Columbiana County officials asked Petro to examine contracts relating to the Columbiana County jail project built by the V Group.
Trash power
None of this deterred Governor Voinovich from raising $10 million for his successful U.S. Senate bid in 1998. But almost immediately after the election last November, sending Voinovich to Washington, the Associated Press reported that federal investigators were turning their attention to eastern Ohio and the Ohio River Valley. The FBI, IRS, U.S. Labor Department and a federal grand jury from Cincinnati were interested in the little towns of East Liverpool and Steubenville and the activities of the governor's brother, Paul, according to the Dayton Daily News.
Strategically located between Youngstown and Pittsburgh, the economically depressed rust-belt region has a reputation for organized crime activity, especially in the waste management industry. Federal investigators are looking into a variety of allegations: If employees at the North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA) were on the take from local industries, specifically Waste Technologies Industries (WTI), in order to meet state environmental regulations; if WTI, which operates a massive trash incinerator in East Liverpool, used Paul Voinovich in order to win favors from NOVAA and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA); and if NOVAA officials and Paul Voinovich directed WTI to hire Fabiano as their lobbyist--the same lobbyist linked to a money-laundering scandal stemming from Governor Voinovich's 1994 re-election campaign.
In a deposition filed on March 26 by Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen Stern, former NOVAA employee Vince Zumpano--convicted of attempted bribery on behalf of the V Group--directly links Paul Voinovich to the growing scandal. A Cincinnati grand jury is hearing testimony on the matter.
Federal, state and local investigators are scrambling to verify Zumpano's sworn allegations that at a 1995 meeting in Pittsburgh, former NOVAA Director Pasquale "Patsy" Deluca, Paul Voinovich, Fabiano, Voinovich Companies executive Frank Fela and Zumpano met with WTI Manager Jeffrey R. Zelick and public relations manager Michael A. Parkes.
Zumpano alleges that the intent of the meeting was to get Deluca and NOVAA employees to "go easy" on WTI's controversial waste incinerator. Failure to pass air quality tests, which were conducted by NOVAA employees, would lower the plant's commercial burning capabilities. Zumpano testified that both Paul Voinovich and Fela sent a clear message to Deluca and Zumpano that "you better take care of WTI." In exchange, WTI would hire Fabiano as its lobbyist to take care of business in Columbus with the state EPA. Last fall, a federal probe based in Cincinnati revealed that Fabiano was receiving as much as $100,000 a month as WTI's lobbyist in Columbus.
Zumpano alleges that Patsy Deluca used his son, Ron, and the Foggia Corporation to act as a front for Paul Voinovich to deal with Fabiano and the OEPA. (The Akron Beacon Journal obtained copies of checks showing that Fabiano paid Ron Deluca $10,000--in $2,000 increments--between October 1994 and May 1995.) Zumpano swore that Paul Voinovich told him, "I get a piece of everything," in reference to the tens of thousands of dollars paid to Fabiano each month for his lobbying efforts on behalf of WTI.
When contacted by Columbus Alive for comment, Paul Voinovich's office referred questions to V Group spokesperson Andrzejewski. "Zumpano's deposition was prior to his sentencing and he's a convicted perjurer," Andrzejewski noted of the testimony. "The main witness against him [in the perjury case] was Paul Voinovich, and there's an ax to grind."
Andrzejewski conceded that Zumpano "might have sold office supplies to the V Group" and "was part of a couple of meetings involving V Group projects. But, by and large, his contacts with Paul Voinovich and the V Group were seeking political contributions" as a Democratic fund raiser. Andrzejewski also denied Zumpano's characterization of the allegedly damning 1995 Pittsburgh meeting. The spokesperson said, "Paul Voinovich had nothing to do with setting up such a meeting, and was not in attendance as I recall."
The environmental governor
Although George Voinovich ran as a self-proclaimed "environmental governor" in 1990, his administration facilitated the start-up and operation of WTI's East Liverpool hazardous waste incinerator. This angered local residents and a broad coalition of Ohio environmental groups as well as state officials in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. The WTI incinerator, built on the borders of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania at the cost of $160 million, is one of the world's largest. The plant can burn 60,000 tons of waste a year, and consequently spews dangerous dioxins, lead, mercury and other toxic particles into the air of the Ohio River Valley, according to the New York Times.
The incinerator's history is shrouded in mystery. An April 1992 Columbus Free Press article (later confirmed by the New York Times) linked secretive Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens--the man who introduced the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) into United States financial markets--as a reported financier and founder of the project.
In 1991, Congressional investigators revealed that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) knew of more than 100 cases linking BCCI to drug-money laundering. An investigator told the London Daily Telegraph that "DEA agents in storefronts all over the country knew, as a matter of course, that BCCI is the place to launder drug money."
Richard Kerr, deputy director of the CIA, told Congress that "it was quite obvious that it was involved in illegal activities such as money laundering, narcotics and terrorism." According to the Boston Globe, "Kerr confirmed that the CIA used BCCI to provide financial support for many of its overseas clandestine activities. The CIA paid its agents from BCCI and used other accounts to funnel money to guerrilla groups." In October 1988, the bank collapsed after one of the largest financial-sting operations in history.
The question of whether the WTI incinerator was "BCCI's baby," as the Columbus Free Press asked, proved even more intriguing when the owner of record was revealed to be Von Roll Ltd. of Switzerland. WTI manager Zelick told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Von Roll had put up $30 million and five unidentified banks had loaned another $130 million to build the plant. In October 1979, Von Roll licensed the first successful U.S. garbage-to-energy patent in Sargus, Massachusetts. During the heady days of the "co-generation" of power from trash, Von Roll's conversion system was the most widely used in the world.
Prior to showing up in East Liverpool, Von Roll's reputation was tarnished by allegations that it illegally exported parts of a planned "super gun" to Iraq just before the 1990 Gulf War. Von Roll was a steel and machinery company based in Bern, Switzerland. In May 1990, customs agents in Germany, Britain, Greece and Switzerland seized two shipments of Von Roll machinery that were Iraq-bound. The Swiss Justice Ministry described the shipment as "likely to involve parts for the Iraqi super cannon." Four Von Roll officials were later convicted.
In 1990, Von Roll bought out its partners in WTI without going through the process of obtaining new regulatory permits, a continuous point of controversy as incinerator opponents demanded to know who financed the plant.Before his inauguration as vice president in December 1992, Al Gore promised to prevent WTI from operating. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) proposed fining WTI $156,250 for beginning construction without a federal permit on January 9, 1992. Clinton overruled Gore and allowed the plant to begin limited operation in 1993. In July 1993, 22 anti-WTI protesters were arrested near the Swiss embassy in Washington D.C.
The WTI plant fired up its controversial hazardous waste incinerator on April 13, 1993. A Cleveland Plain Dealer investigation found that changes had been made in the initial partnership of four corporate entities that received the original permits in 1983. "Partners with similar names were substituted for the original group. Some of the new entities were not created until years after the first permit was received," the newspaper found. The new plant owner was Von Roll America Inc., a subsidiary of the Swiss-owned company.
The USEPA fined WTI $64,900 in August 1993 for failing to modify its operating permit prior to transferring it to Von Roll (Ohio) Inc. USEPA investigator Hugh B. Kaufman testified before Congress that the permit-granting process for WTI's incinerator was "riddled with deceit and deception at best, and fraud at worst." The plant was fined an additional $14,950 for failing to properly label and store hazardous waste.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to block commercial hazardous waste burning at the WTI incinerator that March, but upheld the ruling of a Cleveland federal judge who ordered that test burns be conducted and analyzed prior to the plant's start-up. This was NOVAA's job. Zelick told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that "further legal delays could cause severe financial problems for WTI's parent firm, Von Roll America Inc." Zelick estimated delays were costing the plant $115,000 a day.
Terri Swearingen, a leader of the Tri-State Environmental Council, charged at the time that WTI was operating illegally in violation of U.S. and Ohio environmental laws. She told the Columbus Dispatch that WTI "is being treated as if it were `above the law.'"
Richard Sahli, the former chair of Ohio's Hazardous Waste Facilities Approval Board, called WTI's location "the worst site in the state for an incinerator." The hazardous waste burner sits astride the Ohio River, a mere 400 yards from a elementary school attended by 450 children and only 300 feet from a residential neighborhood.
Plant critics pointed out that Von Roll owned 61 percent of the New Jersey Steel Corporation. New Jersey Steel owned a third of A.J. Ross Logistics, a steel fabricating company that is also partly owned by Thomas Petrizzo, described by New York law-enforcement officials as involved in organized crime, according to the New York Times.
Then-Ohio Attorney General Lee Fisher did not dispute these links, but instead termed them "remote." Fisher told the New York Times that "there is no evidence that Petrizzo controls New Jersey Steel Corporation."
In December 1990, a Von Roll subsidiary was awarded $143 million by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to build a monorail. The New York Times reported that "Von Roll hired Mr. Petrizzo as a `consultant' and gave him 1.3 percent of the contract." Petrizzo was acquitted of charges that he conspired with six other reputed Colombo crime family members to murder foes in a family war in 1995.
The next year, prosecutors charged that he was "a Mafia captain" who extorted $1.3 million from Von Roll. Petrizzo pleaded guilty May 1, 1996, to "federal racketeering charges that he fleeced a Long Island Teamsters Local of $500,000 and tried to defraud a bank of $6 million" according to the New York Times. In 1994, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the FBI notified Von Roll that it was investigating the company's United States subsidiary, New Jersey Steel Corporation, for alleged ties to Petrizzo, a reputed captain in New York's Colombo crime family.
Paul Voinovich enters the fray
Problems continued to mount for the plant. Officials of Von Roll AG of Switzerland estimated that WTI lost $601 million since 1992. Company officials reduced the value of the incinerator from $181 million to $12.5 million in part because the plant was still operating on a limited waste-burning capacity pending an evaluation of a health study on emission effects on the area's population, according to the Plain Dealer.
According to documents obtained and analyzed by the Akron Beacon Journal, Deluca introduced himself to Governor George Voinovich in a December 1993 letter by stating he was "a very good friend of your brother, Paul." The governor was so impressed that he forwarded the "very good letter!" to the OEPA demanding a "thoughtful response" to "Pat's recommendations" on NOVAA's role in air-quality monitoring.
In October 1994, WTI suddenly terminated its state-of-the-art air-monitoring system contract with environmental consultant Jim Burns. More surprising, WTI hired NOVAA--a quasi-public agency with rumored ties to Paul Voinovich and the V Group--to test the air. NOVAA was serving as the eastern Ohio air monitoring arm of the OEPA, monitoring virtually every smokestack in the Ohio Valley.
Sources close to the federal investigation told the Beacon Journal that "subpoenaed documents showed a series of meetings began in the summer of 1994 in which the following people were invited: WTI lobbyist Tony Fabiano; WTI executives Jeff Zelick and Michael Parkes; Deluca and Zumpano from NOVAA; and Frank Fela and--sometimes--Paul Voinovich from the V Group." The meetings continued into 1995. Fela acknowledged the meetings took place but refuses to comment on them, while V Group officials deny that Paul Voinovich attended any of the meetings.
Zumpano alleges that Paul Voinovich came to the rescue of WTI by arranging the Pittsburgh meeting in 1995. WTI spokesperson Raymond Hill refused comment and told the Akron Beacon Journal that it would be "inappropriate to comment on secret grand jury proceedings....The V Group has denied any allegations of illegality."
Fabiano secured a lucrative contract as WTI's lobbyist in February 1994. An IRS federal investigative memo obtained by the Akron Beacon Journal hints that Fabiano may have landed the contract because of his personal relationship with his old friend Paul Mifsud, then the governor's chief of staff.
Zumpano, a NOVAA air-filter changer, has testified that Paul Voinovich told him, "Make sure to take care of Fabiano." Zumpano swears that Fabiano called him and NOVAA Director Deluca numerous times trying to get them to go easy on WTI. In the Jefferson County deposition, Zumpano alleges that both Fela and Paul Voinovich made repeated threats to shut NOVAA down if WTI's problems didn't disappear.
State Auditor Petro began an audit of NOVAA in July 1996 after the alleged Pittsburgh meeting. At the time of the audit, Zumpano was being investigated for attempted bribery on behalf of the V Group. One state auditor mentioned 473 telephone calls made from the office of Zumpano at NOVAA to the V Group and 64 telephone calls to the V Group's Columbus lobbyist, Hamilton. There was no record that Petro's office ever responded to the field investigators' inquiry to pursue the NOVAA-V Group connection.
Zumpano also admitted under oath that he asked Paul Voinovich to have his brother George appoint at least three people to important state positions; all three were appointed.
In April 1997, Zumpano pleaded guilty to an attempted bribery charge for offering a Jefferson County Commissioner between $3,000 and $5,000 in exchange for awarding a million-dollar jail construction management contract to the V Group. Jefferson County Prosecutor Stern brought perjury charges against Zumpano and began to question him regarding his relationship with Paul Voinovich.
In June 1997, the Ohio Hazardous Waste Facility Board approved the transfer of WTI's operating permit from Von Roll of Switzerland to Von Roll America. Hearing examiner Peter A. Precario cited WTI's "past regulatory compliance" as a reason for approval, according to the Columbus Dispatch. Members of the Tri-State Environmental Council "urged Precario to take a closer look at the Swiss owners, including Von Roll's alleged ties to organized crime and the conviction, under Swiss law, of Von Roll executives for selling so-called `super gun' parts to Iraq," the Dispatch reported.
Plant critics called on Governor Voinovich "to look into who really owns the incinerator as well as Von Roll's environmental record in Europe and charges that Waste Technologies Industries officials may have influenced air quality monitoring by the North Ohio Valley Air Authority."
Soon after these charges against NOVAA were made public, the OEPA announced that NOVAA's contract to monitor the WTI hazardous waste incinerator would not be renewed on June 20, 1997. Within a month, U.S. Attorney Kathleen Brinkman subpoenaed OEPA documents relating to NOVAA and/or WTI from the onset of the Voinovich administration.
WTI called its former environmental consultant Burns back to its East Liverpool plant in September 1997 to help with air monitoring. He told the Akron Beacon Journal that his high-tech air-monitoring system had been "gutted in the three years it was run by NOVAA" and "the computers that made sure the air quality readings were accurate had disappeared." The Ohio EPA admits that one year of NOVAA's data is faulty and that many of its studies recorded the wind blowing in the wrong direction. A recent USEPA study listed Ohio as the third most polluted state in terms of air quality, after Texas and Louisiana.
Investigating the Senator
In September 1997, the governor's personal friend and long-time campaign treasurer, Vince Panichi, testified before a federal grand jury. V Group Chief Financial Officer Thomas Woods was also questioned. In January 1998, V Group Vice President Fela appeared before the grand jury.
As Governor Voinovich campaigned to be Ohio's junior senator, the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department expanded the investigation into the Pine Hollow landfill in Island Creek Township. A contract was filed in the Jefferson County Court on November 16, 1992, outlining an agreement between Pine Valley owner Paul E. Hatcher and International Waste Systems, Inc. Zumpano's deposition states that he met with Paul Voinovich in Cleveland to arrange getting Hatcher a 100,000-ton, site-specific permit for construction debris when there was a state moratorium on such permits.
Zumpano alleges that he met with Hatcher and Paul Voinovich in his Cleveland office. Zumpano claims that Paul Voinovich told him that Dan Dzina of International Waste Systems could get Hatcher a permit. Zumpano swears that, at Paul Voinovich's request, he drove Hatcher to a Columbus EPA office and worked out a permit agreement with Dzina. Dzina's name is also on the contract.
A recent Associated Press story led with: "The brother of U.S. Senator George Voinovich demanded kickbacks from an eastern Ohio landfill operator seeking state environmental permits, according to the sworn testimony of a man who claims he helped broker the deal."
V Group spokesperson Andrzejewski denies this account. He said, "Zumpano's allegations of kickbacks are absolutely outrageous and 100 percent wrong."
When contacted by Columbus Alive for this story, Senator Voinovich's spokesperson referred questions to David Young, Voinovich's attorney. Young was not available for comment this week.
In late August 1998, the U.S. Attorney's office in Cincinnati sent grand jury material to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien concerning money laundering involving Voinovich's 1994 gubernatorial re-election campaign. O'Brien decided the material should be forwarded to the Ohio Elections Commission. Since grand jury testimony is secret, a federal judge must approve the release to the commission.
On October 8, 1998, the grand jury material was forwarded to the Elections Commission, but not in the form of a complaint. With the November election nearing, the material bounced back again to Cincinnati, since the testimony has to be considered in a public meeting and needed another federal court order to be released again.
Finally, on October 28, 1998, the Ohio Elections Commission received two formal complaints. One of them charged that Governor George Voinovich, his brother Paul, Panichi and Fabiano misrepresented political funds; and the other charged that Fabiano and Associates, Fabiano, the V Group, Fela and ECIC Inc. improperly used corporate funds for political purposes. These charges are pending but may simply be a small part of a much bigger pattern of political corruption tied to the brothers Voinovich.
04/15/199
Murky network
Faster, Octopussy! Kill! Kill!
by Bob Fitrakis
The body of investigative reporter Joseph Casolaro was found in Martinsburg, West Virginia, with his wrists slashed on August 10, 1991. Near the body was a six-word suicide note: "I'm sorry, especially to my son," reported London's Daily Telegraph.
Why would a newspaper in England care about the tragic death of an obscure freelance reporter?
Casolaro had told his friends and family that he'd found a "network of murky individuals--he called it the octopus--linked with several covert operations and dubious organizations, including BCCI, which he suspected was used to funnel funds for arms sales to Iran," the Telegraph wrote. There were mysterious circumstances surrounding Casolaro's death: He was meeting with an unnamed source in a hotel confirming links between U.S. officials, arms sales to Iran, and the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI); his body was hastily embalmed without the family's permission, which hampered a criminal investigation; and he had told his family that if he was killed in an accident, not to believe it.
Who is the octopussy that might be lurking in the Ohio River Valley? Perhaps w
e should start by asking shy Arkansas billionaire Jackson T. Stephens. After all, Stephens introduced BCCI from Pakistan to the United States and the WTI waste incinerator to East Liverpool, Ohio. Stephens would be a good sketch artist because he's seen some monstrous scandals in his day. Stephens' family firm is the largest privately owned investment bank outside Wall Street. In September 1977, President Jimmy Carter's Budget Director Burt Lance was forced to resign amid allegations about his bank dealings with Stephens (Stephens and Carter were classmates at the Naval Academy). In 1978, Stephens, Lance and BCCI were charged with violating U.S. security laws. The charges were dropped after the defendants promised not to violate security laws in the future, even though they admitted no guilt.
The New York Post reported in February 1992 that it was Stephens who enabled BCCI to gain a foothold in the U.S. and helped the fraud-plagued bank secretly acquire U.S. banks. In Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin's book, False Profits, perhaps the best account of the BCCI scandal, the authors outlined how opium revenue from Afghanistan Mujahedin fighting the Soviets ended up in the accounts of BCCI, founded by Agha Hasan Abedi. The Post reported that Stephens allegedly introduced Abedi to Lance shortly after Lance resigned.
In 1991, Lance testified that he urged Abedi to acquire a Washington bank holding company, but he denied any knowledge of BCCI's subsequent secret ownership of First American Bankshares. The Post reported that Securities and Exchange Commission documents from 1977 substantiate that the idea originated with Stephens.
During Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential run, Stephens and his son Warren boasted of raising more than $100,000 for the campaign. The Stephens family also owned a 38 percent share in Worthen National Bank that extended a crucial $2 million line of credit to Clinton in January 1992.
But Stephens' Ohio roots go further back. Waste Technologies, Inc. (WTI) was a Stephens subsidiary chartered in Arkansas in 1975. In January 1980, a Stephens employee and former East Liverpool resident, Don Brown, informed local officials that Stephens wanted to build the WTI incinerator on land recently acquired by the newly formed Columbiana Port Authority. A press release issued July 1, 1981, identified four firms including WTI, a subsidiary of Stephens Inc. of Little Rock, and Von Roll of America Inc., an affiliate of the Swiss firm Von Roll Limited. Four Von Roll officials were convicted in Switzerland for attempting to illegally sell "supergun" parts to the Iraqi government during the Gulf War. It also owned New Jersey Steel, a company with reputed mob ties.
The combined presence in the Ohio Valley of Von Roll and Stephens, with his BCCI links, should raise eyebrows in law-enforcement circles--particularly in light of the recent allegations of campaign money-laundering involving former Governor George Voinovich and his brother Paul and Von Roll lobbyist Tony Fabiano. Richard Kerr, the deputy director of Central Intelligence, told Congress that BCCI "was involved in illegal activities such as money-laundering, narcotics and terrorism." The CIA director called BCCI "the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International," and admitted it paid its contractors from its accounts.
A sting by federal agents on a BCCI bank in Tampa, Florida, led to a 1991 Congress-ional investigation that uncovered more than 100 cases linking BCCI to drug-money laundering. Still, critics of the BCCI investigation charge that the Justice Department limited the scope to Tampa. If federal authorities were allowed to follow BCCI's tentacles into Stephens' Arkansas or the Ohio River Valley, they surely would have intersected with the national security and intelligence apparatus of the U.S.
As investigative reporters Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair conclude in their essential book Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, a great American tragedy occurred when the CIA and Bill Clinton were able to turn the allegations of Contra gun and drug-running at the Mina Arkansas airbase into "the darkest backwater of right-wing conspiracy theories."
The Mina allegations included Stephens, BCCI, Miami's Southern Air Transport, and then-Governor Clinton connected to the octopussy. In Ohio, we have Stephens, BCCI, Von Roll, Columbus' Southern Air Transport and former Governor Voinovich. Perhaps for symmetry, we should simply dismiss the similarities between the octopussies to that of the urbane, over-intellectual, left-wing paranoia.
Try to tell that to Casolaro, may he rest in peace.
4/22/1999
FEATURED ARTICLE
by Bob Fitrakis
Something's rotten at Rickenbacker Port Authority. Maybe it's just the stench of the bankrupt corpse of Southern Air Transport, or the moldering smell of the $3 million the state pumped into the notorious airline before it folded.
Ohio taxpayers are among the more than 800 creditors now lined up to file claims against "Spook Air." SAT filed for bankruptcy in Columbus on October 1, 1998, the same day the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General issued a report linking the cargo hauler to allegations of drug-running in connection with U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Something's rotten at Rickenbacker Port Authority. Maybe it's just the stench of the bankrupt corpse of Southern Air Transport, or the moldering smell of the $3 million the state pumped into the notorious airline before it folded.
Ohio taxpayers are among the more than 800 creditors now lined up to file claims against "Spook Air." SAT filed for bankruptcy in Columbus on October 1, 1998, the same day the Central Intelligence Agency Inspector General issued a report linking the cargo hauler to allegations of drug-running in connection with U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Once lauded as a coup for central Ohio development, landing Southern Air Transport's business at Rickenbacker eventually turned into a nightmare, as the enterprise became mired in massive debt and was closed under a cloud of suspicion about its true activities. Just how and why one of the world's most notorious airlines ended up in Columbus in the mid-1990s is a story that hasn't been fully examined until now.
Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Columbus Alive obtained a massive number of documents from the Rickenbacker Port Authority and additional records from the Ohio Department of Development showing that the Franklin County Commissioners and the Voinovich administration offered hard-to-refuse incentives to get SAT's business, despite the airline's shady history.
"We are proud of Rickenbacker's growth and believe the addition of Southern Air Transport would represent a significant step forward," Franklin County Commissioner Arlene Shoemaker wrote Southern Air President William G. Langton in January 1995. SAT officials pitched a proposal involving the construction of a 180,000-square-foot corporate headquarters and air-maintenance facility on leased land in the Rickenbacker Air Industrial Park. They projected the total cost of the project at more than $36 million, and predicted the creation of 300 new jobs within a three-year period.
"I will need and look forward to help from the State of Ohio, the Port Authority, Franklin County, the City of Columbus, the Chamber of Commerce and any other groups or individuals you would suggest, to help effectuate a seamless move to Columbus, Ohio, and the Rickenbacker International Airport," wrote Langton in a February 14, 1995, letter to the port authority's Executive Director Bruce Miller. A "seamless move," in Langton's estimation, would cost $3 million.
The port authority and the Ohio Department of Development, under the aegis of Governor George Voinovich's then-Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud, developed an attractive incentive package for SAT. The state development department agreed to provide SAT with a low-interest $6 million loan. The department promised an additional half-million dollars from a Business Development Capital Account to defray the cost of "eligible equipment associated with the project." The Ohio Department of Transportation agreed to enter into a lease to support $10.2 million in Certificates of Participation to enable Rickenbacker to make "necessary taxi-way and parking improvements to allow SAT to locate in the park," according to an SAT document. Such airport improvements are usually funded by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The document goes on to spell out that "the Rickenbacker Port Authority has committed approximately $600,000 to fund other public infrastructure improvements associated with the project... In addition, the port authority has also agreed to make available to SAT up to $30 million in port authority revenue bonds for eligible project related costs." The SAT document noted that, "Franklin County has also committed to granting a 100 percent abatement for 15 years on real property improvements under Ohio's Community Reinvestment Area Law."
News accounts show that The Limited owner Leslie Wexner played a role in SAT's relocation to Rickenbacker. Two other key figures in the SAT story have Columbus connections: Alan D. Fiers Jr., a starting tackle on the 1961 Ohio State University football team and a Buckeye assistant coach in 1962, who later became the chief of the CIA Central American Task Force; and retired Air Force Major General Richard Secord, head of air logistics for the CIA-owned Air America's covert action in Laos between 1966 and 1968, and air logistics coordinator in the illegal Contra resupply network for Oliver North in the '80s.
Both Fiers and Secord eventually were found guilty of charges in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. On July 9, 1991, Fiers pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges involving illegally supplying weapons to the Contras. According to the recent CIA report on Southern Air Transport, Fiers informed U.S. Senate investigators that the CIA told the DEA early on about Contra leaders being involved in drug smuggling. Secord, who is a 1954 graduate of Columbus' South High School, pleaded guilty in 1989 to a felony charge in connection with the cover-up of the Iran-Contra affair.
While SAT was busy setting up offices in central Ohio, the CIA was linking the airline to illicit activities. The October 1998 CIA report on Southern Air Transport says that as early as January 21, 1987, the customs office in New Orleans was investigating an allegation of drug trafficking by SAT crew members. The 1987 memorandum noted that the source of the allegation was a senior FDN (Contra) official, and indicated that the official was concerned that "scandal emanating from Southern Air Transport could rebound badly on FDN interest including humanitarian aid from the United States."
The memo continues, "A February 23, 1991, DEA [Drug Enforcement Agency] cable to CIA linked SAT to drug trafficking. The cable reported that SAT was `of record' in DEA's database from January 1985-September 1990 for alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking. An August 1990 entry in DEA's database reportedly alleged that $2 million was delivered to the firm's business sites and several of the firm's pilots and executives were suspected of smuggling `narcotics currency.'"
How did such a notorious company come to set up shop in central Ohio? Perhaps it was the efforts of Langton to keep the airline's history in intelligence operations at arm's length that assured Ohio officials of SAT's success. In March 1995, Langton told the Columbus Dispatch that his company was "no longer connected to the CIA."
"Too good to turn down"
It remains unclear exactly why Franklin County Commissioners were so willing to bring the scandal-ridden airline to central Ohio. Commissioner Dorothy Teater, currently running for mayor of Columbus, told Columbus Alive this month that she was not aware of Southern Air's ties to the CIA. "If it's true, that's awful," she said, adding the push to land SAT in Ohio came from the state Department of Development. "We commissioners were an afterthought. They asked us at the last second to sit in the audience at the press conference."
When asked last week if she was aware of SAT's past CIA links or allegations of drug running, Commissioner Shoemaker answered, "Certainly not."
Documents obtained by Columbus Alive show that local officials did not balk at the notion of an enterprise at one time linked to drug smuggling and covert operations worldwide setting up shop here. They were apparently willing to overlook any danger signals in an effort to please local commercial enterprises that might benefit from SAT business. In 1996, SAT spokesperson David Sweet told Columbus Alive the airline moved to Ohio because "the deal [put together by the development department] was too good to turn down."
The Franklin County Commissioners created the Rickenbacker Port Authority (RPA) in 1979 in order to utilize excess military land at Rickenbacker Air Force Base for industrial, distribution and air cargo purposes. In February 1992, the county commissioners created a Community Reinvestment Area for five years, making the Rickenbacker Port Authority a lucrative investment zone.
In a 1994 corporate report, which Columbus Alive retrieved from the Rickenbacker Port Authority's files, Langton downplayed the airline's controversial past and its crucial role in the Iran-Contra scandal, describing it as "an all-cargo airline operating schedule, charter and wetlease service for shippers, freight forwarders, the Department of Defense, relief organizations and individual customers around the world."
On April 13, 1994, William B. Holley, executive vice president for economic development for the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, wrote the Ohio Job Creation Tax Credit Authority under the Ohio Department of Development, urging that the airline receive tax credits for relocating from Miami, Florida, to Rickenbacker International Airport in Columbus.
Edmund James, president of James and Donohew Development Services, told the Columbus Dispatch that negotiations with Southern Air had begun "exactly one year ago today," speaking at the March 16, 1995, press conference announcing that SAT was locating to Columbus. He let it be known that "much of the Hong Kong-to-Rickenbacker cargo will be for The Limited." James said, "This is a big story for central Ohio. It's huge, actually."
The day following the press conference, Brian Clancy, a cargo analyst with MergeGloban Inc., was quoted in the Journal of Commerce: "Limited Inc., the nation's largest retailer, is based in Columbus, a fact that undoubtedly contributed in large part to Southern Air's decision."
That same day, the Dispatch noted a meeting between Langton, Governor Voinovich and "other officials yesterday to discuss the air cargo carrier's plans." Governor Voinovich is quoted saying, "This will be a new window to the world for Ohio business... It will be a boon for exports." Within a week, SAT announced it would be flying twice-weekly freighters from Hong Kong to Columbus on behalf of The Limited.
In an article titled "Touchdown in Columbus," SAT's company newsletter featured an artist's rendering of the proposed state-of-the-art headquarters on its cover and lauded "the very pro-business attitude of the State of Ohio and City of Columbus."
That pro-business attitude is evident in a 1995 letter from SAT's Langton to the Rickenbacker Port Authority. Although in response to Alive's records request, former Governor Voinovich's staffers claimed no records exist linking the governor or then-Chief of Staff Mifsud to the SAT deal, a February 22, 1995, letter from SAT chief Langton to Miller of the port authority stated: "I was very pleased with my visit with Mr. Paul Mifsud and Governor Voinovich, and after meeting with the State of Ohio it is my understanding that they will make the appropriate changes in funding amounts that we require in our Response to Proposal... I would expect to have a decision on the matter on or before March 10, 1995." Numerous other SAT correspondence were carbon-copied to Mifsud at the governor's office.
Repeated calls and a fax sent to Senator Voinovich's office seeking comment for this article were not answered.
The next day, a letter from Ohio Department of Development Director Donald Jakeway to Langton begins, "Pursuant to your recent meeting with this department and Paul Mifsud, we are responding with this revised commitment letter..." Jakeway outlined a "revised preliminary commitment" worth an estimated $7.2 million in services, benefits, tax credits and low-interest infrastructure loans.
Jakeway is no longer with the Department of Development and was out of the country this week and could not be reached for comment. Calls to the Department of Development for comment were not returned by presstime.
On March 16, 1995, Langton joined then-Governor Voinovich and officials from the Rickenbacker Port Authority to announce officially the relocation of SAT from Miami to Columbus. In the Columbus Dispatch's coverage of the announcement, an exuberant Voinovich gushed, "I am extremely pleased to welcome Southern Air Transport to Ohio, as it will be the first airline to have its world headquarters located at Rickenbacker Airport. This will help Columbus tremendously in becoming a world-class inland port."
Shoemaker, representing the Franklin County Commissioners, said, "We're deeply grateful to the governor and all those who helped make it possible to welcome Southern Air to Franklin County."
Langton called Rickenbacker "an opportunity waiting to happen."
By the end of the year, Langton was not sounding quite so positive. In the SAT newsletter, he stated: "As we close out 1995, I am sorry to report that we have the first loss year in recent history for Southern Air Transport."
Apparently, the airline was in better shape financially when it was engaged in covert and possibly illegal activities. Officials of SAT, which was founded in 1947, acknowledge that their airline was owned by the CIA from 1960 to 1973. In 1960, the CIA purchased SAT for $300,000 and rapidly expanded the airline's business into the Far East and Latin America. At one point, SAT was the CIA's largest "proprietary"--a private business owned by the CIA--with estimated assets of more than $50 million and more than 8,000 employees worldwide.
In 1973, the CIA sold SAT to "the official who had run it on behalf of the CIA, with a $5.1 million loan from First National Bank of Chicago, known to be a CIA-used bank," according to the National Journal. The airline retained informal ties with both the CIA and the National Security Council. The current principal owner is Miami attorney James Bastian, former CIA lawyer, who chaired the investment partnership of the management group that acquired SAT from the CIA. In 1979, Bastian acquired the company's outstanding stock.
The airline's activities after that suggest that it was still heavily tied to the U.S. national security apparatus. During the 1980s, Southern Air Transport carried a variety of military supplies, arms and equipment to the Contras. Southern Air President Langton admitted in an affidavit in the civil trial of SAT employee Eugene Hasenfus that SAT flew TOW anti-tank missiles from Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to Israel. Southern Air crews then loaded the missiles onto Israeli-owned planes that flew them into Iran.
At the time, President Ronald Reagan was officially urging the world to embargo Iran, a country he called "Murder, Inc." In 1986, SAT secretly shipped 90 tons of TOW missiles to Iran as part of the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages exchange. Proceeds from the sale of the missiles--some $16 million--were diverted to the Contra resupply effort in Central America. The scandal broke when on October 5, 1986, a Southern Air Transport C-123 cargo plane carrying 10,000 pounds of arms was shot down over Nicaragua.
The flight logs of the downed Southern Air Transport C-123 linked it to a history of involvement with the CIA, cocaine and the Medellin drug cartel in Colombia. The logs documented several Southern Air Transport flights to Barranquilla, Colombia, during October 1985, the same time Wanda Palacios, a Miami FBI informant, told the FBI that the airline was running drugs.
(It was also the same airplane that Louisiana drug dealer Barry Seal used in a joint CIA-DEA sting operation in 1984 against the Sandinistas. Seal acquired the plane through a complicated airline swap with the Medellin cartel, according to declassified government documents, and the plane was fitted with hidden cameras by the CIA at Rickenbacker Air Force Base. Seal reportedly flew weapons for the Contras and returned to the United States with cocaine. He was murdered in New Orleans in 1986 by Colombian hitmen.)
Reports of SAT involvement with drug runners surfaced early on in the Congressional Iran-Contra inquiry. In August 1987, the New York Times reported Palacios informed Congressional investigators that "she witnessed drugs being exchanged for guns intended for the Contras." Palacios identified Southern Air Transport planes involved in the gun and drug running in two separate incidents in 1983 and 1985. Initially SAT denied any connection to the CIA and dismissed accusations of drug running as absurd.
Although SAT issued an internal memo denying any post-Iran-Contra connections to the CIA, during the Gulf War in 1990-91, Southern Air Transport played a key role in logistic support for the U.S. military. And in September 1990, the Air Force awarded SAT a $54 million contract for "air transport services." Early 1996 opened for SAT with the same story line when it garnered a 90-day contract to transport construction supplies, equipment and civilian personnel from Zagreb, Croatia, to Tuzla, Bosnia, one of the world's military hot spots.
By the end of January 1996, company officials assured the Dispatch that SAT "isn't backing away from the central Ohio hub," but SAT officials were dragging their feet on plans to begin construction on a hangar at Rickenbacker.
SAT's lack of action did not stop the state's Controlling Board from approving, in May 1996, a half-million-dollar grant "related to the overall project of constructing a 180,000-square-foot facility." Documents show that Doug Talbott of the Ohio Department of Development hand-carried a $500,000 check to an SAT official on August 5, 1996.
On December 19, 1996, the Dispatch reported that SAT was "delinquent in paying a $277,000 personal property tax bill." SAT spokesperson David Sweet insisted that "the company is financially sound and intends to proceed with its Rickenbacker plans. `It's not that we don't have the money to pay the tax; we just dispute the amount,'" according to the Dispatch.
Langton, SAT's president of 15 years, left abruptly in March 1997, handing the reins back to the airline's owner James Bastian. Eight months later, SAT issued layoff notices to 100 of its 750 employees. Two months after that, Southern Air Transport publicly announced it would lay off 54 of the 65 maintenance workers at Rickenbacker and 43 of the 175 employees at the company's temporary headquarters on Kimberly Parkway. Rickenbacker Port Authority now lacked any airport maintenance facility.
SAT, which had promised 300 new jobs within three years--and had already taken at least $3.5 million in state money--admitted that it hadn't begun work on the maintenance facility project it had promised.
Marlo B. Tannous, deputy chief legal counsel for the Department of Development, issued a memo trying to figure out what "the exact job numbers" were submitted by SAT to the state. In June 1998, SAT announced it planned "to park and sell off most of its fleet of Lockheed Hercules L-100" planes.
That same month, Joseph C. Robertson, director of the state Department of Development, wrote J. Robert Peart, the executive vice president and CEO of SAT, inquiring about the $500,000 grant and an earlier $200,000 grant for new employee training. "It is critical that DOD receive an accurate assessment of your company's situation related to these agreements," Robertson wrote.
On July 30, 1998, Daniel F. Dooley, the chief financial officer of SAT, informed Lewie A. Main of the Department of Development that "Southern Air's project will not proceed as planned at Rickenbacker due to severe financial difficulty."
Fine Air Services of Miami announced a plan to purchase the financially troubled SAT on July 23, 1998. Robert Dahl, a consultant with Air Cargo Management Group, summed up SAT's financial woes by pointing out "there are fewer belligerent circumstances in the world today than there were during the Cold War." Apparently Spook Air needed the Soviets and the Red Menace to survive. Fine Air backed out of the agreement to purchase SAT "after getting a closer look at its books," according to the Journal of Commerce.
Kitty Hawk Inc., the world's largest operator of air cargo planes, signed a letter of intent shortly thereafter to buy SAT. Three weeks later, Kitty Hawk terminated the agreement. Neither Fine Air or Kitty Hawk gave reasons for their decisions not to purchase Southern Air.
Blanca Hernandez, a Southern Air spokesperson, denied rumors that the company was going to seek bankruptcy protection after the Kitty Hawk deal fell through. Three days later, Southern Air Transport grounded all its flights and fired 450 employees. Hernandez admitted that the company was "considering ways to liquidate assets." The Dispatch reported that the Ohio Department of Transportation would not try to "recoup" $3 million it had loaned SAT.
Telephone calls to Southern Air Transport seeking comment for this story were referred to Columbus attorney Randy Latour. Citing pending litigation, Latour declined to comment.
The Dispatch managed to put a positive spin on the death of Spook Air: "But there were plenty of good times for Southern Air. Its Hercules fleet became the pack mules of the skies, transporting odd-size cargo, including Keiko, the whale, and taking part in humanitarian airlifts to Bosnia and Somalia." Like local officials, the Dispatch ignored the mounting evidence of SAT's ties to cocaine smuggling.
More recently, on April 4, the Dispatch reported that the airline's already messy bankruptcy may be further complicated by allegations that $32 million in the private account of SAT owner Bastian's wife Mary Bastian are company funds.
On October 1, 1998, the CIA Inspector General issued his report outlining allegations of Southern Air Transport's involvement in drug-running. That same day, Spook Air filed for bankruptcy in Columbus.
4/29/1999
MISSING
5/06/1999
MISSING
5/13/1999
Deja vu?
Another airline with CIA ties lands at Rickenbacker
by Bob Fitrakis
In the May 3 Business Today section of the Columbus Dispatch, Mike Pramik gave readers some hope concerning Rickenbacker International Airport: "Evergreen International Airlines has quietly increased its scheduled cargo flights...The McMinnville, Oregon, air carrier has added three flights in the last two weeks."
Surely this was good news for the airport and Franklin County's Rickenbacker Port Authority. You recall that the notorious Southern Air Transport went belly up last October. The CIA-connected SAT was lured to Rickenbacker by the county and state at great expense to taxpayers--some $6 million in low-interest state loans, a 100-percent county tax abatement, and other incentives. The same day SAT filed for bankruptcy, a CIA Inspector General's report was released linking SAT to drug trafficking (see Columbus Alive's April 22 cover story "Spook Air").
Evergreen, on the other hand, has had "two regularly scheduled flights from Hong Kong to Rickenbacker" since 1989, the Dispatch reminds us. Heck, why don't we just starts passing out taxpayer money right now to Evergreen? If the Big D says they're cool, you know they're worthy of grants, tax abatements, tax-increment financing, Enterprise Zone dollars, training money, low-interest loans--the works.
I just thank God we live in a city that is worthy of the almighty, faithful Evergreen Airlines. Let me repeat: They are nothing, and I mean nothing, like Southern Air Transport.
Well, except perhaps for the minor matter of connections to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Now, we shouldn't be concerned just because the Associated Press reported in 1980 that Evergreen Airlines of McMinnville, Oregon, was created when "Evergreen Helicopters of McMinnville bought Intermountain Aviation of Marana, Arizona, from the CIA in 1975 and used its assets to form Evergreen Airlines."
Nor should we worry about a little thing like Evergreen being created from a former CIA-owned company--a "proprietary"--as SAT was. Evergreen assured the public in 1980, right after the airline flew the deposed Shah of Iran--installed by the CIA in 1953--from Panama to Egypt, that "there is no current link between...[the] company and the CIA."
I know what you Columbus cynics, agitators and conspiracy theorists are thinking: Isn't that the same thing that SAT told us before swiping millions from the Ohio state and Franklin County treasuries?
Jim Bastian, who owns SAT, had been identified in news reports as a CIA operative, while a 1980 AP report only referred to "George A. Doole, who has been identified as a prime figure in the CIA's aviation operations in the early '70s, has served as a consultant to Evergreen Helicopters." We're lucky to have such a company in Columbus. Evergreen Helicopters is a legendary company, going from one helicopter in 1969 to a $100 million worldwide operation with a thousand employees in a decade.
Pay no attention to the New York Times Magazine article in 1974 that claimed that Intermountain Aviation "was used to aid in covert CIA operations." Look, that was a long time ago. And Evergreen, unlike SAT, helps other countries. Remember, in 1985, they "donated" a plane to supply humanitarian aid into Ethiopia.
Evergreen is so nice that even SAT was forced to come to their defense when Evergreen lost its U.S. Postal Service Express Mail contract in 1989. The Journal of Commerce reported that SAT "protested the decision to the Postal Service" when Air Train Inc. won with a bid that was $7.6 million lower than Evergreen's.
Some busybodies are likely to make much ado out of the fact that Evergreen is privately held, like SAT, according to the Journal. And that Chairman Ned Wallace, who resigned in 1990, had been with the Flying Tiger Line Inc.--with its own government connections--for some 23 years.
Just 'cause Evergreen held the airlift duties contract for the U.S. Southern Command at Howard Air Force Base in Panama prior to 1990 does not prove any direct ties to the U.S. National Security apparatus. And what do Aviation Week and Space Technology really know anyway?
All I know is I'm proud to have an airline that flew the Shah--I mean, Imelda Marcos--back to the Philippines in 1991. To think that our very own Rickenbacker Airport would be privileged to house the airline that was reported on in the Washington Post as follows: "After landing in a chartered Evergreen Airline Boeing 747 with more than 200 supporters and journalists, the former first lady was held up at Manila Airport for more than two hours...Among her entourage were 200 American security men."
We were lucky to get Evergreen Airlines to come here in 1992 to handle "freight in the Columbus area primarily for The Limited," as the Dispatch reported on March 27, 1992. Just like we were really unlucky Southern Air Transport came here to fly to Hong Kong for The Limited. See, SAT: Bad. Evergreen: Good.
We're the luckiest city in the world. We should get down on our knees and thank God, or Les Wexner, that "Evergreen Airlines of McMinnville, Oregon" would lease a plane to "federal investigators...a 747 studded with censors...to re-create the fuel tank temperatures of doomed TWA Flight 800 just before it exploded," according to the Seattle Times.
Do you think an airline associated with the CIA would do something that nice?
5/20/1999
Jovial response
Cops are on better behavior at African-American fest
by Bob Fitrakis
Last Saturday night I witnessed shocking events. So terrifying that nearly the entire Columbus police force was called out to contain the potentially explosive situation. To be blunt, thousands of noisy black people converged on the OSU campus late at night. There were black people walking down the sidewalk, talking with other black people and some were, dare I mention it, driving cars and motorcycles. We can only guess what their real agenda was, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves way too much for Columbus, Ohio.
It was the notorious African-American Heritage Festival--usually used by the Columbus police as an occasion to block off streets and harass and arrest lots of black people--and I was an eyewitness.
First, the good news. No wooden bullets ("knee-knockers") were fired this year by overzealous police. Now cynics, and I know many of them, charge this is because three U.S. Department of Justice officials were present at the event, aided by 40 or so "community observers." I believe we're in the middle of a major transition here in Columbus. The police were obviously on better behavior, and what I saw was a visible shift in police strategy and attitude. Instead of the police seizing the street and setting up their treasured "thin blue line" of officers in riot gear with clubs--stationary, unyielding and immovable--they mingled more and walked with the crowd. Some were actually pleasant. One was even jovial. What would've brought a good Macing last year was often laughed off by the officers.
As I observed an arrest for "excessive noise," I was ordered to move along or risk arrest myself. After explaining, as usual, to the officer that I was a reporter not breaking any laws and had a legal right to observe an arrest, I awaited my customary fate of detention, forcible removal or Macing. This year it didn't happen. The officer actually went to his sergeant who sided with me for once.
Now we've still got a long way to go. The bad news is that the massive police show of force was in disproportion to any conceivable threat posed by the predominantly middle class college crowd. The behavior of students at the African-American Heritage Festival and that at an OSU football tailgate party are virtually indistinguishable, except for dress. Oh, and the Buckeye tailgaters drink more. At one point police officers tensed up, ready to attack, when they sighted a dozen or so black men doing something similar to a bunny-hop down High Street. It took the cops awhile to realize the Omegas, who look like extras from Spike Lee's School Daze, were engaging in silly fraternity activities and were not a menace to society.After a quick perusal of the crowd, the police should have sent half the force to other areas of the city where real criminals were no doubt having a field day. How much trouble can you expect from women in evening wear, with expensive high-heeled shoes, carrying balloons? Admittedly, one suspicious-looking black lass was wandering High Street with a crown and a sash that said "Ohio," randomly hugging people. No, not mugging people--hugging.
I suspect the rapid and massive police response to a drunk throwing up behind a building in Pearl Alley may not have been the best use of tax dollars. Most likely, the guy was a campus bar regular not even associated with the festival. Next week he'll be able to hurl in peace. I tried to get to him and offer a suggestion: If you're going to behave like that, for God's sake, man, wear a Buckeye jersey or run for public office.
One quick solution for next year: take all the DARE money and put it into a new program that teaches cops to do stand up comedy. I didn't see the one jovial cop arrest or harass anybody. And when I got up close to him I swear I heard him humming Hang on Sloopy and muttering to himself, "Pretend they're an OSU football crowd..."
One place to revel in tolerance and diversity and begin the necessary re-socialization to a groovier social order is at this Saturday's Anti-Fest, sponsored by Anti-Racist Action. From noon to midnight on May 16, a block off High Street, bands and people will play. All are welcome--Buckeyes, bunnyhoppers, the woman hugging everybody and the happy cop. Peace.
5/27/1999
Police profile
Despite community complaints, Columbus cops seek accreditation
by Bob Fitrakis
The big loser at Monday's public hearing conducted by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. was Police Chief James Jackson, despite his best efforts. Jackson, like any good street fighter, tried to gain homefield advantage for the May 24 event by staging it at the Police Palace, otherwise known as Columbus Police Headquarters. The accreditation commission gives cop organizations their "good policing" seal of approval if the department can comply with professional standards; Monday's hearing was the public's chance to speak up about the performance of Columbus police.
I spotted the chief hunkered down in row eight on the right side of the auditorium. Things looked good for him early on as law-enforcement officers from lily-white west- and northside suburbs took time out from their busy schedules to support the chief. Let's see, a cop from Grandview is for the accreditation. A sergeant from Dublin, whose boss is an accreditator, brought blessings from his city and Worthington as well. Dwight Holcomb threw the full weight and majesty of Upper Arlington's finest behind the Columbus Division of Police's accreditation.
But the counter-offensive against Columbus police practices in general, and Chief Jackson's leadership in particular, was fast and furious. The heat was too hot for Jackson; he bailed out, by my count, after two tongue-lashings by participants.
Don Murray, the first vice president of Police Officers for Equal Rights (POER), reminded accreditors that on June 21, 1998, the U.S. Department of Justice found that certain Columbus police officers "engaged in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, making false arrest and lodging false charges, and conducting improper searches and seizures in violation of the Fourth and 14th Amendments to the Constitution." He also pointed out that since that finding, the city of Columbus has paid out more than $1 million taxpayer dollars to settle civil suits against the police.
Murray likened the accreditation to giving an alcoholic a Certification of Completion for Rehabilitation while he's still drunk. He charged that the chief and his cronies are "drunk with denial," particularly on the question of "racial profiling."
Last Wednesday, Chief Jackson told WCMH-TV news: "Let's face it: Statistically minorities are six times [more] likely to be involved in crime. So I would think you would probably have a six times likelihood of them being stopped." Not only are Jackson's facts wrong on the probability of blacks being involved in crime--the famous Chambliss sociology study long ago established that cops bring racial, ethnic and class prejudices into the arrest process and often arrest those who fit their profile of a criminal--he wears his ignorance as a badge of honor. If Jackson were white, the African-American community would be up in arms demanding his immediate resignation because of that comment.
Some Columbus citizens aren't looking the other way while the city's first black police chief puts on whiteface to play the role of Boss Hogg. Showing they're not afraid of the police or jails, they boldly walked into police headquarters and told their stories. Jackson and the news cameras were long gone but Safety Director Tom Rice, much to his credit, stayed for the entire two-and-a-half hours.
Testimonial after testimonial illustrated the rabid infection of racial and ethnic profiling by Columbus police. Black evangelists said they were abused and accused of stealing the church's van. A white BREAD (Building Responsibility, Equality and Dignity) member asked how the commander of the Narcotics Bureau amassed $4 million in real estate; he also rightly pointed out how "three out of four cops" live outside the city and are perceived as an occupying army.
Most of the participants attacking the chief and his chums were black; a few were white. Two critics, speaking in heavy Russian accents, each relayed separate but similar tales of being ridiculed by Columbus police officers and harassed about their ethnicity. The second was a female of Ukrainian Jewish descent who I had the privilege of teaching at Columbus State Community College. An outstanding student, she was intellectually astute and thoughtful. She wondered why a ticket was brought to her house, where she lives with her husband and young child, at 1 a.m. after an accident with a white citizen who spoke with no accent. Or why, when she asked about her complaint against the police, she found out it didn't exist.
The irony of hearing this political refugee from the former Soviet Union publicly demand, despite her acknowledged fear of the police, that the police take classes in "spelling" and "racial, ethnic and religious sensitivity" was not lost on the audience.
James Moss, president of POER, directly challenged what he feels are the "stonewalling" tactics of Chief Jackson on the Justice Department consent decree negotiations. "Statistically, African-Americans and other minorities are targeted because of their skin color and other culture-negative stereotyping by racial profiling by the Columbus Police Department.... Statistically, African-Americans are involved [in fewer] than 12 percent of illegal drug sales and usage but represent more than 80 percent of the drug arrests," Moss said.
Moss believes to accredit the Columbus Police at this point is to validate Chief Jackson's bigotry. Safety Director Rice, who participants praised as "helpful, professional and friendly," sees it differently. "The accreditation doesn't clean away the past but gives us a road map for the future," he stated.
While Moss and Rice both debate the future of Columbus law enforcement, Chief Jackson stands as a stonewall serving and protecting the past forces of racism.
6/03/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Not another column linking the CIA to drugs! No, it seems we're weeding--I mean weaning--the company off the hard stuff. Earlier this month, former Central Intelligence Agency Director R. James Woolsey, now a Washington lobbyist, signed up his first client--the North American Industrial Hemp Council. The Washington Post described the group as "angling to legalize hemp."
The Post also noted that "hemp lacks enough of the psychoactive substance that gets smokers of the forbidden weed high" and called the fiber "a billion-dollar-a-year crop, producing paper, clothing, lotions and even car dashboards."
Hemp and marijuana plants are part of the same family--cannabis sativa l.--although hemp plants can't get you high. Not that this hasn't been reported respectively in the Free Press, Columbus Alive and even the Columbus Dispatch. But it must be true if it's in the Post.
Woolsey told the Post, "The hemp battle is about developing hemp oil as a substitute for petroleum, which could enhance the country's energy security by making it less dependent on foreign suppliers."
On March 23, North Dakota's governor signed into law legislation that requires North Dakota State University to study the feasibility and desirability of industrial hemp production in that state. A final report is due by August 1999.
This is some seriously shocking stuff, so to speak. After all, just 'cause hemp's legal in Canada, Western Europe and the rest of the world, and America's founding fathers are becoming as well known for their hemp growing as their slave owning, we shouldn't forget the dangers of Reefer Madness! Remember, if it looks like pot and smells like pot, it doesn't matter if you can't get high off it. Banning hemp because it looks like marijuana makes as much sense as banning sugar because it looks like cocaine.
If you want to hear more on the subject, join me at the Environmental Hemp Festival on June 5, from 12 noon to 11 p.m., at the Browning Amphitheater near Mirror Lake on the Ohio State University campus. The event is sponsored by advocacy group For A Better Ohio.
SAT flies again
"Former" CIA airline and bankrupt cargo carrier Southern Air Transport (SAT) has risen zombie-like from its grave to again stalk the Earth. According to a May 13 story in the trade publication Aviation Daily, the newly created Southern Air Inc. has acquired "SAT's route authority and some of its assets."
The original SAT went bankrupt in October 1998 amidst allegations of cocaine and gun running (see Columbus Alive's April 22 cover story, "Spook Air"). The new company--that's Southern Air Inc., not Southern Air Transport--is referred to as "the Columbus, Ohio-based company, formed May 10."
Alas, finally something to make us a world-class city. I hear these guys got connections, and I do mean big connections, all over the globe. The brand spankin' new Southern Air Inc. wants the U.S. Department of Transportation "to transfer SAT's certificates and exemptions to Southern so Southern can begin all-cargo service about September 1," Aviation Daily says.This is curious. Court papers claim that SAT's Air Cargo Division lost more than $39 million in 1997, the year before it filed bankruptcy. Now who the hell would invest in a company that bleeds that kind of red ink?
We'll never know, if Southern Air Inc. has its way. They've asked the transportation department "for confidential treatment of investors."
Of course, the cargo carrier has a long history of providing confidentiality to investors and clients. Like the CIA, which owned SAT from 1960 to 1973. Or Ollie North and Richard Secord's Enterprise, which reportedly used the airline to arm both the Ayatollah Khomeni and resupply the Contras in Nicaragua. Or the alleged crack dealers who used the airline, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. Customs and the CIA Inspector General.
If the old clients are worried about new practices getting the way, rest assured that "Southern plans to provide its own flight crew training." Southern Air has always focused on providing planes, crews, maintenance and insurance under long-term contracts to airlines and cargo companies in need of its specialized expertise. This practice is known in the industry as "wet leasing."
With the proper lubrication provided from secret investors, Southern Air Inc. is once again positioned to take over SAT's route, come rain or sleet or snow, or more snow.
Fitrakis honored by AAN
Columbus Alive columnist and investigative reporter Bob Fitrakis received an Editorial Awards Contest honorable mention from the Association of Alternative Newspapers at the group's annual convention last week in Memphis. Fitrakis was honored in the News Story category, for papers with a circulation below 54,000, for last July's Alive cover story "The Shapiro Murder File." He was among 63 winners in 14 categories; the AAN contest received 780 entries from 76 alternative newspapers nationwide.
"The Shapiro Murder File" was an in-depth look at a single police document: the report of the homicide investigation into the 1985 "mob-style murder" of prominent local attorney Arthur Shapiro. Fitrakis' cover story also explored the history of links between the various city and business leaders named in the report, including billionaire clothing magnate Leslie Wexner, businessman Jack Kessler and former Columbus City Council President Jerry Hammond. Because of these "scandalous" allegations, in Columbus Police Chief James Jackson's words, the chief had once tried to destroy all copies of the homicide report.
While some good fortune lay behind this particular article--the report was allegedly accidentally released by police sources--Columbus Alive had closely followed the Shapiro story for years. A Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Fitrakis seeking the Shapiro report was pending for a year before the report was finally released.
The AAN contest judges--journalists from major daily newspapers and national magazines--said of Fitrakis' winning story: "Fitrakis creates a compelling narrative by ably stitching together new information and past reports linking some of Columbus' most powerful business and community leaders, both living and dead, to the mob."
"The Shapiro Murder File" is available at www.alivewired.com/19980716/
6/10/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
White supremacists and neo-Nazis continue to be supported by local so-called conservatives with ties to the Republican Party. The latest, and one of the most flagrant recent examples, is Ohio State University student Matt Ball's guest column in the Observer, a right-wing newspaper that's distributed for free in the campus area.
The Observer describes itself as "an independently run student newspaper published by the Buckeye Conservative Studies Foundation." In fact, it's a noticeably low-rent cousin to the notorious Dartmouth Review, which won its 15 minutes of fame when its staffers attempted to dismantle the anti-apartheid shantytown erected by students at the Ivy League school to protest South Africa's white supremacist policies in the 1980s.
In the past few years, an inexcusable--and often ignored by the mainstream media--pattern of behavior has emerged wherein so-called conservative Republicans give aid and comfort to explicit racists and anti-Semites. Recall that after the 1992 election, investigative reporter Russ Bellant linked then-Ohio Governor George Voinovich to money sources provided by Eastern and Central European former Nazis and fascists.
Columbus Alive reported two years ago that the Republican Ohio House Speaker Pro Tem William G. Batchelder, who left the Ohio House last December to become a Medina County judge, was listed as a member of the little-known and highly secretive far right Council for National Policy (CNP). Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates described CNP members as "not only traditionally conservative, but also [ascribed to them] nativism, xenophobia, theories of racial superiority, sexism, homophobia, authoritarianism, militarism, reactionism and in some cases outright neo-fascism."
More recently, we had President Bill Clinton's chief accuser in the House, Representative Robert Barr, and Senator Trent Lott contributing columns to a white supremacist organization, the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Which brings us back to the Observer and Matt Ball. Above an ad for the College Republicans, a typical Observer article offers the lead, "Newt!, Newt!, Newt!, the crowd of young and old roared," under the headline "Newt Speaks at Notre Dame." But the real politics of the editors are revealed by their choice of guest columnists. First, Andy Rufus ponders, if the recently tortured and slain Matthew Shepard "was not gay and had merely been robbed, would we have heard about it?" and wonders, "How long will it be until being a Clinton hater is a federal offense?"
While Rufus is merely sophomoric, Ball's Observer column is sinister. After pointing out that there are "17 organizations I found for black/African students" and "nine organizations I found for Jewish students," Ball uses the Observer as a recruiting tool to form a "European-American" student organization at OSU. This is an old tactic, „ la David Duke and his infamous National Association for the Advancement of White People. The Observer staff are either ignoramuses, dupes or willing pawns of neo-Nazi organizing techniques. Sure, the Observer editors will try to falsely hide behind free speech claims, but remember the axiom, only the government can censor. The Observer editors made a constitutionally protected editorial decision to publish these racist sentiments.
Ball is a frequent writer of letters to the Ohio State Lantern editors. In a May 22, 1998, letter to the Lantern, Ball proudly admitted to putting up National Alliance fliers in the campus area. The fliers contained Aryan-type poster children with warnings against "Jewish-controlled Hollywood," and stated that the blue-eyed, blonde lass pictured "stands a greater than one in four chance in being raped, probably by a non-white."
A week later, Ball wrote that "there is ample evidence to show that Jewish losses during World War II are nowhere close to 6 million." And, he pointed out, "CNN is no longer owned by a Gentile, neither is CBS, ABC, nor Disney. Don't let me forget Time Warner, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the U.S. News and World Report. All are controlled by Jews."
Ball is so proud of his National Alliance membership that he's featured on the neo-Nazi group's web page. It would have only taken Observer editors a few minutes to research the National Alliance. They would have quickly found out that its leader, William L. Pierce, is the author of The Turner Diaries under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. The novel is really a primer for fomenting race war in America, containing a passage describing a morning bombing of a U.S. federal building. Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was an enthusiastic fan of the Diaries. The fictional Turner, the hero of the Diaries, is an open racist like McVeigh; Turner's fictional bomb exploded at 9:15 a.m., McVeigh's at 9:05 a.m.
Anti-Racist Action activists are busy posting fliers exposing Ball's neo-Nazi connections. But who in the Republican Party or the conservative movement will dare demand that their comrades at the Observer be held accountable for serving as a propaganda tool for an organization dedicated to genocidal terror?
6/17/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Attorney Barry A. Mentser filed three lawsuits on May 7 on behalf of inmates at the Madison Correctional Institution. These lawsuits, filed in the Ohio Court of Claims, and a state investigative report, provide a frightening glimpse into the practices of the Ohio Penal Industries--the state program that administers prison labor--and raise questions about the general direction of Ohio's prison-industrial complex.
Theodore Reddy, Joseph Bowles and Richard Gloden are suing the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction for negligence. All three inmates worked on an Ohio Penal Industries (OPI) demolition crew at a London Correctional Institution site and, according to court papers, the men all came down with histoplasmosis--a potentially debilitating respiratory disease caused by close contact with pigeon droppings.
Their lawsuits allege that they were required "to work in close proximity to a large amount of pigeon feces and related debris" and they "contracted histoplasmosis at the worksite...and required continuing medical treatment." The charge of negligence stems from the allegation that the corrections department "did not provide plaintiff[s] with the appropriate training, protective gear, or take any preventative measures to minimize and/or prevent plaintiff[s] from contacting histoplasmosis, pursuant to state and/or federal rules and regulations."
Normally such inmate lawsuits simply provide fodder for right-wing talk show hosts buying into conservative hot button issue to boost ratings. This case should prove different: This time, the inmates' allegations were investigated by a special assistant in the Office of Correctional Health Care, George D. Alexander. Prison working conditions were then detailed in a report from Alexander to Robert O.E. Keyes, the correctional healthcare office's deputy director.
Alexander noted in the August 6, 1998, report that he was "informed that in 1997, a work stoppage by outside contractors lasted 47 days due to the threat of contracting histoplasmosis from pigeon droppings and dust." While non-inmate workers wisely refused to be subjected to vast quantities of pigeon feces, the prison industries' virtual slave laborers were required to do the dirty work.
Alexander uncovered three separate inspection reports from a private contractor, Emilcott-dga Inc., warning of the dangers of "pigeon droppings" and recommending specific "precautions." Emilcott issued the first report on November 25, 1997, and the second two weeks later, both during the civilian work stoppage.
As a result of the reports, a training video was made to teach the civilian construction workers how to safely deal with pigeon feces. When Alexander visited the site on August 3 last year, he learned that a OPI demolition crew had just demolished a restroom at the London facilities; as they removed a wall, "a large quantity of pigeon droppings and dust suddenly fell from behind the wall." An OPI asbestos removal crew was then called in to clean up the area.
Alexander's report describes the interesting scenario when the OPI demolition crew returned: "While I was present, a crew of six OPI demolition workers were sweeping the area and hauling trash to be discarded. I observed that each inmate was wearing a hard-hat. All were wearing tear away paper jumpsuits over their regular clothing, however the sleeves had been removed from the jumpsuits and they were not zipped up. Only one inmate was wearing a dust mask over the mouth and nose and a second had the mask on but it was around his chin. One inmate was wearing safety goggles. One inmate was sitting in a wheelbarrow while taking a break. I was in the area between 10 and 15 minutes. During the entire time no supervisor was present."
In his report, Alexander directly links the lack of supervision and proper safety equipment to prison officials. For a bureaucrat, his comments are remarkably frank: "I viewed the video that is shown each Thursday to new workers. The video appears to be the initial training session that was presented to the construction workers before they returned to work [after the work stoppage]. The presentation is very poor to say the least. The audio is almost inaudible and the video out of focus. A question and answer section is completely inaudible."
Discussions between Alexander and Bob Mouradian, an OPI construction supervisor, revealed that "inmates are not required to `sign off' when they are instructed in safety procedures and that he [Mouradian] is not aware that training records are maintained on employees," according to the report. Now imagine what would happen to a private sector employee who openly admitted to such violations of state and federal health regulations.
In October 1982, about 1,700 inmates out of a statewide population of 16,400, worked in OPI jobs. Twelve years later, Reginald Wilkinson, director of the corrections department, bragged in a 1994 Columbus Dispatch op-ed piece that the "factory-type work supervised by Ohio Penal Industries had increased its prisoners workforce from 2,024 at the beginning of 1991 to 5,079 in the fall of 1994." Wilkinson attributes this to the man who appointed him, then-Governor George Voinovich.
In 1990, there were 20 prisons in Ohio; when Voinovich left the governor's office, there were 31. This year, Wilkinson and Governor Bob Taft proposed a $2.7 billion two-year prison budget. By 2001, Ohio prison spending will be three times what it was when Voinovich moved into the governor's mansion in 1991.
Racial profiling, mandatory sentencing, de-industrializing Ohio and attacks on the working class swelled the prison population. Conveniently, the Voinovich family and their cronies were in the jail- and prison-building business. But they're not the only ones benefiting from the prison-industrial complex--any industry employing prison workers is getting virtually free labor without occupational safety and health regulations. As Wilkinson wrote, "The new private contracts [for OPI workers] have come in the area of doing work that might ordinarily be sent to workers outside the United States."
Taxpayers are subsidizing an internal banana republic, a primarily black workforce within the Ohio prison system. It's been almost a hundred years since Upton Sinclair wrote his classic The Jungle. For the sake of men like Reddy, Bowles and Gloden, we need a new wave of muck-raking journalists to expose the new horrors of Ohio's prison-industrial complex.
6/24/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Four different reports--serendipitously released in the same month--all offer telling looks into the state of socio-economic justice in America.
The rich are still getting richer. A lot richer. Forbes magazine's annual list of billionaires, released this week, found that the top 200 richest people in the world now own more than $1 trillion. That's double the wealth the Forbes report accounted for just 10 years ago. The billionaires created in the high-tech global economy, like Bill Gates with his personal $90 billion, now own more wealth than half the rest of the people on the planet combined.
Amidst the gross inequalities of this brave new world order, the Republican Congress saw fit to pass a law allowing the 10 Commandments to be displayed in public buildings. Maybe a simpler quote from the Bible like, "You can't worship both God and Mammon" would be more appropriate. Or, say, something from the Book of Acts, when the early church members gave up their worldly possessions and gave to each according to their needs. Or the corollary from the Communist Manifesto: "Workers of the world, unite!"
I first got caught up in the "struggle" in 1969. In my mid-teens, as a greaser in Detroit, I grew my hair long and became a target for the Detroit Popo, the man. We began to identify with black militants because we, too, shared their "profile" in the eyes of the police. In New York, white radicals in Greenwich Village adopted a familiar police phrase. They called themselves "The Up-Against-The-Wall Motherfuckers."
I hate to say it, but it looks like we fought the law and the police state won. The recent report by Professor David Harris of the University of Toledo, "Driving while black," documents pervasive statewide "racial profiling" in Ohio and throughout the United States. Harris found that blacks in four Ohio cities are roughly twice as likely to be ticketed as all other citizens.
Harris concluded: "African Americans, Hispanics and others have said for years that they are stopped, questioned and sometimes searched in disproportionate numbers when they drive. The data are confirming this, and we need to begin to search for ways to eliminate race from police decision making."
A separate report by the U.S. Department of Justice, also released earlier this month, illustrates shocking statistical disparities between how blacks see the police in contrast to whites. A survey of 12 cities showed that roughly one in four (24 percent) African Americans are dissatisfied with police, while only one in 10 (10 percent) whites feel the same way.
Racial profiling is nothing more than leftover racial stereotypes from the Jim Crow era (pre-1964 for you youngsters). As Harris' study points out, "Everyone breaks traffic laws," and police have a tremendous amount of discretion in deciding who they'll stop. Just like during the civil rights movement when the FBI targeted black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Angela Davis and the Black Panthers, the harassment continues on the street level today.
The drug of choice in the 1960s, we all know, was marijuana. So it should be no surprise that the same month the Harris study and the U.S. Justice Department survey came out, a Federation of American Scientists research paper documented that nearly 60,000 Americans are incarcerated at any given time for minor marijuana offenses. Some 15,400 are currently incarcerated for possession--not trafficking! In 1997, according to FBI data, more than 700,000 marijuana arrests were made in the United States. Eighty-seven percent of those were for personal possession of marijuana rather than for sale or manufacture. The cost of these short-term marijuana incarcerations are costing taxpayers more than $1.2 billion a year. Put that on your Forbes list.
This summer, 30 years after the Woodstock Nation was founded, we've got the rich richer, continued police harassment of minorities, and small-time potheads serving serious time. To be fair, the police are a little better trained. Now when they stop you to frisk you for being black or looking like a hippie, they say: "Up against the wall, motherfucker. Please."
07/01/1999
Anatomy of a whitewash
Inside the Voinovich campaign financing report
by Bob Fitrakis
A masterful painting--or paint job--is a thing of beauty and wondrous to behold. Reading Roger Makley's investigative report that exonerated the brothers Voinovich and their V Group cronies of alleged money laundering humbled me. Reading about his virtuoso performance before the Ohio Elections Commission left me awestruck.
I bow to the master Makley. Only through sheer genius of obfuscation and delicate fact- and word-twisting could he have come up with such a masterpiece--his 70-page report, six months in the making.
The Voinoviches were accused of laundering $60,000 from Governor George Voinovich's 1994 election campaign fund into the coffers of the V Group (formerly the Voinovich Company), the construction company headed by George's brother Paul Voinovich. Makley, the independent investigator who looked into the allegations for the elections commission, couldn't find anything wrong with the Voinoviches' actions.
It didn't help that Nick Mamias, a key player in the alleged scheme and potentially a key witness, tragically died after slipping on ice in 1997. Mamias allegedly laundered the $60,000 to Waste Technologies Inc. lobbyist Michael Anthony Fabiano and ECIC Inc., the joint venture company between Fabiano and the V Group.
Then there's Fabiano, another potential key witness whose lips are sealed: he's taking the Fifth.
Still, the real story in the report and its appendices is the testimony of Mimi Myers, the former office manager for ECIC. Her testimony has more to do with understanding the corruption of the Voinovich administration than Makley's inability to locate campaign irregularities. You know it's hot stuff when Makley allowed Paul Voinovich's lawyer, Roger Synenberg, to insert into the report a letter labeling Myers' testimony as "slanderous."
Seems Myers had the audacity to appear before Makley without an attorney for her deposition. Even worse, she took her oath seriously, not only swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but also actually doing it.
Margaret Newkirk's account in the Akron Beacon Journal of Makley trashing Myers is required reading for aspiring Makleyavellians. Makley said that Myers' "deposition on the surface... `seems to be some damaging testimony,' but much of what she said should be `discounted as personal opinion and observation,'" the Beacon Journal reported.
Myers stated in her deposition that "it was my understanding that Frank Fela with the Voinovich Group brought he [Fabiano] and WTI together and from that resulted a contract." Waste Technologies Inc. (WTI) runs one of the largest waste incinerators in the world in East Liverpool, Ohio.
In her testimony, Myers claimed that ECIC "didn't" have any clients and essentially functioned as a corporate shell to pay a kickback to the V Group. Makley asked Myers, "Why and for what purpose ECIC Inc. was making payments to the V Company or the Voinovich Company or to Paul Voinovich?"
She replied: "Well, I always thought it was returning a portion of the money that Mr. Fabiano was receiving as a lobbyist for WTI, which the V Group and Frank Fela got WTI as a client for Fabiano and Associates, and that this was paying them back for doing that."
Check registers included in the report document that Fabiano's ECIC paid V Group companies $114,500 between April 1994 and September 1996. Fabiano received $26,000 a month from WTI as a retainer plus expenses, according to Myers.
Myers told Makley, "My next concern was that we, essentially, never did anything to earn the money. They're sending us $26,000 a month for what I could see is nothing.... There was no reason for V Group to be involved. They weren't contractors. They weren't anything to WTI from what I could tell, but then in addition to that, another concern came to my mind--and that was when the people from NOVAA [North Ohio Valley Air Authority], when they started getting them together with WTI and I always thought that this was a conflict of interest."
Critics, including this column, have long pointed out the apparent preferential treatment of WTI's toxic incinerator by Governor Voinovich's administration following WTI's involvement with the V Group. A secret federal grand jury in Cincinnati is currently looking into criminal matters related to WTI, Fabiano and the V Group.
Myers said Fabiano's checks to the V Group stopped when WTI terminated its lobbying contract. And guess who got to sort out all these strange dealings which attorney Synenberg insists were not "kickbacks"? Of course, the well-known accounting firm of Ciuni & Panichi Inc., according to Myers.Makley appeared unfazed by Myers' revelation that the personal accountant for both Voinovich brothers also served as the accountant for Fabiano and Associates and ECIC. Vincent Panichi is also George Voinovich's long-time campaign treasurer and the accountant for the controversial Banks-Carbone Construction Company.
Makley ultimately concluded: "There's no evidence that anyone involved with the filing of that report [1994 Voinovich campaign funds report] knew or could have known that expenditures to Mamias & Associates Inc. was for any purpose other than that shown on the invoices."
Maybe Makley forgot about campaign treasurer Panichi, who claimed under oath to the Cincinnati grand jury that the scheme was hatched at a meeting he attended with the brothers Voinovich. Neither of the Voinoviches could "recall" the meeting. Barring any further accidents, hazy memories or Fifth Amendment silences, perhaps this alleged scheme will be sorted out someday.
7/08/1999
White denial
by Bob Fitrakis
Perhaps this weekend's widely reported killing and shooting spree by white supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith will snap Columbus citizens out of their state of denial. Yes, it could happen here. Yes, it already has happened here. And yes, it will continue to happen here unless you stand up and say: "Hi, my name's Biff. I live in Columbus and I'm in denial about the white supremacists that operate in our city."
Smith, a member of the World Church of the Creator, reportedly celebrated this Fourth of July weekend by shooting and killing minorities in Illinois and Indiana. According to police, Smith shot and killed a black ex-college basketball coach and wounded six Orthodox Jews on Friday. He fired at blacks and Asians on Saturday. On Sunday he murdered a Korean man then turned the gun on himself.
Even The Other Paper and its letter writers should now understand why Anti-Racist Action (ARA) recently outed Matt Ball as a white supremacist Ohio State University student. What we now know of Smith's history leading up to the rampage is enlightening. Smith told a student newspaper that "the U.S. government favors minorities at the expense of whites." Ball argued the same thing in his editorial in a student newspaper.
Commentators are obsessed with Smith's unassuming or "normal" appearance and behavior. On TV, he's described as "polite," even when he was passing out white supremacist fliers. Recall the lead in Debbie Briner's Other Paper article questioning ARA's outing of Ball: "Matt Ball is a clean-cut, polite young man..." who also happened to pass out white supremacist literature.
OSU Professor Raymond W. Lang attacked the ARA for outing Ball. This is how Lang described Ball in a letter to the editor: "This good looking, well-proportioned young man would seem to be the model OSU student." Except, like Smith, Ball belongs to a terrorist organization that advocates genocide of non-whites. And like Ball, Smith was outed by the ARA, in Bloomington, Indiana.
Ball is a proud member of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi organization headed by William L. Pierce, an avowed white supremacist and author of The Turner Diaries. The Bible of America's white supremacist terror network, The Turner Diaries is a primer for racial holy war and, along with Christian Identity ideology, unites the white supremacist movement. From the Klan to the Posse Comitatus to the World Church of the Creator to the National Alliance and Aryan Nation, virtually the entire supremacist movement falls under the hate umbrella of Christian Identity. Christian Identity believers hold that Jews are the direct spawn of Satan and that blacks are "mudpeople" without souls.
When Smith's Church of the Creator feared that it would lose its West Virginia property to a black family in a civil suit--after one of its "reverends" shot to death Harold Mansfield, a black sailor in 1991--it sold the land at a quarter of its value to Pierce and the National Alliance.
Prior to Ball's recent OSU-area white supremacist activity, Joey Hagar and his band of 15 Church of the Creator co-horts terrorized the campus area in the late 1980s and early '90s. Hagar went to prison after being convicted of killing a black woman. He was replaced by the "Reverend" Matt Hayhow, who was convicted with another Church member on bank robbery charges in Columbus.
In between Hayhow and Ball was the Columbus-based Aryan Republican Army in the mid-'90s. Known as the Midwest Bank Bandits, the Aryan army robbed 22 banks before their leader, Commander Pedro, was popped at his Columbus safe house on the south side.
This spring in Zanesville, a Klan leader started a demonstration with the "88" greeting--code word for "Heil Hitler," eight being the eighth letter of the alphabet. Pretty clever, huh? He also offered the neo-Nazi "14-words" greeting, another terrorist code word for carving out an all-white nation.
This Saturday, the Klan is demonstrating in Steubenville, Ohio. On August 21, they'll be in Cleveland, and on September 11, back in Columbus. Anti-Racist Action plans to counter-demonstrate at all these events. Maybe this time the local media will think twice before they take the "just ignore them and they'll go away" tactic. This tactic was tried in both Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy.
White supremacist terrorist organizations are recruiting daily. They're in the high schools, the colleges and they're all over the Internet. When you ignore the Klan, they thank you and go on recruiting. While you comment on Matt Ball's nice appearance, it allows him to go unchallenged in passing out his hate propaganda. When you call Smith "polite," it's easier for him to sneak up on minorities and kill them.
Not only does Anti-Racist Action challenge the terrorists by out-shouting the Klan at rallies and by outing white supremacists in their communities, its members give educational sessions at local high schools to promote tolerance and anti-racism. The ARA brings people together from different races, ethnic groups and socio-economic backgrounds.
Some may think ARA activists are not as clean-cut or polite as Smith and Ball, but at least they're not in denial.
7/15/1999
Portrait of a racist
by Bob Fitrakis
Currently, the neo-Nazi apologists and propagandists are busy feeding the public misinformation and distancing themselves from their boy, Benjamin Smith--the racist serial killer who went on a shooting spree last Fourth of July weekend. They're blaming the Bloomington, Indiana, police who ticketed Smith for littering after his racist hate sheets flew off cars.
Smith was a member of the World Church of the Creator, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization. He went on his rampage only hours after the church's anointed "Pontifex Maximus," the "Reverend" Matt Hale, lost his appeal to get a license to practice law in Illinois because of his racist beliefs and total disdain for the U.S. government and its laws. It's hard to swear an oath as an "Officer of the Court" when you apparently want to destroy it.
Hale's "church," based in East Peoria, Illinois, has a long documented history of racist violence. It's also one of the fastest growing racist organizations in the U.S.--going from eight churches in early 1995 to 31 today. Church of the Creator "Reverend" George Loeb murdered African-American Harold Mansfield Jr. on May 17, 1991, in Florida. "Reverend" Joey Hagar was convicted after killing an African-American woman in Columbus during that same time period. Just this weekend, police seized white supremacist literature from the home of the Williams brothers, Benjamin Matthew and James Tyler, suspects in the murder of a gay couple in northern California and arson attacks on three Sacramento synagogues. The Associated Press reported that police investigators are "examining whether the case is part of a wide hate-crime conspiracy and whether the brothers are linked to the World Church of the Creator."
Who's responsible for Smith's actions? The "liberal" media? What liberal media? You mean the mainstream corporate media that sucks up and spits out every lie and distortion "Reverend" Hale has to offer? Remember how the media dutifully noted Hale's absurd disclaimer that his organization does not practice or advocate violence? Let's look to the words of the church founder, Ben Klassen, in his classic RAHOWA! The Planet is All Ours, written in 1987. He told his "congregation" that they should prepare for "RAHOWA! [Racial Holy War]: In the one word we sum up the total goal and program of not only the Church of the Creator, but of the total white race...We regard it as a holy war to the finish--a racial holy war. RAHOWA! is inevitable. It is the ultimate and only solution...No longer can the mud races and the white race live on the same planet and survive."
Remember also that the mainstream media bought Hale's big lie when he said that Smith had just quit the church in May 1999. The small non-profit Center for New Community almost instantly issued a special report on Smith, overlooked by the for-profit corporate media, pointing out that the Church of the Creator's June 1999 newsletter announced that Smith "has relocated to central Illinois to assist PM Hale at World Headquarters." If he quit, why was he moving to the East Peoria headquarters?
Obviously, the school year was over at Indiana University in Bloomington and the church's "Creator of the Year" was heeding the head racist's national call to move to Illinois. The center's special report on Smith notes that a July 1998 directive from Hale to Church of the Creator members announced: "Just as Adolph Hitler knew that before he could win Germany, he must first win his home turf, Munich and then Bavaria as a whole, before we can win the world, I fervently believe that we must win our capital, Illinois... Therefore, I am calling on all of you (particularly my most dedicated brothers and sisters) to strongly consider moving to Illinois, central Illinois in particular...We will get the ball rolling. RAHOWA!"
Liberal media, my ass. Unless ignoring the obvious and buying racist terrorist spin is a new definition of "liberal."
Following the words of their fuehrer, New Jersey neo-Nazi organization Day of the Rope Productions joined Hale and his pals in Illinois. The Ropesters take their name from the fictional day, described as "necessary and bloody," in the neo-Nazi novel The Turner Diaries. This is the day when all white "race traitors," Jews and people of color are publicly hung from lamp posts. Tim McVeigh loved the book and recommended it highly, and the Klan members in Texas who put a rope around James Byrd and dragged him till there were few parts of his body left said they were "starting The Turner Diaries tonight" according to sworn statements.
The author of The Turner Diaries, William Pierce, is an avowed neo-Nazi. He also wrote another fictional primer to promote racial holy war titled Hunter. In it, a "lone wolf" racial terrorist rampages through the streets shooting "race traitors" at random, and targets an interracial couple.
Who's responsible for Smith's actions? The liberals who preach tolerance and diversity or the neo-Nazi terrorist network that pumps out propaganda by the tons, harasses, targets and kills non-whites, burns synagogues and preaches genocide as the final solution?
7/22/1999
FEATURED ARTICLE
by Bob Fitrakis
For such a drab, unassuming structure, it sure holds a lot of importance: come January 1, 2000, it could house the state government's most vital operations. "It's a big, square white building along the road that looks like a runway next to Beightler Armory," described Kelly Blackwell, spokesperson for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
It's not hard to find--if you know it's there. On a rural stretch out on Route 161, west of Route 315, the normally low profile Ohio Emergency Operations Center/Joint Dispatch Facility, operated under the auspices of the Ohio Public Safety Department, will be "fully activated" if and when the Y2K computer bug bites on New Year's Eve.
For such a drab, unassuming structure, it sure holds a lot of importance: come January 1, 2000, it could house the state government's most vital operations. "It's a big, square white building along the road that looks like a runway next to Beightler Armory," described Kelly Blackwell, spokesperson for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
It's not hard to find--if you know it's there. On a rural stretch out on Route 161, west of Route 315, the normally low profile Ohio Emergency Operations Center/Joint Dispatch Facility, operated under the auspices of the Ohio Public Safety Department, will be "fully activated" if and when the Y2K computer bug bites on New Year's Eve.
The building, which occupies more than 90,000 square feet, is described in Ohio Emergency Management Agency (OEMA) literature as "a steel frame unit...built over a poured concrete structure for maximum disaster protection." Surrounded by barbed wire with its own filtered air supply, the center contains a cafeteria, dormitories (two male, one female), a decontamination room and an infirmary.
Beginning on December 29, the center will be staffed 24 hours a day until it's no longer needed--even if it's nuked. The center comes with an Electromagnetic Pulse Shield Enclosure "designed to filter out and prevent the damage caused by lightning or an electromagnetic pulse produced in a nuclear detonation," says the brochure Blackwell hands out.
The Y2K crisis--described by some as an overblown plot to get people to buy portable generators, seen by others as the dawn of a new dark age--is the inability of computers to read the year 2000 without reprogramming. Computers that read dates as two digits ("99" instead of "1999") will confuse 2000 with 1900--sending software and hardware into a digital tailspin. This millennial meltdown is the ultimate payback for putting so much everyday reliance in technology, the just deserts for our digital hubris.
The government is concerned that everything from the telephone system to the electrical grid to water and sewage facilities will be affected--and may even be an opportune moment for terrorist attacks or apocalyptic revolts. As vice chair of the Senate Special Y2K Committee, U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd, stated recently, "The question is not, will there be disruptions, but how severe the disruptions will be."
Just exactly how long the Y2K crisis will last depends on who you believe. The official U.S. government line, echoed in Ohio, is "prepare for a 72-hour winter storm." Yet government documents and contingency plans imply that that may be the best case scenario. More likely, documents suggest, there will be two weeks to three months of random computer failures.
On June 22, at the Second Conference on International Preparedness for the year 2000 computer bug, New Zealand unveiled its "BY2K wise" plan. In New Zealand, where Y2K will hit first, households will get a checklist this September advising them to be prepared for up to three days of disrupted services but to stay ready for the first three months of the year.
The U.S. government tends to avoid telling the public about the worst case scenario, not only because of its statistical unlikeliness, but for fear of inducing panic. Federal, state and local governments here are preparing for the worst, though you may not have read about such efforts in the American press.
Under the headline "U.S. sets up bunkers to beat Millennium chaos," the London Sunday Telegraph reported on April 18: "America's major cities are preparing secret command centers and making plans to mobilize armed troops in the event of a possible breakdown of social order if there is widespread computer failure on the eve of 2000."
The Telegraph continued, "State officials in Ohio announced last month that they were ready to move government operations into a $13 million bunker eight miles outside downtown Columbus on December 29."
(Blackwell told Columbus Alive the OEMA center is "not a bunker. We don't like to refer to it that way. It's an emergency management center and joint operations facility.")
Fred Millar, director of environmental and public safety policy for the Washington D.C. nonprofit Center for Y2K & Society, visited Columbus last month and argued strongly for full disclosure. "Studies show that the American people don't panic unless you withhold information from them," he told Alive in an interview.
Still, some odd news has filtered out. On January 15, Ohio National Guard officials informed the news media that they've prepared a mobilization plan to be used in case of a Y2K emergency. Ohio National Guard Captain Neal O'Brien told the Cincinnati Post, "We don't want to cause panic and we're certainly not trying to add fuel to the fire, but on January 1, there's a chance that there could be some issues and we're looking at what we can do to prepare just in case."
During a recent tour of the Emergency Operations Center, Chief of Support Services Dan Patchen stressed that while there's a plan to activate the National Guard, they can only be called out through a declaration by the governor.
The question of civil disorder during Y2K is obviously a sensitive one. Responsibility for maintaining law and order will rest primarily with the National Guard under the governor's direction. State officials from 54 Ohio agencies will ring in the new year in the center working in pre-designated cluster groups. Patchen pointed out that the National Guard's adjutant general, who operates out of the similarly fortified armory next door, and law enforcement agencies are natural cluster partners. "But people forget that the DNR [Department of Natural Resources] has armed and trained game wardens and that the DOT [Department of Transportation] has the heavy equipment that's needed to clear roads," he explained.
Other clusters of Ohio agency officials will congregate in the Emergency Operation Room. The room resembles NASA's mission control center, with 52 workstations and command and control stations. "The large viewing screen in the center of the room is on a movable track. The two large screen monitors, similar in concept to large screen televisions, are used to view video, computer graphics, local television stations or satellite feeds," official center literature describes. "The two large projection screens on either side of the room are used to view slides, overheads or 16 millimeter films. They can be raised and lowered electronically." There's also a Fixed Earth Station Transmit and Receive Site which "functions as a portable, quick erect satellite system" for deployment in a disaster area.
When asked whether the Telegraph's claim that the Ohio government was moving to the center is true, Patchen insisted that only Ohio government officials needed for emergency management would be there. The governor has a large working cabinet room connected to the main Emergency Operation Room.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency kicked in $2.7 million in construction costs for the center. Still, the federal government's role in Y2K-related problems in Ohio and other states remains a mystery. The Telegraph reported that National Guard units in the U.S. "are said to be coordinating with federal agencies on a new command and control system with high-frequency radios, emergency power backup and command centers to be readied by the end of the year."
More curious is the role of the U.S. Marines, who have been using U.S. cities to train "urban invasion forces" this year. In February, the Potomac News, a small Virginia newspaper, ran a photo captioned "Y2K riot training." The photo showed a Marine private attempting to "force himself backward through a line of Marines during a civil unrest exercise at Quantico Marine Corps base," near Washington, D.C. A Quantico spokesman officially denied the story, but the writer, Dave Ellis, stood by it.
A Pentagon Internet site posted a February 22 memorandum from John J. Hamre, deputy secretary of defense and the military's point man on Y2K, outlining "support to civilian authorities." In guarded language, the memo noted, "It is possible that localized system failures will occur, and that the possibility for more widespread, systemic problems, both domestically and internationally, cannot be ruled out."
Hamre continued, "Within the United States, local commanders may undertake immediate, unilateral, emergency response actions that involve measures to save lives, prevent human suffering, or mitigate great property damage, only when time does not permit approval by higher headquarters."
In March, Marines staged mock invasion counter-terrorist exercises in Monterey, Alameda and Oakland, California. After 400 Marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit announced plans to train in Richmond, Virginia, for two weeks in June, citizens questioned why. The May 3 Richmond Times-Dispatch wrote, "The urban maneuvers, these worried citizens say, may mask preparations for a year 2000 computer meltdown so great that governments are afraid to discuss it." The Marine Corps officially denied the exercise had anything to do with Y2K and said it was just training for dangerous urban areas overseas.
The same day, syndicated columnists Jack Anderson and Jan Moller published a column in which they claimed "we have learned that the U.S. military is quietly planning a sophisticated social-response network in case civil unrest should erupt. It was confirmed to us recently by Senator Robert Bennett, who chairs a special Y2K Technology Problem Committee."
Thomas Barnett, director of the Y2K security project, told Anderson and Moller that his team has been coaching every branch of the military since fall 1998 in "planning drills and simulating Y2K breakdowns."
While the "preparing for a 72-hour storm" line persists, both Patchen and Dean Arvin, Ohio's Y2K coordinator, admitted they were preparing a final Y2K annex or supplement to their emergency management plan. Sources familiar with the plan say it will be far more thorough and comprehensive then one needed for a 72-hour storm. Patchen refused to speculate on any worst case scenarios.
J.R. Thomas, who coordinates Y2K efforts for the Franklin County Emergency Management Agency, refused to speculate on any meltdown scenario or civil unrest, but he did say that he felt it had, at worst, the potential to be similar to the 10-day ice storm in Virginia a few years back.
Why all the preparation in Ohio? Government officials know that the computer glitch is not like a localized storm in one region. Rather, it's an international, national and statewide problem, because of its scale, potentially leaving local governments to their own devices and isolated in the wake of a communications breakdown. James Williams, OEMA Director, told the Columbus Dispatch earlier this year, "We're telling local governments that you need to be prepared for up to a 72-hour delay before state government will be able to get there to help out." This begs the question, if it's like a 72-hour storm, why would local governments need state assistance after the 72 hours is over?
Recently Congress passed Y2K liability legislation exempting businesses and organizations from computer failure-related lawsuits for the first 90 days of 2000. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers told Congress, "Prevention of all Y2K failures was never possible" partly because "`Y2K compliance' does not equal no Y2K failures." As the institute put it, most Y2K testing systems "will overwhelm the testing infrastructure that was never designed to test `everything at once.'" Specific Y2K disruptions and glitches are virtually impossible to predict since they're randomly distributed and one disruption may trigger several more.
The U.S. Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem pointed this out in its February 24 report. The good news is 97 percent of the "embedded" computer chips should be compliant or survive the Y2K bug. (Embedded chips are those hidden in innumerable everyday devices, from your radio alarm clock to the telephone company's switching equipment). The bad news is the remaining three percent that could randomly fail equals roughly 1.2 billion chips. The report says of the untested chips, it's "impossible to tell which one" will fail and when.
The Senate report concluded that "embedded [computer] chips are used extensively in all parts of the electrical power industry including generating plants, transmission lines, distribution systems and power control systems." The report emphasizes, "Electrical power is key to every other sector: The lights must stay on!"
The Senate report cited the health care industry as particularly lax in its Y2K preparations. Rural and inner city hospitals were found to be especially at risk. "About 81 percent" of the water utilities expect to complete their internal Y2K work on time.
A mid-July General Accounting Office report listed Columbus as "one of the 10 major cities that don't expect to have key services ready for the millennium bug until the final quarter of this year." Only two major cities, Dallas and Boston, have finished testing.
Millar, the public safety advocate, argues that "vulnerable communities--read the poor, sick and elderly--are most at risk....People need facts, not PR."
Thomas says that even if there are Y2K problems with water or gas here in Franklin County, those utilities could manually open their valves. He added that "Ohio has a 14-day supply of natural gas stored in underground caves, even if the pipeline goes down in Texas." Thomas claims that Kroger supermarkets has assured him there will be a "36-day food supply" in their stores come the New Year and the food banks will be "stocked" as well.
When asked about possible "cyber-terrorism" or apocalyptic adherents taking advantage of the Y2K bug, Thomas remarked, "Now you've given me something else to worry about."
The Senate committee has its own worries: "The committee has serious concerns about the Y2K readiness of state and local governments." And well they should. Just last month, when Van Nuys, California, tested its water and sewage system for Y2K compliance, four million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the city streets. Let's hope our Y2K tests fare better this October in Columbus.
7/29/1999
MISSING
8/05/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
As the battle over the massive Spring-Sandusky Interchange construction project heats up, the defenders of Victorian Village have rolled out some heavy artillery. Grassroots group Citizens for a Better Spring-Sandusky hired one of the nation's premier traffic engineering firms to study traffic patterns through their historic neighborhood. Their findings--that Victorian Village traffic is much worse than the city will admit because of the construction project--should blast holes in the interchange's first line of defense.
The city of Columbus is using skewed statistics to justify an ill-conceived, 30-year-old design for the Spring-Sandusky Interchange, a Gordian knot of a downtown highway connecting route 315 and interstates 70, 71 and 670. Sadly, the city's steadfast adherence to cooked numbers will most likely destroy the historic character of Victorian Village.
Since interchange construction began in 1992, many ramps to I-670 and route 315 have been closed, causing a noticeable increase in traffic through Victorian Village as suburban commuters seek alternative routes to the expressway. This is well documented in the city's own traffic data. Yet, the city denies that the Spring-Sandusky Interchange project has anything to do with the increase or that the thoroughfare traffic will permanently and negatively alter the residential area.
In the late 1960s, government officials sought to make America safe for suburban white flight. Inner city communities were regarded as rotten and expendable following the urban riots of that decade. The colossal Spring-Sandusky Interchange project was intended to straighten out route 315 as part of an overall plan to finally complete the I-670 innerbelt--giving Hilliard and Dublin commuters a quick route downtown bypassing the "seedy" neighborhoods.
The near northside area (then known as "Flytown") was of no concern. It was thought of as an area for flophouses, hippie crash pads and criminal activity. We all know Victorian Village and the Short North have changed--they're now considered among the city's best neighborhoods--but officials at City Hall must be having some strange acid flashback. They think it's still 1969 and it's OK to demolish urban neighborhoods.
The Spring-Sandusky project has closed many downtown exit and entrance ramps, essentially forcing suburban commuters to race through Victorian Village at 45 mph. It never occurred to the original planners, three decades ago, that Victorian Village would be a gloriously restored historic district worthy of slow residential traffic. Citizens for a Better Spring-Sandusky point out that the current project design "takes a far higher number of ramps out than are being put back in"--thus turning Neil Avenue into a freeway ramp for overflow traffic.
Ted Beidler, a programming engineer in the city's engineering and construction department, somehow emerged as the city's chief flack-catcher and misrepresenter of facts at a December 3, 1998, meeting with village residents. Beidler pitched the city's Big Lie--waving around a laughable and amateurish two-page Victorian Village Traffic Analysis done by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC)--that traffic had grown by a whopping 3.8 percent a year between 1980 and 1992 on Neil Avenue due to "natural growth." Three thousand additional cars a day have flooded onto Neil Avenue since 1992, but Beidler and the city are using their "natural growth" thesis to deny that the interchange project affected traffic. (Beidler told Columbus Alive he didn't write the city's report, and he didn't know who did.)
Citizens for a Better Spring-Sandusky hired engineering firm Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin Lopez Rinehart, Inc. to analyze the city's study. Their Traffic Evaluation Report, issued July 19, documents the city's blatant dishonesty. The report calls the city's and MORPC's analysis "not statistically reliable." Better yet, in plain English and easily understood charts and graphs, the Glatting report demonstrates how the city manipulated the stats.
In order for MORPC and the city to make their case for the obsolete design of a 1960s concrete jungle construction project, they calculated the growth rate for Neil Avenue north of Goodale Street using only two traffic studies, one from 1980 and one from 1992. They then assumed "a linear relationship between them," the Glatting report notes. The reason MORPC and the city used only two traffic studies, and made asses out of themselves by relying on a false assumption, is because these are the only two studies that back their "natural growth" thesis. By finding and using an abnormally low number in 1980, it allows the city to claim a false traffic increase prior to the construction project.
As the Glatting report shows, MORPC and the city only had to add older traffic studies to avoid their bizarre assumptions. The Glatting report, instead of using two traffic reports and an assumption, added studies from 1970, '72, '74, '76, '78, '83, '86, '87 and '90. By relying on actual studies, you get an actual growth rate of 1.1 percent instead of 3.8 percent between 1980 and 1992. From 1990-92, traffic increased by 300 cars a day, but after construction began between 1992-97, it increased nearly 3,000 cars a day.
By 1997, Neil Avenue had reached its maximum traffic capacity at 18,000 vehicles a day, leaving the city with only two options: either accept an alternative design for Spring-Sandusky that protects the neighborhood, or remove the on-street parking enjoyed by residents in the historic neighborhood and raise the speed limit, creating a two-lane commuter road, according to the report. City officials prefer to turn a quiet, picturesque historical avenue into a godawful suburban snail trail.
The city says it's only "natural" to force another 3,600 cars onto Neil Avenue over the next 20 years. Thus, the city can turn its back on Victorian Village and justify turning a historic avenue into a rush hour parking lot.
8/12/1999
Florida, not Ohio
Dispatch rests while the V Group says it's not the V Group
by Bob Fitrakis
You'd never know it from reading the Columbus Dispatch--seems Ohio's "Best Home Newspaper" is turning tricks for Senator George Voinovich again--but a huge can of worms involving the V Group has popped open in Summit County. By now, everyone except Dispatch readers is aware of Paul Voinovich, brother of the former guv, and the V Group's reportedly shady and unethical business practices. Where Pauly goes, indictments seem to follow.
If you read the Cleveland Plain Dealer on July 24, you learned that there's an attempt by the Summit County Council to permanently prohibit the V Group (formerly the Voinovich Companies) from doing business in that county. The Dispatch must've been too busy scooping everyone on the drought to cover it.
Why, you ask, would someone want to keep the senator's kid brother from making a living? If you're to believe Paul Voinovich's standard explanation, it's because his big brother has "political enemies" and they're taking it out on him. Or, if you read the July 20 Plain Dealer, it's because William Hartung Jr. reportedly received at least $89,000 from companies owned wholly and partly by Pauly. At the same time, Hartung was serving as chief of staff for Summit County Executive Tim Davis. The Dispatch was probably researching its State Fair series and unable to look into the situation.
Hartung resigned last February as the number two man in Summit County. Three months later, he was convicted in U.S. District Court in Cleveland on 14 counts of bribery, mail fraud and income tax evasion. And the money trail allegedly led to the V Group, followed by the V Group's usual pattern of denials. Summit County General Counsel Lewis Adkins asked Pauly to disclose whether or not there were financial ties between the V Group and the convicted Hartung. Pauly told him it was a "private" matter even though it involved public funds.
Margaret Newkirk's story in the May 15 Akron Beacon Journal outlined Paul Voinovich's refusal to cooperate. "Impugning people's character based on some `contemplated arrangement' violates all reasonable ethical and professional standards," Pauly pontificated. As always, Pauly does more than contemplate. Dispatch reporters were no doubt staffing the phones, waiting for Pauly to confess, so they had little time to investigate the scandal.
Earlier in the year, Summit County officials nixed a deal that would have given $3 million in unbid consulting fees to the V Group and consultant James W. Achterman. Summit County officials claimed that Hartung engineered the deal, the Beacon Journal reported. It looked like a routine V Group fleece job. You can almost hear Pauly thinking up the alleged scheme: "Tell 'em there's some very, very serious environmental shit going wrong in your county, and you need to hire us to straighten it out."
In mid-July, Summit County Councilman Paul Gallagher attempted to get to the bottom of the financial relationship between Hartung and Pauly. As the V Group put it in a letter, reported in the Beacon Journal, "to comment on business transactions that William Hartung or Cindy Peters [another former Summit County administrator] may or may not be involved in since leaving the county would place our company at risk."
Two days later, while the Dispatch rested in anticipation of its upcoming frenzied Buckeye coverage, notorious V Group Vice President Frank Fela resigned and confirmed to the Plain Dealer that Hartung had indeed received at least $89,000 from Pauly's companies while on the payroll in Summit County.
Fela told the Plain Dealer that "there was nothing illegal done." You see, in Frankie's mind, since the money wasn't paid by the V Group of Ohio--but by the V Group of Florida; Step II Management and Development Corp., also solely owned by Pauly; and North Coast Villas, a real estate company that Pauly partially owns--it was all on the "up and up." The Dispatch probably agreed with Fela's analysis, not that we'd know since they didn't tell us anything about it. But I'll concede that their Cleveland Browns coverage is phenomenal.
As V Group spokesperson Tom Andrzejewski explained to the Beacon Journal, "The V Group of Florida is a different company than the V Group of Cleveland." If you're going to be taken to the cleaners by Senator Voinovich's brother, I guess it's better when he does it with an out-of-state company. That way the Buckeye state remains untarnished.
Andrzejewski turned away questions about the relationship between convicted felon Hartung and the V Group as "disconcerting and offensive," according to the Beacon Journal. Thank God only the Columbus Dispatch, among the state's major newspapers, had enough sense not to ask the V Group spokesperson mean and rude questions about something some company in might have Florida done.
8/19/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Exactly what part of "neo-Nazi terrorist network" doesn't the mainstream media and middle-class America understand? In the aftermath of Buford Furrow's shooting spree last week that wounded five Jewish people, including four kids, and killed a Filipino American, isn't the simple-minded slogan "Ignore them, they'll just go away" fully discredited? Nobody can ignore the growing violent white supremacist and neo-Nazi movement that will only get bolder before the end of the year.
Can it happen in Columbus? It already has. From 1989 to 1991, between 20 to 30 campus-based racist skinheads, or "boneheads," openly operated in Columbus. The boneheads were members of the Church of the Creator.
Just last month, Benjamin Smith of the offshoot group World Church of the Creator went on a rampage that targeted Jews, African-Americans and Asian-Americans, killing two. Smith's progenitors of neo-Nazi ideology in Columbus were local Creator leaders John Reid and Matthew Hayhow. John Backstrom, a local music promoter, was violently assaulted by Reid and nine other neo-Nazis in April 1990. Backstrom informed the police that he recognized all 10 of his bonehead assailants, yet assault charges were only brought against Reid. Hayhow and Reid were sentenced in March 1993 with a third man for robbing two Columbus banks in 1990.
With the "Reverend" Hayhow in prison, Joey Hager of Clintonville took control as the Creator's local "holy man." In August 1992, Hager stabbed 19-year-old African-American Nichele Trice to death in an altercation on 18th Avenue; in February 1993, Hager was sentenced to eight to 25 years in prison for voluntary manslaughter. Oddly, Hager's judge deemed his well-known involvement with the neo-Nazi Creators to be irrelevant and inadmissible at the trial. Columbus Alive has since, rather easily, examined Hager's personal papers and effects, including his personal copy of The White Man's Bible, which lays out the five basic racist beliefs of the Creators: our race is our religion; the white race is nature's finest; racial loyalty is the greatest honor; racial treason is the worst crime; and what is good for the white race is good for nature.
The Columbus Dispatch ignored or downplayed Hager's neo-Nazi connections. Only the Columbus Free Press and the now-defunct Columbus Guardian, which pointed out that Trice's killing was not even counted as a hate crime, covered the racist nature of the murder.
In March 1993, another local man with neo-Nazi ties, John W. Gerhardt, was sentenced to three to 10 years for abduction. Gerhardt sought sanctuary at the Aryan Nations' compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho, after attempting to kidnap a woman from a Bank One ATM machine in Gahanna. He hid out with the Aryans in 1991 until his arrest in May 1992.
Gerhardt and his brother Edward both attended Columbus' Mifflin High School and first attracted national attention when they founded the American White Nationalist Party in 1972, according to the Guardian. Gerhardt currently is serving time in the Orient Correctional Facility, where prison sources say he's an Aryan Nations minister. Prison sources also report that he recently converted former Ohio Grand Titan of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Vince Pinette away from the Klan to the neo-Nazi movement. Just a couple of white guys, doing time and talking hate.
Columbus plays a prominent role in the neo-Nazi movement, particularly in relationship to bank robbers. Aryan Nations offshoot the Order, led by Robert J. Matthews, stole $4 million and killed Jewish talk show host Alan Berg in 1984. Matthews died in a shoot-out with FBI agents in 1984, but not before he visited Columbus. In the book The Silent Brotherhood, the rise and fall of the Order is depicted, including Matthews' Columbus excursion "where he met a college history professor he knew through the National Alliance." The authors fail to name the professor, whose identity was redacted from government documents.
Between January 1994 and January 1996, Aryan Republican Army Commander Peter Kevin Langan committed as many as 22 bank robberies before his arrest at a south-side Columbus safe house, according to FBI testimony. In 1995, Langan recorded a two-hour recruitment video for his Aryan army where he displayed a copy of Richard Hoskin's book Vigilante Christendom. He called it a "handbook for revolution."
Police also found a Hoskin book in Furrow's abandoned van. Hoskin, a racist Christian Identity preacher, advocates a "Phineas Priesthood" of underground racist terrorist
"kamikazes" or "Shiite warriors" who kill non-whites and race-mixers. Hoskin draws from the Bible (Book of Numbers, 25:1-18) to defend the killing of interracial couples.
When Aryan Nations staged a rally in Columbus in February 1997, a member of the racist Southside Greathouse armed robbery gang--the gang that went on a 19-day crime spree in October 1997--shot and critically wounded a black newspaper carrier. An FBI agent told Judge James Graham that the shooting was both random and racially motivated. Furrow's shooting spree resembles those outlined in National Alliance founder William Pierce's novels The Turner Diaries and Hunter. Both glorify terrorism and random assassination of non-Aryan people.
San Diego-based Alex Curtis, who also has neo-Nazi ties, praised Furrow for his "lone wolf" tactics. "[Jews] deserve the retribution that lone wolves are just beginning to dish out. Now a major sacrifice of Jews and niggers occurs once a month or so. Imagine the near future when the number rises to once a week. We are witnessing the end of civil society. A race-mixing society that must die if our race is to survive," Curtis wrote in his weekly e-mail magazine.
As the millennium approaches, and apocalyptic fervor among white supremacists increases, violent hate crimes may indeed become more common. It should be clear to readers of this column why Matt Ball's neo-Nazi activities as a National Alliance member at Ohio State University should be scrutinized. Exposing even non-violent racism is our first line of defense against future bloodshed.
8/26/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
You can't blame Columbus' Fraternal Order of Police for being skeptical of the consent decree the city of Columbus negotiated with the U.S. Justice Department. A year ago, the Justice Department claimed to have found a pattern and practice of civil rights violations on the part of the Columbus Division of Police. The agreement the city negotiated would avoid a costly federal lawsuit based on these charges.
But why the hell should the FOP accept the decree and modify its collective bargaining agreement when the city has stated publicly that there's no problem to correct? City Attorney Janet Jackson and Mayor Greg Lashutka's political posturing on the consent decree makes FOP opposition possible.
The city has spent millions of dollars in the last few years settling cases brought by Columbus area citizens who've been shot, Maced, beaten, abused and falsely charged by untrained, undertrained or just plain rogue elements of the Columbus police department. Yet the city attorney sees no "pattern or practice" of police abuse. The consent decree is just the adoption of "best practices" that the city was moving toward anyway, she explained.
Yeah, right. And the people of Columbus are all village idiots who love when their elected officials lie with enthusiasm.
There is a huge problem with the Columbus Division of Police. It starts at the top with Chief James Jackson, a kindred spirit to legendary Southern lawman Eugene "Bull" Connor. The chief is still busy whining because city Safety Director Thomas Rice held him accountable for destroying a document in the Arthur Shapiro murder investigation file. Jackson still doesn't admit it was wrong for him to let his good buddy Commander Walter Burns off the hook after botching the Tony Menucci high-priced call girl case. (Jackson received a five-day suspension for these transgressions.)
The Justice Department has carefully read the safety director's reports on the 1997 mayoral investigation of Chief Jackson and his top cronies. These reports pointed to Deputy Chief Curtis Marcum's family ties to organized gambling and Commander Nick Panzera's peculiar relationship with drug traffickers who rent property he owns. Just this year, Chief Jackson, after years of resistance, will face his first annual performance appraisal. Chiefs of police in Columbus enjoy the same job security and think themselves as infallible as the Pope.
Chief Jackson, like Janet Jackson, simply denies any wrongdoing in the face of Justice Department allegations, claiming that "the Columbus Division of Police is one of the best in the nation." If it was truly one of the best in the nation, division officers would have a working understanding of the U.S. Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment. In lawsuit after lawsuit, Columbus police under oath come across as comically and pathetically uneducated and uninformed on basic Constitutional rights.
If the department was one of the best in the nation, it wouldn't be using the Police Intelligence Bureau to spy on politicians and "troublemakers," as law-enforcement sources have claimed. A recent court case produced sworn evidence that there were no procedures established for checking out high-tech spying equipment by officers in the Intelligence Bureau. We would expect this sort of practice in the former Soviet Union, but not in Columbus.
If Columbus police officers were really the finest, they wouldn't have encouraged Gulf War supporters to violently assault peace demonstrators, as I saw them do in 1991; they wouldn't have attacked peaceful Antioch College students protesting federal student loan cuts at the federal building, a 1995 incident that cost the city a $16,000 settlement; and they wouldn't have conducted masked, SWAT-style raids on Columbus' gay bars, as they did in 1997. Instead they would have protected all these citizens' Constitutional rights, just as they do for the Klan.
But it's not these obvious examples of high-profile police blunders that tarnish the department's image. It's their everyday treatment of black residents on the east side, students in the OSU campus area, and poor people on the city's south end that's even more telling.
There is a problem, Janet and Greg--that's why there's a consent decree. The decree will make the Columbus police better able to protect and serve the public by breaking the culture of corruption that flows like filthy water from the top. Chief Jackson and his cronies need the "three civilian outsiders" the agreement calls for to oversee their training practices and staffing assignments. The decree provides for the monitoring of the race or ethnicity of anyone stopped by the police, which will let us know if the Columbus police are disproportionately singling out a particular racial group. Additional information is needed to determine whether the police are systematically violating people's Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure during routine traffic stops. And officers who are using excessive force need to be scrutinized, retrained or fired based on what's best for the people of this community.
No professional police officer should fear the consent decree. The FOP knows there is a problem at the Columbus police department and they also know it starts at the top. They must embrace the agreement for the good of the citizens they've sworn to protect and serve. Let the politicians deny that anything's wrong.
9/02/1999
E-mail bomb
Battle between Nationwide and protesters takes a nasty turn
by Bob Fitrakis
Heard any good "coon" jokes lately? Or have you been e-mailed any "Sambo" cartoons? If you work at Nationwide, the answer may be yes.
The battle between the Friends of Freedom and Justice, led by Columbus School Board member Bill Moss, and Nationwide Insurance, the nation's fourth largest insurer, has taken a nasty turn. Moss claims that on August 19, two white and three black employees at Nationwide's downtown headquarters gave him a copy of a cartoon they said was circulating on Nationwide's internal e-mail system.
The cartoon seemingly depicts Moss' cohort Jerry Doyle--wearing a Malcolm X cap, with a jet-black face, bulging white eyes and missing teeth--demonstrating in front of Nationwide. The cartoon has Doyle shouting "Not gonna stand by!" and holding a picket sign with an obvious misspelling of a real sign he carries stating "God Nose."
Moss provided Columbus Alive with a copy of the cartoon, printed on Nationwide letterhead, along with a Nationwide strategic communication from Donna James, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at the company. James' memo warned employees against using the company's computers and e-mail system for "e-mail jokes or cartoons that could be perceived as stereotypical in nature."
Peggy Castlen, who works in Nationwide's human resource department dealing with compliance and employee relations, told Alive, "We do not know where the cartoon originated, but it came over our e-mail."
Castlen claims that Nationwide "took action immediately" when the company learned of the cartoon's e-mail transmission. Castlen said such uses of the e-mail are not tolerated at Nationwide and that the company took "disciplinary action." She declined to spell out what action was taken or how many employees were involved.
Moss, Doyle and other group members have been demonstrating at Nationwide for 21 straight weeks, demanding that the insurance giant build a $4 million staff development center for Columbus City Schools as outlined in a 1975 tax deal with the city. Nationwide has claimed that it did give the city the money, and it's the city that hasn't followed through in constructing the center.
Doyle was arrested by Columbus police for disturbing the peace during a country-western concert at Nationwide Plaza on August 20, even though he was on public property. He injured himself during the arrest and was taken to Grant Hospital.
"It started out with a few employees mimicking Jerry and doing a Kingfish Amos and Andy routine, and now there's the cartoon and the arrest," Moss said. "I think if people look at this closely and look at Nationwide's record across the country, they'll realize that we're telling the truth about the racist policies of this company."
In a Friends of Freedom and Justice statement, the group points out that Nationwide Insurance "was ordered to pay $100 million in penalties by a jury in Richmond, Virginia, for discrimination against blacks and minorities" in October 1998. The statement also focuses on Nationwide's March 1997 settlement with the U.S. Justice Department whereby the company, without admitting any guilt, agreed to spend more than "$26 million in minority neighborhoods nationally" after allegations of "redlining, a practice of refusing to sell insurance to entire neighborhoods because of the racial make-up of those neighborhoods." Moss sees the current struggle between the Friends organization and Nationwide as part of the same pattern of discrimination and arrogance.
Company spokesperson Bob Cunningham denied any allegations that Nationwide engages in discriminatory practices and said the company is working to enhance its presence in "urban markets." He declined to comment on any current litigation that Nationwide is involved in concerning civil rights allegations.
"Nationwide wants the people of Columbus to believe that they really care about the city schools and children, but their actions, particularly on not building the promised training center, tells us what they're really about," Moss argued. "People want to ignore a 20-year paper trail."
In 1975, Nationwide entered into a real estate tax agreement with the city of Columbus for additions and improvements at the company's headquarters at One Nationwide Plaza. For 20 years, the additional property tax generated from the improvements would go to a list of eight projects--seven of them in and around the headquarters.
Between Nationwide and the city of Columbus, all the projects were funded and built except the one that benefited the schools. The $4 million school center represented the money Columbus school kids lost because of the city's tax deal with Nationwide. Moss points out that, adjusted to inflation, this 1975 figure would be closer to $11.7 million in 1999.
A July 1975 letter from then-Columbus Mayor Tom Moody to school Superintendent John Ellis stated, "It is the city's intention to enter into an agreement with the Columbus Public Schools whereby the city would construct, on land provided by the schools, a `metropolitan staff development center.' The cost of this facility is now estimated at $4 million." Moody assured Ellis that "the Columbus City Council will be made fully aware of this commitment on the `metropolitan staff development center' prior to taking any legislative action on the redevelopment application made by Nationwide."
Four and a half years later, the center remained unbuilt. Then-Superintendent Joseph L. Davis asked Mayor Moody for a letter of commitment. Seemingly good news arrived when council President M.D. Portman wrote the Columbus school board and informed them that, "At the February 19 meeting of City Council's Rules and Policy Committee, it was agreed that the city administration's recommendation to build a career center for lease to the Columbus schools system be included in the city's next Five-Year Capital Improvement Program."
In February 1980, the mayor responded, "While this letter constitutes a solemn pledge of support for the project, in no way does it remove or change any of the conditions or circumstances originally represented to the board."
As the Moody administration wound to a close and the center remained unbuilt, a panicked school Superintendent James G. Hyre fired off a letter to the mayor saying, "Since your term of office is rapidly coming to an end, I must request that you provide an update on the status of the staff development center that was planned...The members of the Columbus Board of Education believe this matter to be one of such importance and magnitude that it must be pursued."
In 1995, as the 20-year tax deal was about to end, the Columbus school board again asked for their center. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Mayor Greg Lashutka "said the city has no legal obligation to fund the center," although the Dispatch article revealed that the city used additional money to fund three of the seven projects at Nationwide headquarters--which the city wasn't legally obligated to do.
This year Mayor Lashutka announced he would be taking a reported $350,000 a year job at Nationwide after his term ends. "Three hundred and fifty thousand divided into $4 million--oops! I mean, $11.7 million--is how many years?" Moss chuckled. "And they say we're the problem."
9/09/1999
MISSING
9/16/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Last week's Democratic Party endorsements of Columbus Board of Education candidates reveal a lot about the vacuous and unprincipled nature of local politics. The Democrat and Republican Party endorsements are crucial in this non-partisan race, and are usually the single best predictor of who's going to end up in the top six spots. Incumbent Democrat Bill Moss is the only candidate in the last decade to win a seat on the school board without a major party endorsement.
The Democratic screening committee gurus nominated four candidates: Karen Schwarzwalder, Stephanie Hightower, Andrew Ginther and Hearcel Craig. Oddly, the Dems endorsed Hightower, listed as an independent, despite their clear misgivings over the fact that she worked as an "special assistant" to Republican Mayor Greg Lashutka. It also concerned the committee that she just recently switched her child's enrollment from private school to the Columbus Public Schools.
The two-time Olympic hurdler, according to screening committee sources, vowed to raise $150,000 for the school board race. The question is, Why, and from whom? Don't be surprised if the Republican Party jointly endorses Hightower. She's just the type of popular athlete, so beloved in this capital city, who can be controlled by the downtown power brokers.
Although not reported in the Columbus Dispatch, the most interesting event at the Democratic Party endorsement meeting came in the form of a letter circulated by School Board Member Loretta Heard. She urged the party's central committee not to endorse Schwarzwalder because "she allows [Republican School Board Member] Bob Teater to dictate how she is to vote on all programs."
Excerpts from Heard's letter are insightful: "I supported her [Schwarzwalder's] candidacy in 1995...The first and only persons she met with after her election were Bob Teater and Mark Hatch...Using the control [over] Mark, Karen and Mary Jo [Kilroy], Bob was able to suggest to the superintendent's staff [how] to handle key positions in the district. Also, with this control, Bob Teater had issues passed that aided the money grubbers such as roofers, lawyers, suppliers, bankers and others who short changed, did shoddy work, overcharged a higher rate to our district."
As executive director of the YWCA, Schwarzwalder's main claim to fame is soliciting the support of Abigail Wexner to re-make the Y. Schwarzwalder also screened with the Republican Party for this election, raising the possibility of a duel endorsement for her.
Democratic screening committee members admitted being concerned that she had actually donated more money in the preliminary campaign report to Republican mayoral candidate Dorothy Teater ($150) than she did to the Democrat Michael Coleman ($30). Since the preliminary campaign filing and prior to her screening, she's given Coleman another $150. Screening committee members say she cited her "friendship with Bob Teater" as the reason she gave money to his wife's campaign.
Strangely, Schwarzwalder's political success is not due to her vague, tight-lipped style of campaigning--where she distinguished herself in 1995 by missing more candidates' nights than any other candidate--but due to her name. It's not her maiden name or the last name of her current husband David Ferguson, but her ex-husband's name, former progressive State Senator Michael Schwarzwalder.
A high-ranking Democratic Party official conceded that Schwarzwalder has done "nothing for the Democratic Party in the last four years." But she's done a lot for Bob and Dot Teater.
Some Democratic Party regulars speculated that perhaps that's why she received such a lenient ruling from the Franklin County Board of Elections after low-level election workers initially disqualified her from the ballot. Sources inside the board of elections claim that Schwarzwalder was disqualified because she only had 204 signatures on her campaign petitions, when the required minimum is 300.
Schwarzwalder's husband circulated nine petitions with 97 signatures, just enough to put the candidate on the ballot. But Ferguson wasn't a registered voter at his new residence when he circulated the petitions, as state law seems to require. Ferguson listed his address as 1293 Park Plaza Dr. on the petitions, but Ferguson's voter registration listed his old address, 390 W. Seventh Ave.--a home he sold on May 17, according to Franklin County Auditor's records.
Board of elections sources say they then conducted an exhaustive search for a change of address form to see if Ferguson was a registered voter at his new address, a normal requirement for petition circulators. They couldn't find a change of address and ruled his petitions invalid.
Here's how the Ohio Revised Code explains it: "No person shall be entitled to vote at any election, or to sign or circulate any declaration of candidacy or any nominating, initiative, referendum, or recall petition, unless the person is registered as an elector and will have resided in the county and precinct where the person is registered for at least 30 days at the time of the next election."
Franklin County Registrar Guy Reese told Columbus Alive that as long as Ferguson registered by October 4, he was a valid circulator.
Assistant Legal Counsel Gretchen Quinn at the Ohio Secretary of State's office explained that with the adoption of the Motor Voter Registration Act at the federal level in 1995, and recent Ohio Supreme Court decisions, local boards of elections have a certain amount of "discretion to liberally construe" election laws.
Quinn went farther and suggested that the Franklin County Board of Elections may have been within its rights to allow Ferguson to register on the day of the election. She admits that this is the "interpretation" from the secretary of state's office, which doesn't serve as legal counsel to local boards of elections.
Neither the secretary of state nor the board of elections would provide a written explanation of their ruling in this case. But apparently the precedent has been set: You don't have to be a registered voter at your residence to circulate a petition in Franklin County, as long as you register sometime before the election. I wonder whether the law would have been "construed" so "liberally" if one of Bill Moss' petitioners wasn't registered at a valid address.
Editor's note: Bob Fitrakis is a member of the Franklin County Democratic Party Central Committee.
9/23/1999
Alternative campus survival
Activism at OSU and beyond
by Bob Fitrakis
So your parents sent you off to the Ohio State University hoping that you'd be normal. You know, join the large cult worshipping the state deity Brutus Buckeye, annually battling the fierce Wolverine god of the north. That means constantly wearing scarlet and gray and perhaps joining a fraternity and hurling on people after consuming too much alcohol.
What your parents fear is that you may act like one of those students who showed up at OSU's St. John's Arena in February 1998 to disrupt the carefully choreographed war rally scripted by the Clinton administration. As 200 million watched on live TV, Ohio State became famous--or in your parents' minds, infamous--for campus activism. Before the Brutus cult snatches your brain, you might want to commit to memory who the "troublemakers" were that day.
One of the most successful campus activist stories in the late 1990s is the rise of Anti-Racist Action (ARA). Headquartered in the North Campus area, the local ARA is one of the most active chapters in a much larger international movement. Its mainstay is confronting white supremacists and their organizations like the Klan and neo-Nazi "boneheads."
ARA serves an educational and social function as well. Music is a big part of the ARA scene. Recently, national artists donated their talent for an ARA benefit CD and every year the local ARA sponsors the Anti-Fest on campus on 16th Avenue near High Street. If you want to fight against racism, fascism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia, this is the group.
A couple of interesting spin-offs from the ARA crowd are Copwatch and Art and Revolution. Armed with only video cameras and the power of the U.S. Constitution, Copwatchers wage a heroic struggle in the campus area to document police brutality and violations of citizens' Fourth and 14th Amendment rights at the hands of overzealous cops. The group is there to make sure you're not illegally searched and you're treated fairly by the police.
A tense and sometimes violent history exists between OSU students and certain Columbus police officers, particularly after football games and at the annual African American Heritage Festival. Be warned that a U.S. Justice Department investigation alleges that the Columbus police are guilty of a pattern and practice of abusing the rights of young people--read "students"--and other oppressed minorities. Copwatch is currently planning for an October 22 demonstration as part of the national Day Against Police Brutality.
The San Francisco-based Art and Revolution organization came to Columbus this summer for a skills workshop to aid local activists in "reclaiming the streets." The secrets of San Fran's street theater were imparted to eager and willing local activists. The art of giant puppet-making is an Art and Revolution specialty. But hey, all artists are welcome--dancers, poets, singers, performance artists and street theater playwrights. Giant puppet sightings occurred this summer at the Statehouse, the Whee 3 Freedom Festival at Buckeye Lake and the recent Klan protest. The local Art and Revolution chapter meets every second Wednesday.
From Wavy Gravy to Cannabis Kenny, the hemp movement lives on in the United States and Columbus. For A Better Ohio (FABO) sprang from a small group at Columbus State Community College, but also has an OSU chapter and groups on several other Ohio campuses. Their goal is to legalize the medical use of marijuana and the industrial use of hemp in Ohio. A poll sponsored by the Drug Policy Foundation found significant support for both issues in central Ohio.
FABO is also fighting to reform the so-called Higher Education Reform Act that requires campus administrators to cut off your federal financial aid if you have a minor marijuana conviction. You can usually find the merry hempsters tabling around the Oval and make sure you check out their annual spring Hempfest at Mirror Lake. FABO meets every Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Browning Amphitheatre unless it's too cold or rainy, then they meet at the Ohio Union's second floor main lounge. They also sponsor a monthly all-night hemp benefit party. A demonstration to support the medical use of marijuana is planned for October 11 at 5 p.m. at the federal building downtown.
Anti-Racist Action, P.O. Box 82097, Columbus, Ohio 43202, 424-9074, ara@coil.com
Art and Revolution, 470-2194
Copwatch, P.O. Box 82097, Columbus, Ohio 43202, 424-9074
For a Better Ohio, 224-3378, 578-3378
9/30/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
So George W. Bush wants Pat Buchanan to stay in the Republican Party instead of bolting to the Reform Party and its $12 million "pot of gold" in matching funds. Why? Because, Bush says, "I need every vote I can get," reported the Columbus Dispatch. Better a far right Nazi apologist like Buchanan pissing out of the big Republican tent on Democrats than pissing in on Republicans.
I understand perfectly that Bush doesn't want to alienate the Holocaust deniers, cryptofascists and the all-important gay-bashers vote clustered around Buchanan. The dirty little secret of the Republican Party in Ohio and nationally during the Reagan-Bush years is the GOP's established ties to various old-time fascists through its ethnic-outreach program. Russ Bellant's Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party (1991) and Martin Lee's The Beast Awakens (1997) are both fine sources on this topic. Bellant wrote about ties between then-Governor, now U.S. Senator, George Voinovich and former Eastern European fascist immigrants.
The Buchanan record is easier to document for those who care. As White House Communication Director under Reagan, Buchanan regularly assailed the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), an agency established during the Carter years to find and prosecute Nazis and fascists who had entered the United States illegally. Buchanan is on record as an admirer of the deceased fascist dictator Franco, the Chilean butcher Pinochet and the former South African apartheid regime.
During the Reagan administration, Buchanan equated the Allies' treatment of German citizens after World War II to the Nazi's treatment of the Jews--an absurd claim favored by German and American neo-Nazis. Reportedly, Buchanan scripted Reagan's infamous and shocking remarks when he proclaimed buried SS soldiers at Bitburg "victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps." The rock group the Ramones immortalized Reagan's words, and his bizarre comparison between the executioners and the executed, in their song Bonzo Goes To Bitburg.
Buchanan believes Hitler was "an individual of great courage, a soldier's soldier," a line usually advanced by neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic publications like the Spotlight and the Institute for Historical Review Journal. Expect Pat's new tome, A Republic, Not An Empire, that offers the thesis that Hitler was eminently appeasable, to get favorable reviews in neo-Nazi circles. Also recall during the Reagan presidency, his Department of Education rejected a proposed Holocaust curriculum for federal funding because "the Nazi point of view, however unpopular [was] not presented, nor [was] that of the Ku Klux Klan."
Both France's right-wing National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and Pat Buchanan masqueraded as free market Reaganomic fanatics during the 1980s. After faithfully serving Reagan, Buchanan changed his tune during his 1992 bid for the Republican presidential nomination. Buchanan's program strongly mirrored the right-wing national populism of France's National Front. By appealing to everyone from the Christian Identity to the Christian Coalition and socially conservative Catholics, Buchanan's campaign allowed for the cross-fertilization of ideas between white supremacists and their less-overtly racist, but far more numerous, religious right allies. Hatred of gays, bashing of immigrants, opposition to abortion and fear of the mysterious "New World Order" brought them together in the Buchanan brigades.
Buchanan actually used the term "culture wars" during his speech before the Republican convention, the same phrase used by Nazis in the 1930s. He openly appealed to the Christian right with calculated phrases like "our culture is superior to other cultures, superior because our religion is Christianity."
As Arianna Huffington pointed out in a recent column, last November Buchanan charged, "Non-Jewish whites--75 percent of the U.S. population--get just 25 percent of the slots...Now we know who's really getting the shaft at Harvard: white Christians." During the Reagan years, Buchanan argued against racial and ethnic quotas and insisted that people should be admitted to colleges based on merit. Now he's hinting at the pre-World War II anti-Jewish quota system prominent in elite universities.
Not only was Buchanan endorsed by several prominent religious right leaders, but the anti-Semitic Spotlight, published by the Liberty Lobby, noted that, "Buchanan's campaign platform reads like nothing less than a statement of the Liberty Lobby's positions on the issues."
In 1996, Larry Pratt served as Buchanan's presidential campaign co-chairman. Pratt heads Gun Owners of America, but more important, is a key figure in American militia circles. Pratt attended the infamous October 1992 militia planning session in Colorado hosted by the notorious racist Christian Identity pastor Pete Peters. Pratt has shared the stage at rallies with Aryan Nation Chief Richard Butler and former KKK leader and guerrilla warfare specialist Louis Beam. Pratt resigned after the media exposed his ties to the neo-Nazi and white supremacist fringe.
Part of Buchanan's appeal, like the Nazis in the 1930s, is populist economics. His willingness to scapegoat immigrants to appease the financial insecurities of the average U.S. citizen left out of the 1990s economic boom fills a void created when President Bill Clinton led the "New Democrats" to the economic center.
Here in Columbus, you hear lots of talk from Democrat Michael Coleman and Republican Dorothy Teater on school and police issues, but nothing about the unconscionably high poverty rate of 17 percent in Columbus. Business First courageously called this "the dark side of the boom." The Northeast Ohio Research Consortium recently published a new study showing that while unemployment rates are abnormally low, creating theoretically a strong job market, average wages--living wages for real workers--have actually declined in Columbus and Ohio over the last 20 years. Adjusted for inflation, Columbus wages declined from $12.19 an hour to $11 an hour.
As long as local major party candidates ignore the everyday plight of workers, the specter of a right-wing national third party under Buchanan's control will continue to haunt us.
10/07/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
The Columbus Dispatch's editorial campaign to demonize Columbus School Board incumbent Bill Moss, up for re-election in November, took a brief respite last week with the release of the Phi Delta Kappa curriculum audit of the city school district. The Dispatch editorial spin doctors resumed their finger pointing at Moss on Monday, though, blaming him for the problems the auditors found in Columbus schools.
The Dispatch fired heavy artillery from its editorial page on Sunday, September 26. In a laughably propagandistic editorial titled "Schools Suffer: Obstructionist Moss sabotages system," obvious logic and simple math skills elude the Big D editorial board. Moss and Loretta Heard--the board's only two black members in a district that's over 61 percent minority--never had the votes to obstruct anything.
As the Dispatch explains it, "One of the beauties of the democratic system of government is the opportunity for dissent by minority viewpoints," but Moss is not a proper dissenter in the Daily Monopoly's view. Rather, he's "an angry man who has lost touch with reality and with the mission he purports to represent."
The release of the curriculum audit two days later supports Moss' long-standing contention that there's race and class apartheid being practiced within the Columbus Public Schools. The Dispatch reported that the audit said, "Black and low-income students continue to fare worse than white students in achievement and dropout rates." The audit cited "inequities and inconsistencies" between schools that disproportionately affected black and low-income students' success. Moss, the messenger, is under attack from the Dispatch for telling the truth about ugly realities.
In the lily-white world of the Dispatch owner and editors, whose children face the harsh realities of private or affluent suburban schools, Columbus Public Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith is a saint. Moss is the devil.
The Dispatch editorial argued, "Time and again, Moss does his best to thwart any step the board takes to nudge the district on to a track toward academic and financial accountability and success." Yet it was Moss who blew the whistle on Smith's attempt to railroad through a $30-million unbid "emergency" computer contract involving one company where her son worked.
It was Moss and Heard who questioned the unconscionable $30,000 raise that Smith received after only 10 months on the job. The Dispatch assailed Moss for his opposition to "a well-deserved raise for Smith." Read the audit. Since when is presiding over one of the worst school districts in the country worthy of a $30,000 raise?
In a post-audit editorial on Monday, October 4, the Dispatch again blamed Moss for the school district's woes. "The tragic reality...is that the bedlam [Moss] creates sabotages progress on the very real challenges this district faces," the Dispatch wrote, before not-so-subtly encouraging voters to oust Moss and elect a board that can "transcend its troubled history."
Not surprisingly, the five white school board members echoed the sentiments of the Dispatch editorial pages. Why not? White kids are doing much better in the schools than their minority peers. With the absurd "win-win" agreement that allows an estimated 40 percent of Columbus city schoolchildren to attend affluent suburban schools, the city's powerbrokers have perfected both intra-school district and inter-school district apartheid and class disparity. The Coalition of Concerned Black Citizens estimated four years ago that 92 percent of "win-win" participants were white. The Columbus schools don't keep track of such statistics, but they do know that almost 58 percent of their students received free and reduced-priced lunches based on low-income eligibility. Yet, if the two black school board members dare to talk about these issues, the Dispatch deems them obstructionist troublemakers.
The same Sunday the Dispatch portrayed Moss as a loony, they praised Smith for her "high achievement" in an editorial. They cited Smith's recent "glowing review" where she received 36 marks of "exceeds expectations" and 20 marks of "meets expectations." What they didn't tell you, which is so often the case with Dispatch editors, is how Rosa got such rosy marks from board members wearing rose-colored glasses.
Both Moss and Heard claim the scores they gave Smith, reflecting the realities of the district, were significantly lower than the white members' scores. Subsequently, Smith's review initially wasn't all that glowing. As the board completed its tallies, Moss exited the meeting to go picket at Nationwide in an attempt to get the insurance giant to build the teacher training center it promised the school district, while Heard sat in the room and claims to have witnessed the other board members re-evaluate Smith to give her review that saintly glow.
"What they did is change their numbers," said Heard. "I told them not to call on me, I was not changing any numbers. They revised the numbers with me right there in the room after [Moss] left in order to give her a better evaluation."
Both Moss and Heard claim that unbeknownst to the public, Smith negotiated an oral agreement to consult for money outside the school district, although it's not spelled out in a written contract. Moss particularly has questioned Smith's frequent travel outside Columbus with the district facing so many problems here at home. Documents obtained by Columbus Alive show that Smith spent at least 40 days at 13 out-of-town conferences within her first year on the job. By the end of the second year, the number will exceed 50 days. Moss and Heard suspect that Smith may be doing a little more than taking in new knowledge on these frequent trips, and that she might be looking for her next job or drumming up consulting business.
Smith came to Columbus from the Beloit, Wisconsin, school district where she was making a reported $94,000 when she left. In Columbus, she negotiated a three-year, $120,000 contract with an additional $9,500 yearly tax-sheltered annuity and $12,000 more in car and personal expenses. The white school board members are planning to give her another $9,000 raise, putting her over $180,000 in compensation and expenses. Rumors of her leaving have given her leverage to demand more money. School Board President Mary Jo Kilroy, a former leftist, now lectures on the need to compensate Smith in the free "market."
We all know how the unprepared poor and minority students will do in that same market. Can you say, "Do you want fries with that?" Read the audit, and then tell me who's out of touch with reality: Bill Moss or the Dispatch editors and Rosa Smith?
10/14/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
There is a familiar Columbus, celebrated by politicians and mass-marketed by advertisers--it's an all-American test market city in the country with the world's highest standard of living. But there's a dark side to this glossy sheen that's just as often overlooked or ignored, the "other" Columbus uncovered by Roland Andes.
For more than seven months, the documentary photographer chronicled central city residents in the Near East, South and West sides of the city. Andes personally discovered these "all-too-often dismissed, ignored, labeled or disdained" Columbusites and documented their lives in his exhibition In Visible City: The Heart and Soul of an All-American Town, showing at the Rhodes Tower Main Gallery this month.
With great will and intellectual honesty, Andes captures glimpses of life in the neighborhoods where most suburbanites fear to tread. Photos depict armed SWAT team members practicing assaults on abandoned homes, a transvestite prostitute strutting his ample stuff and a dead cat with a frightened death mask sacrificed to three pit bulls for public entertainment.
Andes' exhibit focuses on the everyday lives of people. People who eat free meals at the Southside Settlement House, not Max & Erma's; those who lounge in vacant lots, not on their sundecks; children who "improvise" their own gymnastic equipment using old mattresses. More than anything, Andes humanizes the inhabitants of the "other" Columbus. In numerous close ups, Andes looks directly into the eyes of the young and the old, the suspicious and desperate--from hookers to community leaders.
Andes refers to a quote from Sam Gresham of the Columbus Urban League who likened being black to being invisible in Columbus. The "invisible" nature of minorities and people in poverty is a recurring theme in American art and literature. Andes speaks of Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man as an influence.
"The poor are increasingly slipping out of the very experience and consciousness of the nation," Michael Harrington, the architect of the Kennedy-Johnson War on Poverty and the author of the seminal The Other America, wrote in 1962. "Now the American city has been transformed. The poor still inhabit the miserable housing in the central area, but they are increasingly isolated from contact with, or sight of, everybody else. Middle-class women coming in from suburbia on a rare trip may catch the merest glimpse of the other America on the way to an evening at the theater, but their children are segregated in suburban schools. The business or professional man may drive along the fringes of slums in a car or bus, but it is not an important experience to him. The failures, the unskilled, the disabled, the aged and the minorities are right there, across the tracks, where they have always been. But hardly anyone else is."
Ironically, Columbus' current 17 percent poverty rate is the same as when the War on Poverty started in 1964. Andes' exhibit illustrates the reason why. One photo shows a large liquor ad billboard next to a "Quick Cash" check cashing store--an unthinkable, and thanks to zoning laws, illegal scene in Dublin and Bexley. In these affluent suburbs painting your house a non-earth tone or the construction of a McDonald's are cause for great community consternation.
Sociologists tell us that the easiest way to tell if you're in a less-affluent area is to look for liquor ads on billboards and buildings. With Andes' photos to remind us, we might also add to the list convenience store clerks with guns strapped on their hips wearing bulletproof vests; graffiti-tagged houses; and children playing in junkyards. What do we make of a society where someone who spent his life digging coal, forging steel and driving a forklift is forced to make do by eating free meals at a community house?
One telling photo shows a young white boy looking on as his next-door neighbors celebrate at a birthday party with a clown. All 18 kids at the party are black. The white child tells Andes that his "mom wouldn't allow him to participate."
Another photo captures the shattered family dreams at Sullivant Gardens. President Reagan's Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp promised the property to its low-income inhabitants in one of the most innovative and progressive policies in recent U.S. history. After paying a little out of their meager salaries to convert their apartments to condos, the residents were moved out because the area is in a flood zone. Soon after Sullivant Gardens' residents were given eviction notices, the downtown development boys announced their plans for a floodwall--and to help develop the now vacant and valuable property.
Perhaps my favorite photo is titled Obsolete Man. In the caption, a 47-year-old Vietnam veteran and lifelong auto mechanic says, "My society doesn't exist anymore. I don't fit in today's society." He's just closed his south-side auto repair business.
In another image, six homeless men appear strewn like trash in a vacant lot near the Open Shelter. The downtown developers will soon have them removed.
The role of the other Columbus in our increasingly high-tech, post-industrial suburban society remains unanswered. Andes' photos illuminate his identification with the invisible. The mood is non-judgmental, but impatient with a quiet rage. The photographer looked into the faces of those in the other Columbus, sensed their dreams and despair, and reminds us that ultimately we'll be judged by how we treat the least of our brethren. A police officer who saw the show wrote, "Absolutely fantastic. So real, so undiluted, so important." I concur.
10/21/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
The Columbus mayoral race between City Council President Michael Coleman and County Commissioner Dorothy Teater is constantly touted as "historic," since either the first African-American or female will become this city's next mayor.
But the real historic significance in this election has gone unspoken. It's found in the answer to two questions Coleman failed to ask Teater during the campaign: Why did you, Dorothy, as a Franklin County Commissioner, fail to take action when the V Group overran the costs of the Franklin County Jail project by $10 million, or six times the original estimate? And if you are so opposed to tax abatements and TIFs, why did you use them to bring the notorious CIA-connected Southern Air Transport or "Spook Air" to Rickenbacker airport?
The jail question perfectly illustrates the bizarre nature of Columbus politics. When then-Governor George Voinovich's brother Paul and his V Group finished building the Jefferson County Jail 15 months behind schedule and $10 million over the original estimate, Jefferson County sued the company. In Columbus, we ignored the cost overrun (in the same amount) and pretended like it never happened.
Just last week, Jefferson County attorneys complained that the V Group walked off the job and left their jail filthy and unfinished. In my October 8, 1997, column "Jailhouse Crock," I reported that the same thing happened here in Franklin County. Except Teater and the county commissioners reportedly bailed out the V Group by using county employees and maintenance people to clean up and fix up the mess left behind by the construction and consulting company.
In a pleasant surprise, the Columbus Dispatch has unchained its resident pit bull Bob Ruth to report on the ongoing Jefferson County-versus-the V Group trial in St. Clairsville. Perhaps Coleman should have seen this as a sign to yap a little, chihuahua-style, at Teater. He should at least nip at her knickers on the jail issue. After all, her ads have the Democrat packing up a truck and hauling jobs to Toledo. If Coleman manages to grasp a defeat from the jaws of victory, it'll be because voters hate only one thing worse than negative ads--wimps who won't respond to them.
On Tuesday, the Dispatch named Clark Miller, a former V Group vice president, as the target of a federal corruption investigation. Miller and former V Group Vice President Frank Fela were involved in convincing the Franklin County Commissioners to hire the V Group for the Franklin County Jail project, a source close to the investigation told Columbus Alive.
Add to that last week's revelation that alleged former V Group associates involved in the Jefferson County Jail fiasco agreed to become government informants in a federal probe of corruption in eastern Ohio, and it's clear that eventually federal and state investigators will get around to the Franklin County Jail issue, even if Coleman doesn't. Pasquale Jay Deluca, former director of the now-defunct North Ohio Valley Air Authority (NOVAA), his son Ronald, and Vincent R. Zumpano, a former NOVAA employee, all pleaded guilty to federal bribery and tax charges in exchange for squealing, I suspect, on V Group activities.
Readers of Columbus Alive are all too familiar with "Patsy" and "Vinnie," a couple of not-so-stand-up guys that Pauly Voinovich never knew nuttin' about. An April 8 Alive cover story investigated many of the facts now finally emerging in the Dispatch.
Because Jefferson County Prosecutor Stephen Stern courageously pursued charges against the V Group in his county, he was able to first convict Zumpano on state charges and create an investigatory trail that aided federal prosecutors. It's hard to have a decent scandal in Franklin County, when by tacit consent the politicians (even political opponents) agree to tidy up by sweeping all the dirt under that big old jumpy rug.
With Teater's holier-than-thou attacks against the Polaris tax increment financing plan, you'd figure Coleman would at least have the courage to ask her about the subsidies granted to Southern Air Transport (SAT) at taxpayers' expense. Remember, the CIA's inspector general's report linked the Rickenbacker-based freight airline to numerous allegations of drug running. The single most explosive political issue in the black community this decade continues to be the reports and increasing documentation of CIA "assets" and subcontractors linked to alleged cocaine-running and the inner-city crack epidemic.
Teater and her fellow commissioners promised SAT a 100-percent, 15-year property tax abatement as part of the package that lured the airline from Miami to Columbus. It also included up to $30 million in Rickenbacker Port Authority revenue bonds and an additional $16.7 million in state grants and loans. Teater appeared gosh-darn excited at the big hullabaloo news conference that brought the now-bankrupt "Spook Air" to Columbus.
In a normal city, where candidates are blessed with spines, this would be a red-hot campaign issue. Of course, we may want to forgive Coleman this failure to mention the Southern Air Transport tax abatement since the airline admitted it was wholly owned by the CIA from 1960 to 1973, and continued to serve as a CIA and National Security Council "asset" through the 1980s.
Maybe after the campaign, Coleman can go see the Wizard and ask him for some courage. "Put up your dukes, Dorothy."
10/28/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Does anybody know who snatched the Bill Moss sign from my front yard? It happened last Saturday, the same day someone stuffed a Democratic Party sample ballot in my mailbox. Shockingly, the same thing happened the same day to several of my neighbors. Maybe if we can get ahold of those most likely paid, door-to-door Democratic Party regulars, they might have seen something.
After a quick glance at the official Franklin County Democratic Party ballot, let me offer some random observations from a Democratic Party renegade. The only thing that keeps me nominally in the party as the 55th Ward representative is my intention to support Bill Bradley for President of the United States.
The Dems urge a vote for Michael Coleman for mayor of Columbus. This I'll do with very little enthusiasm. I'm still suffering from existential despair after witnessing the Coleman-Teater debate at Columbus State Community College. While Coleman clearly had more style than Dorothy Teater, I left the debate with the disturbing conclusion that Teater had more substance on issues that really matter to average citizens.
I agreed with Dorothy's mandatory recycling proposal and her stand against the Polaris TIF. I wish Michael had the courage and common sense to agree with Dorothy on the consent decree between the city of Columbus and U.S. Justice Department concerning the behavior of the Columbus police. He should know that the Fraternal Order of Police labor contract does not supersede the Fourth and 14th Amendment rights of Columbus citizens. The pre-Clinton Democratic Party knew these things.
Just last week, Vice President Al Gore attacked Bill Bradley as being part of the "Old Democratic Party"--you know, the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Johnson. The party that pulled us out of the Great Depression while protecting the poor and elderly. The party that defeated Hitler in World War II and the party that created programs during the Kennedy-Johnson years that allowed me to be the first person in my family to get a college education.
The New Democrats love taking care of the fat cats and the corporate elite. So it comes as no surprise that the Columbus Dispatch honored Coleman with its endorsement. The paper's description of Mike as a cautious, pragmatic, likable consensus-builder accurately reflects the candidate. But Coleman is dead wrong on the TIF question.
The outcome of Issue 33 is probably more important than who wins the mayoral race. A "yes" vote will kill the unconscionable Polaris tax increment financing district, created by Columbus City Council in 1996. Property taxes in the Polaris TIF district were earmarked for infrastructure projects in the area like roads and sewers. For three years, nothing happened with the TIF money.
Then, in 1999, Polaris Fashion Mall developers suddenly proposed to use the Polaris TIF funds to construct roads and other projects to serve their upscale mall. By tapping the $22 million TIF fund, the developers freed up money and announced plans to steal the three anchor stores from Northland Mall. With no anchor stores, Northland would be ripe for check-cashing stores, Rent-to-Rob retailers and pawn shops.
While Mayor Greg Lashutka and City Auditor Hugh Dorrian are busy touting the TIF, they can't alter the facts. Columbus will not receive any property taxes from the Polaris Fashion Mall for over 30 years; it will never receive any sales tax revenue; and the Columbus City Schools will never see a dime from the project located in Delaware County and the Olentangy School District. Polaris won't add more than 1,000 new jobs, the former employees of Northland will just have to drive farther north when they lose their jobs. And, schoolchildren will lose out as Northland becomes decayed and abandoned, taking property tax revenue away from the Columbus school district.
A June 15 Dispatch headline stated "Delaware County would pay the least, gain most in Polaris mall proposal." Why not let the free market decide? Let the mall developers build Polaris with their own money and pay their taxes like everybody else. Why favor one developer over another? Vote "yes" on Issue 33 to put an end to corporate welfare and to kill the TIF.
Finally, for fiscal integrity on the Columbus School Board, it's imperative that Bill Moss be re-elected. Moss supporters might want to "one-shot" their vote in the four-seat race. I'm voting for only two candidates instead of four: Moss and Al Warner, another independent voice who speaks more for the children than the Chamber of Commerce.
11/04/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
As Sunday's Columbus Dispatch hit the streets with its last election poll, claiming that "seemingly the only contest remotely up for grabs is Issue 33--the proposed repeal of a tax-increment financing district for the Polaris Centers of Commerce," the Ohio Elections Commission met in a rare Sunday meeting.
This known haven for major party hacks and flunkies met in an apparent attempt to swing Tuesday's vote on Issue 33. Remember, just last year, the commission distinguished itself by not bringing to public scrutiny charges referred by a federal prosecutor against then-Governor George Voinovich's 1994 re-election campaign; the charges came out just a day prior to Voinovich's election to the Senate.
In contrast, this latest action was an unprecedented intrusion into electoral politics. The purpose of the commission's bizarre Sunday meeting was to discredit the proponents of Issue 33 who dared challenge multimillionaire would-be developers of the Polaris Fashion Mall. The woman answering the phone at the commission office on Monday conceded that no Sunday meeting had ever taken place in the two years she had worked there.
Phil Richter, the staff attorney for the commission, admitted that the meeting was "rare," but argued that the "statutory framework" mandates quick decisions. Move fast on Voinovich, no; move fast on Issue 33, yes. It was a convenient decision as well.
With the commission taking the unusual step of referring two Issue 33 ads for criminal prosecution to the Franklin County Prosecutor--a ridiculous and dangerous assault on the First Amendment and free political discourse two days before an election--the fat cats and corporate welfare mothers had time to put on their "liar, liar, pants on fire" attack ads.
Richter acknowledged that the commission was trudging in an area precariously close to the First Amendment and that the commission has been scolded in the past by federal judges. In 1991, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals told the commission it was improper to issue cease-and-desist orders to ads they deemed false.
Apparently, the commissioners now find political opinions criminal in Franklin County. The commission's ludicrous charge against Issue 33 proponents will never stand up in court, but it did land on the front page of the Dispatch the day before the election, signaling a bi-partisan turn by the major parties to crush populist dissent against tax breaks and giveaways.
What the state elections commission claims is criminal is nothing more than political opinion protected by the First Amendment. The commission, according to the Dispatch, ruled that a TV ad showing a smiling fat-cat developer being showered in dollar bills contained false statements. The script reads: "There's a wealthy developer who's getting up to $22 million of our tax dollars to help him develop and build a mall in Delaware County. Unfortunately, it'll probably mean the closing of Northland Mall. And for Columbus schools, it'll mean getting $640,000 less every year. So a vote for Issue 33 will stop the ridiculous give-away of our tax dollars. Vote against 33 and the money's all his."
Let's take the ad's script line by line. All sides agree, including the Dispatch editorial page, that the Polaris Fashion Mall developers want to use $22 million from the Polaris tax increment financing (TIF) district to pay for roads, sewers and other public infrastructure at the Polaris development. Tax payments by property owners in the Polaris district, including the developer depicted in the commercial, are placed in an exclusive fund in lieu of the real property taxes the rest of us pay into the general tax fund.
No money in the Polaris TIF fund was used or committed between 1996 and 1998. The $22 million figure emerged after the Polaris developer proposed that roads and infrastructure be built for the Polaris Fashion Mall. The commercial's script is a valid interpretation of these facts, not a criminal act.
Also, the Columbus Public Schools receive $645,000 a year in tax revenue from Northland Mall. The Polaris Fashion Mall developer announced that he wants to take the three anchor department stores from Northland; the Northland developer said if this happens he'll close the mall and the tax revenue will all but disappear. This is a possible and probable outcome. In fact, the loss of the anchors and the consequent devastation of Northland as a viable mall would no doubt lower property values not just at the mall, but all over the Morse Road area. The $640,000 figure may well be a conservative estimate, but it's a good faith estimate based on facts. It's not a lie, it's not a criminal action, no matter what the commissioners say.
The decision by the Ohio Elections Commission is a clear intrusion on protected political speech and a blatant interference in electoral politics. Whether Columbus citizens know it or not, the actions of the commission imperil our democracy. The people of Columbus have a right to hear political opinions and make up their own minds.
11/11/1999
Coleman's cabinet making
Keeping an eye on who might join the Mayor-elect's staff
by Bob Fitrakis
Now that the Michael Coleman election celebration is over and sobriety has set in, we should take note of a few early disturbing signs. In Sunday's Columbus Dispatch, Joe Hallett pointed out the all-too-visible presence of controversial developer, streetwear entrepreneur and hair salon owner T.G. Banks on Coleman's election night dais. Hallett reported that Banks gave the mayor-elect a "kiss on the cheek."
Mike needs to remember that Judas betrayed Jesus in a similar way. And Banks swings both ways: he was the leading minority construction management contractor during the Republican Voinovich administration and he was deeply embroiled with Governor Voinovich's disgraced Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud.
But Banks may be the least of Coleman's problems, if the reports concerning his possible staff and cabinet appointments are true. Last week, The Other Paper reported without comment that Warren Tyler is "expected to have a major role in Coleman's transition team and, therefore, an inside track on any administrative post he might want." The Other Paper mentioned him as a possible chief of staff. Fellow former high-ranking official in the Celeste administration, David Baker, was named as a possible director of trade and development appointee.
Currently, Tyler is technically Baker's boss at the non-profit Columbus Urban Growth Corporation, where Baker is president and Tyler is chair of the board. The Urban Growth Corporation, a Coleman initiative, was founded in 1996 with $275,000 from city coffers. Baker, the former development director under Governor Richard F. Celeste, is the husband of newly elected and well-connected Columbus School Board member Stephanie Hightower.
Tyler first headed the state Commerce Department and later the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency for the Celeste administration. He moved to the Ohio EPA soon after the Home State Savings and Loan scandal blew up on his watch at the Commerce Department, which he directed from January 1983 to February 1985.
In August 1985, Tyler testified before the Ohio General Assembly's Joint Select Committee on Savings and Loans and admitted to talking to Marvin L. Warner, later convicted for his role in the scandal, about the company's peculiar and shaky investments.
Tyler's testimony of his conversation with Warner differed markedly from the testimony of former Chief Examiner of Savings and Loans, Kurt A. Kreinbring. Kreinbring told the Dispatch that he resigned from his state job "because of his frustration of the [Celeste] administration's unwillingness or inability to force Home State to divest itself of the E.S.M. investments." E.S.M. was a Florida company that sold securities deemed to be extremely risky by government regulators.
Kreinbring testified that "he had at least three conversations with Tyler between mid-1983 and November 1984 about examiners' concerns in connection with Home State's ballooning investments and repurchase agreements with E.S.M.," the Dispatch reported.
In July 1984, C. Lawrence Huddleston, then-Superintendent of the Ohio Division of Savings and Loans, wrote Tyler that "I am not willing to take the hit when this thing blows up."
Tyler is on record saying that he failed to tell Governor Celeste of the problems plaguing Home State prior to its collapse. Tyler told state investigators that he never informed Celeste of the problem because he was "convinced Huddleston and the division had it under control." Not exactly the kind of guy you want as your chief of staff with a crisis brewing. On March 8, 1985, the Home State Savings and Loan failure triggered a three-month financial crisis in Ohio.
Celeste shuttled Tyler over to the EPA in February 1985, just prior to Home State's collapse. At the time Tyler took charge at the EPA, political insiders and environmentalists considered it under-funded and under-staffed. Tyler tried to portray himself as a fiscal conservative by making even further cuts and returning unused money to the state treasury.
In 1986, Tyler's EPA failed to use $6.7 million of its $38.9 million fiscal year budget and came under heavy fire from environmentalists. Stephen Sedan, then the executive director of the Ohio Environmental Council, told the UPI, "They [Ohio EPA] finally got a budget that enabled them to increase their staff and they lapsed. It's really shocking."
Tyler became legendary in green circles for his lack of knowledge on environmental issues. Environmentalists charged that Tyler's main concern was protecting business interests. One high-ranking Celeste official recalls that Tyler selected his current attorney, Larry James, as a hearing officer at an "outrageous hourly fee" to hear an appeal of the EPA's denial of a permit to expand a Toledo landfill. James, with little or no background in environmental law, overruled the EPA's decision and sided with the landfill owners. When Richard Shank replaced Tyler as EPA director, one of his first acts was to reverse James' decision.
Tyler resigned from the EPA post in May 1987 amidst controversy. He served on an advisory board and received compensation from local architectural firm Moody-Nolan which, according to the UPI, "he recommended for a contract to design the EPA's new headquarters building." Tyler resigned from Moody-Nolan's advisory board nine days after it was announced Moody-Nolan would be the architect for the project.
More recently, Tyler and James turned up last year in the Africentric School controversy as investors interested in developing the athletic complex connected to the school on Livingston Avenue. Watching who makes Coleman's transition team and cabinet should be interesting.
11/18/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Columbus' mighty Fraternal Order of Police is going to take on the U.S. Justice Department. This probably seemed like a darn good idea after a few beers at the FOP lounge, to raise $2.5 million to pay for their own defense. But had they thought it through, they might have realized that the Justice Department just whacked Microsoft's Bill Gates, worth a reported $90 billion. The FOP's chump change won't matter much in this civil trial.The two people in Columbus most responsible for the Justice Department's investigation of the police department--civil rights attorney James McNamara and Police Officers for Equal Rights President James Moss--both welcome a civil trial. Unlike a criminal trial, where you have to be found guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt," in a civil trial the side that shows a "preponderance of evidence," or tips the scale in their direction, wins. The rules of evidence are also much less restrictive in civil court. In the name of justice, this court battle will give us a clear look at the nasty underbelly of the Columbus Division of Police.
The glimpse we got a few years back with the mayoral investigation of Police Chief James Jackson was shocking enough, despite the limited resources of the city's Public Safety Department. The mayoral investigation documented alleged patterns of corruption at the highest levels of the police department. The Justice Department will probe much deeper into the bowels of police headquarters. The cops are putting up a brave front now, but we'll see what they say when the examination is in full swing.
They should appreciate the glove, so to speak, being on the other hand. At least in the case of the Justice Department it will be properly lubricated. Who can forget the civil rights abuses that resulted from the notorious Project ACE--the Accelerated Criminal Eviction program of five years ago, which was stopped after threats from the American Civil Liberties Union. Under ACE, the police reportedly used thin pretexts to harass citizens with full-body searches in certain working class neighborhoods. C'mere you jaywalker, get your ass in the van.
I knew Columbus had a police problem the first week I was in town in January 1987. As I was dutifully taken to Lindey's for lunch by a prospective employer, I saw a young white kid yell at and flip off the cops who were harassing him from their cruiser. Then I saw something I hadn't seen since before the 1967 Detroit riot. I saw the police officers stop their cruiser in front of numerous citizens and mace and beat the kid. The routine and public nature of the beating spoke volumes about the police culture in this city. That, and an overzealousness in jaywalking enforcement.
The FOPers, with their brave media backer Sterling of WTVN's "show with no brain," can mumble all they want about "undocumented," "unsubstantiated" charges. But the Justice Department has more than 300 verified complaints with the numbers rising weekly. That's why both Mayor Greg Lashutka and City Attorney Janet Jackson agreed to sign the consent decree. There are hundreds of cases, hundreds of settlements to citizens, that reflect a pattern and practice of Constitutional violations, even if the vast majority of police don't violate citizens' rights.
You see it in letter after letter in the Columbus Dispatch from FOP members. Just as telling as the rhetoric about how our "city needs to stand behind its police" are the cities the officers actually live in, stated at the bottom of their letters. Outraged Columbus police officers from London, Pickerington, Obetz and Reynoldsburg continually write in. As investigative reporter Mike Weber once pointed out in the now-defunct Columbus Guardian, they are an "army of occupation."
A quick look at this army's history shows many areas for the Justice Department to probe: standing by during the Gulf War while peace activists were assaulted and brutalized; the SWAT team's attack on Antioch College demonstrators in 1995; the revelations that same year that 29 new recruits had admitted to felonies, including running crack and prostitution houses; the police attacks against Copwatch monitors in the campus area; the needless and unwarranted SWAT-style raids on the gay bars; shooting rubber bullets at the African-American Heritage Festival; the high-level corruption alleged as a result of the Menucci prostitution scandal and mayoral investigation; and the more than 300 complaints from citizens that detail all-too-commonplace police abuses against African-Americans, poor whites, women and young people.
The FOP's solution to all of this is to destroy the paper trail that documents the behavior of the small group of chronic offenders (currently, citizen complaints against officers are purged after three years, which the consent decree would change). The Columbus FOP is willingly taking a bullet for the even more abusive police departments in larger cities like New York and Los Angeles. The National FOP wants to challenge the Justice Department in Columbus, not because they can win here but because by sacrificing the Columbus FOP and the city's reputation, they hope they can delay the Justice Department juggernaut long enough to get George W. Bush elected President. I think they assume in exchange for their endorsement, the Republican will de-fund the Justice Department's investigations of municipal police abuse and the federal effort to protect the U.S. Constitution and citizens' rights.
There's an easier solution than permanently soiling the reputation of Columbus: sign the consent decree, put the police back under civilian control and train all police--not just most police--to uphold the Constitution and take their oath seriously.
11/25/1999
States' rights up in smoke
by Bob Fitrakis
Most of us remember George Voinovich as a fiery opponent of "unfunded federal mandates" and needless federal regulations in the environmental area. With his strong states' rights orientation, then-Governor Voinovich headed to Washington a year ago with Ohio rated the third most polluted state in the nation.
But apparently Governor "States' Rights" Voinovich has become Senator "All Power to the Federal Government"--at least when it comes to the District of Columbia. As chairman of the Senate governmental affairs subcommittee that oversees the District of Columbia, the junior senator from Ohio introduced legislation on October 4 to overturn the will of D.C. voters.
In November 1998, just as newly crowned Senator Voinovich was packing his bags for the Capitol, D.C. voters approved the legalization of marijuana for medical uses by more than a two-to-one margin. Previously, reactionary Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia held the election results hostage by prohibiting the District from using its own funds to count the referendum votes. Only the intervention of a federal judge allowed the release of the D.C. medical marijuana vote results.
Following the judge's ruling in October, Senator Voinovich decided to subvert the will of the vast majority of D.C. voters. Voinovich's Senate Joint Resolution 35 would overturn their referendum. In a less-than-profound statement, but typically Voinovich, our Senator stated: "The District government and the United States government should never condone it, regardless of the professed purpose." Voinovich noted: "In the simplest of terms, illegal drug use is wrong."
It seemed to be lost on the Senator that the drug was and is still illegal in D.C. and that anyone caught with marijuana without a prescription from a physician would be subject to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. The referendum only allows physicians to prescribe marijuana to ease symptoms of serious illnesses such as AIDS wasting syndrome or to reduce nausea and the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation treatment for cancer.
On October 12, Senator Voinovich wrote an inquiring constituent that: "I see no medical benefit in its usage." Perhaps then-Governor Voinovich wasn't paying attention when a Harvard medical professor came to the Ohio Statehouse in 1996 and testified extensively on the medical benefits of marijuana. The doctor and best-selling author of Marijuana Reconsidered was so impressive that the Ohio legislature included an "affirmative defense" provision in a crime bill that would have allowed those charged with marijuana possession to use a doctor's recommendation as part of their legal defense. The Governor beat back the affirmative defense clause, so pot smokers could still go to prison, sick with cancer or AIDS or not. It's good to know, just as he promised, he's now doing for D.C. what he did for Ohio.
GOP in the 'burbs
We might want to keep a close watch on the newly elected mayor of Hilliard, Tim Ward. His opponent in this month's election, Kerry Kay, did the public a service by distributing a letter Ward wrote a few years ago when he ran for the Franklin County Republican Party Central Committee.
Ward's words speak for themselves: "It is a well known political fact that Republicans typically are college educated, have professional and white collar occupations, earn higher incomes, live in more expensive homes and produce fewer children than their Democratic counterparts. Therefore, tremendous residential growth puts an uneven burden on the Republicans of the community. Tremendous residential growth creates a need for additional schools and funding for these schools. Because we Republicans live in more expensive homes than our Democrat counterparts, we pay a higher dollar amount to fund our schools, even though the tax rate is the same. Furthermore, Republicans produce fewer children who enter the public school system. Tremendous residential growth causes Republicans to pay a higher dollar amount to educate our Democrat counterparts' children."
Whoa. There's a mayor for all the people. I personally would be willing to pay higher taxes as long as they were used to reverse Ward's apparent lobotomy or to have him permanently castrated so his genes can't be passed on to future generations of young Republicans. Oh, I forgot--Republicans don't breed that much.
I'm not exactly sure how Mayor Ward plans "to find a more equitable source of funding that would benefit Republicans and make the Democrats pay their fair share," but I'm sure his self-proclaimed "pro-family" party might consider mandatory child labor or the return of indentured servitude for children. Are there no workhouses for these wretched, ill-bred lower-class tykes?
12/02/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Big Brother may not be watching us here in the U.S. but he sure as hell is listening. That's why the American Civil Liberties Union's November 16 announcement that they've launched a website designed to monitor and investigate a global electronic surveillance system known by the code name "Echelon" is so important.
The ACLU website, www.echelonwatch.org, promotes public discussion of the potential threat Echelon poses to all our civil liberties. It also provides an extensive collection of research documents on Echelon. Investigative journalists ferreted out bits and pieces of the Echelon puzzle over many years. Last year, the existence of Echelon became an international issue when the European Parliament received two detailed reports on its operations and the Australian government confirmed its participation in the Echelon project.
Echelon is an attempt to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications worldwide, including communications to and from the United States. U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) computers then use sophisticated filtering technology to sort through e-mails, faxes and phone conversations in search of certain keywords or other "flags." Other intelligence agencies apparently ask the NSA to flag specific words, phrases, organizations or people for surveillance purposes.
One report to the European Parliament charged that the United Kingdom used the Echelon project to spy on Amnesty International and the charity Christian Aid. (We should remember that George Orwell's novel 1984 depicted a totalitarian society in England, or "Oceana," not the Soviet Union.)
"Echelon can no longer be dismissed as an X-Files fantasy. The reports to the European Parliament make it quite clear that Echelon exists and that its operation raises profound civil liberties issues," said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the ACLU.
So far, the NSA--a.k.a. "No Such Agency"--has refused to share with Congress the legal guidelines for the Echelon project, strangely citing "attorney-client privileges" for their silence. Within the next few months, the U.S. House Government and Oversight Committee plans to hold hearings on Echelon. More important is the oversight of the mysterious and powerful NSA.
The 1948 UK-USA Agreement combined under a single umbrella group the SIGINT (signal intelligence) organizations of the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The U.S. government under operation "Shamrock" began monitoring all international telegraph traffic during World War II, with no controls over what was inspected and what was not. During the Cold War, the Truman administration established the NSA to continue this function.
The NSA's birth at 12:01 a.m. on November 4, 1952, came without a public announcement. Born from a seven-page presidential memorandum signed by President Truman, the NSA is the largest, wealthiest, most powerful and least known secret agency in our government. The agency's headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, is the second largest building in the U.S., eclipsed only by the Pentagon. In 1959, Congress passed a law forbidding the NSA to disclose any information about its activities, organization or names of employees. Ten years later, an investigative reporter estimated the NSA had 95,000 employees.
We do know in 1957 that the NSA initiated a five-year computer research program called Project Lightning. Out of this research came the Cray supercomputer. By 1977, reports surfaced that the NSA had the world's biggest collection of computers. The agency's in-house secret classification system goes one step higher than "top secret," with a classification titled "handle via comint channels only."
In 1967, David Kahn, a Newsday reporter and amateur code-breaker, wrote the book The Code-breakers that included a chapter on the NSA. This got Kahn's name placed on the NSA's notorious "watch list," enabling the agency to sweep all of Kahn's electronic communications. In his 1977 book, Clearing the Air, Daniel Schorr called the NSA "one of the deepest secrets" of our government. In 1982, James Bamford published a ground-breaking expose titled The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency.
Reportedly, any journalist who dared write about the agency ended up on the watch list. To keep track of this small fraternity of investigators, NSA's in-house secret police agency M5 set up a special file called "Nonaffiliates of NSA Who Publish Writings Concerning the Agency," according to Bamford.
Bamford and other investigative reporters claim that the NSA began domestic espionage during the civil rights movement which carried over to Vietnam War protesters in the '60s and '70s. President Nixon signed an addendum to the NSA's secret charter that sanctioned this previously unauthorized domestic surveillance, but President Jimmy Carter made a heroic attempt to restrict NSA activities. The last Congressional investigation of the NSA by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1978 noted that "the NSA's potential to violate the privacy of American citizens is unmatched by any other intelligence agency." The Congressional inquiry led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.
The microelectronic revolution that's brought us cell phones and the Internet requires renewed scrutiny of the NSA. As Gregory T. Nojeim, the ACLU's legislative counsel, complained, "It appears that the U.S. government is once again spying on American's private communication. Congress must determine if Echelon is as sweeping and intrusive as has been reported, and most importantly, it must ensure that Americans' conversations are not intercepted without a court order."
12/09/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
A recurring pledge of Mayor Greg Lashutka's administration, now drawing to a close with a final surge of unnecessary tax breaks for the rich, was to turn Columbus into a high-tech town for the millennium. Recall the lead from the July 15, 1997, Columbus Dispatch article "Mayor Greg Lashutka wants Ohio's capital city to enter the new millennium with a new nickname--Tech Town." The mayor boldly proclaimed, "Our goal should be nothing less than to make Columbus the heart of a new Silicon Valley."
Perhaps the mayor had simply scarfed down too much bright green key lime pie at the Columbus Kiwanis Club meeting downtown that day. Having ingested some myself, it would be a perfectly acceptable excuse for exuberant excesses.
Lashutka warned that day that, "We do not want to become the Pennsylvania steel towns or the Michigan automobile cities of the mid-20th century, who let progress pass them by." Pretty darn good thinking, big guy. Except that the November issue of Governing magazine, a trade publication that covers state and local governments, placed the Detroit metropolitan area 21st in its listing of the nation's top 25 cities in terms of "real high technology output." Columbus wasn't even ranked in the top 25.
Of course, we never had a significant number of high-paying steel and auto jobs in the first place, so there aren't any mothballed factories here worthy of a Bruce Springsteen ode. It's not likely that Bruce or Billy Joel are headed to Columbus any time soon to lament the discarded wasteland formerly known as the Continent or other suffering malls like Northland.
It's clear that the Lashutka administration's commitment to newer and better high-fashion malls through tax abatements, TIFs and publicly funded infrastructure development has placed our city in the position to endure the dreaded disposable-mall syndrome. Our fair city is also aided by McDonald's recent acquisition of locally based Donato's. If a mall closes, Columbus residents can always turn to fast food McJobs.
Thankfully, Lashutka, with the full support of City Council, has managed to ensure the future economic viability of our area by making greater Columbus a safe haven for low-paying retail and warehouse jobs. This no doubt explains the far-sighted securing of the Polaris Fashion Mall project located in Delaware County and the Olentangy School District. Thus, if all the malls close in Columbus, city residents can commute to retail jobs in Delaware County.
In his 1997 address, Lashutka called for his now legendary Mayor's Tech Town Task Force to answer "four major questions," one being: "What does government need to do to create an environment hospitable to technology and technology-based companies?" I'm not sure exactly what the task force told the mayor, but it may have something to do with giving large tax abatements to Dispatch development subsidiaries to build upscale housing in areas like German Village. Kind of a "field of dreams" approach. Build luxury abodes favored by high-tech yuppies, and they'll move to the city whether they've got jobs or not. As soon as they secure one of the nonexistent high-tech jobs, they can drive the 15 miles from German Village out to Polaris to shop for high-tech clothing.
As Lashutka put it back in '97, "If we want technology companies to locate and stay in central Ohio, then we need to have skilled workers for them." This is probably why the mayor concentrated so much on malls and sports arenas, where many employees often ring up sales on state-of-the-art cash registers.
Under the Lashutka administration, we've seen a brilliant and systematic plan to build athletic facilities: the Schottenstein Center, Nationwide arena and the Crew soccer field. These are just the type of places well-heeled high-tech workers and their corporate bosses frequent. Looking at it from the mayor's perspective, I'm sure that the arenas' private luxury boxes are all part of his well-thought-out Tech Town strategy.
Spurred on by an August 1997 report to the Tech Town Task Force that claimed "Central Ohio continues to underperform in science and technology," the mayor and his task force vowed to work even harder. After all, when, as the Dispatch reported, Columbus is ranked 54th in "greatest concentration of high-tech companies and technology-related employment," you'd better undertake an ambitious plan of mall and arena building. How else can you compete with the big boys like Oakland, California, rated 14th in this year's high-tech hub study?
Now you're wondering if the Lashutka administration accomplished its goal. Are we known as "Tech Town" USA? Well, the Dispatch noted last January that the "Columbus metropolitan area was not rated as strongly in the creation of high-tech jobs, coming in at number 64." Not bad for the nation's 15th largest city. We're less technologically advanced than about 49 cities that are smaller than Columbus.
The Dispatch editorial writers, ever-vigilant in protecting the mayor's legacy as one of the nation's greatest mall, arena and tax abatement promoters--the man some observers call this city's Master Abater--wrote, "So while it hasn't yet arrived at Tech Town, Columbus at least has its foot in the door."
And a mighty big foot it is. What the Dispatch and the mayor both understood so well is that, hey, we're Columbus, not some rundown old industrial city like Newark, New Jersey. Newark is rated 19th on Governing magazine's list of high-tech hubs. Why should we care that Columbus didn't even make the list? Does the 24th ranked New Haven-Bridgeport-Stamford, Connecticut, have as many retail shopping opportunities as we do? There's really nothing in this town that can't be solved by building another mall.
12/16/1999
Busted?
After two years of Alive investigative reports, a new court action finally tries to fix the bail bonds system
by Bob Fitrakis
'Tis the season for bail bondsmen and their cherished brethren, bounty hunters, to turn to folly. Bounty hunters James Coleman of Columbus Bail Bonds and Kevin Steen of Chuck Brown Bail Bonds reportedly fired several shots at a bail jumper's car in a Columbus parking lot last week. If you want to understand why Coleman and Steen were busily shooting up the east side, you might want to check out three investigative reports I wrote for Columbus Alive in the last two years (archives are available at alivewired.com). When the Alive looked at the bounty hunters, we found some had felony records. One complained to my publisher so much about the revelation that we had to run a correction. No, he wasn't a felon--he was a thrice-convicted felon.
You can't really separate bounty hunters from the bail bondsmen who hire them. They're joined at the hip like twisted and dysfunctional Siamese twins. "`Bad ass' bounty hunters; desperate money-driven bondsmen; questionable court employees, some with criminal records; and corrupt elected court officials with a vested interest in the existing system...this is a formula for disaster. It can happen here, but it doesn't have to, if elected officials acknowledge the problem and reform the system," I concluded in a September 1997 cover story.
I've since changed my mind. Nothing's ever going to change in the Franklin County court system until bounty hunters dust a few innocent people. The county courts appear to be institutionally corrupt and incapable of reining in the burgeoning bonding-industrial complex centered around one Harvey Handler.
As I demonstrated in my May 1997 story "The Gatekeepers," one bond firm, SMD & HLS Bonding Company, dominates the Franklin County Court system. In Alive's month-long investigation, we found that bail bondsmen ran their business right out of the conference room next to the Municipal Arraignment Courtroom 4D. Little has changed since that story, where I witnessed bondsmen smoking in the conference room and fighting in the halls for customers.
"Although this courthouse is a no-smoking public building, smoke wafts from the interview room when the door is opened as bail bondsmen hustle family and friends of defendants from the arraignment court to their office equipped with phones and a criss-cross phone directory. As one highly placed law-enforcement source put it, `It's the old adage. The best place to hide illegal activity is out in the open,'" the article reads.
Maybe that's why our elected court officials, our city attorney, the police and the Ohio Department of Insurance can't see the racket that Handler's running in the halls of justice. Handler, who owns and operates SMD & HLS Bonding Company, is not in great need of bounty hunters, as are the smaller firms involved in last week's shooting. As long as Handler's firm is given preferential treatment to monopolize the bail bonding business in Columbus and doesn't have to worry about people who skip trial, the pressure will increasingly build on the few remaining bond firms to utilize bounty hunters.
In my July 1998 article "Money for Nothing," I documented how a Columbus police investigation confirmed the shady bail bondsmen's practices at the court. Undercover police wrote that they saw Mark Glaser, an SMD bondsman, "all over the courtroom, even entering and exiting the courtroom through doors located behind the judge's bench."
That's why Columbus Bail Bonds filed a complaint on November 16 in Ohio's 10th District Appeals Court seeking a Writ of Mandamus--that's Latin for "Do your damn job, public officials." Columbus Bail Bonds is asking the court to compel J. Lee Covington II, Ohio's Superintendent of Insurance, to enforce Ohio administrative rule 3901-1-40, prohibiting bondsmen from "rebating" or discounting their bonds. The complaint calls for a long-overdue hearing concerning the practices of SMD & HLS. Hell, it's Christmastime. The best deals in town are at the courthouse. I've seen Handler personally negotiate with judges over how much a defendant should pay in bail.
Columbus Bail Bonds claims that Municipal Clerk of Courts Paul W. Herbert and Administrative Judge Charles Schneider "in the past have given and continue to give extraordinary access to the facilities in the Franklin County Municipal Court Building to SMD & HLS Bonding Company." This would be tough to prove. You'd have to actually go down to the court and watch it operate for 10 minutes.
The writ also requests that City Attorney Janet Jackson and Chief of Police James Jackson enforce the Columbus City Code that prohibits bondsmen from "soliciting business" in the courthouse. The city attorney promised action on this a couple years ago, apparently without much success.
Bail bondsmen are relics from the past. Back in 1972, Ohio Chief Justice C. William O'Neill attacked bail bondsmen for preying on defendants. "In 90 percent of the cases, the bail bondsmen renders no service and takes no risk, but keeps his profit," O'Neill told the Dispatch. But as long they keep passing out campaign donations, they'll never become extinct, even if they serve no purpose.
No, nothing's going to change until some desperate and financially strapped small bond firm, at an unfair competitive advantage, hires some trigger-happy bounty hunter who ends up killing the wrong person. I'm sure Lee, Paul, Judge Chuck, Janet and Chief Jim will then begin to do their jobs
12/23/1999
by Bob Fitrakis
Christmas came a little early at Columbus Alive. Last week, the V Group, (formerly Voinovich Companies) owned by Paul Voinovich, was socked with a $13.3 million verdict by a U.S. District Court jury in St. Clairsville, Ohio, for shoddy construction, delays and cost overruns at the Jefferson County jail. Also, former Waste Technologies Industries (WTI) lobbyist Michael Anthony Fabiano was fined $1,000 by the Ohio Elections Commission for his role in a money-laundering scheme involving then-Governor George Voinovich's re-election campaign in 1994.
The Alive has steadfastly investigated a broad umbrella of scandals connected to the brothers Voinovich. In 1996, the paper dubbed the recurring patterns of corruption swirling around the V Group and the Voinovich administration "Ohiogate," a term that initially drew snickers from mainstream reporters. The Ohiogate editorial campaign also won the Alive a first place award from the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.
At the crux of the Voinovich scandal is the fact that Paul Voinovich viewed his brother George as an elected Santa Claus. It's no coincidence that after his brother became governor in 1991 and the former V Group Vice President Paul Mifsud became the governor's chief of staff, the V Group went on a jail-building spree across Ohio underwritten by public monies.
"All evidence suggests that since the onset of the George Voinovich administration in 1991, the governor's recently resigned chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, systematically engineered the steering of contracts and public funds to political backers and Voinovich family members," read an Alive cover story in September 1996.
It's interesting that the only elected government official in Ohio with enough guts to hold the V Group accountable was Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Stephen Stern. He had brave-hearted allies along the way. There's the late Joseph Gilyard, Governor Voinovich's director of the office of criminal justice services. The governor fired him in July 1991 after he blew the whistle to then-state Inspector General David Sturtz on what he alleged was a massive scheme by Paul Mifsud and Paul Voinovich to steer jail contracts and obtain state and local money for the projects.
When Inspector General Sturtz doggedly pursued an investigation of Mifsud a few years later, the governor abruptly fired Sturtz. Mifsud ended up resigning and spending six months in jail over a sweetheart construction deal. The Columbus Alive cover story was utilized by the grand jury in Mifsud's indictment.
Perhaps the greatest monument to the V Group's bizarre--and now according to at least one jury, shoddy and deceptive--construction practices is here in Franklin County. Recall again that the V Group secured an unbid contract to renovate the county jail in downtown Columbus. The V Group originally estimated the project would cost county taxpayers $2 million; it ended up costing more than $12 million. But there's not one elected public official here in Franklin County willing to bring suit against Paul's company.
Ironically, the Jefferson County case--one I believe to be much weaker than the case we'd have against the V Group in Franklin County--was won by local attorney Jack Rosati of Bricker & Eckler. Rosati's firm is often attacked and derided in Columbus Dispatch editorials for such crimes against humanity as assisting poor school districts in their battle for equitable funding.
A December 17 Dispatch article on the Voinovich scandal reported Ohio Elections Commission's attorney Robert Makley as saying that "someone well-connected with the governor's re-election campaign must have arranged for Nicholas Mamais to bill the campaign for $60,000, knowing the invoice would be paid even though no work was performed. But the identity of that person--and indeed, the full story of why the financial scheme was developed--may forever remain a mystery."
Excuse me--what mystery? If you're a reader of Columbus Alive, you'd know that then-Governor Voinovich's campaign treasurer and longtime personal friend Vince Panichi swore under oath that it was Governor George Voinovich, in a meeting with his brother Paul, who gave the order. Someone well-connected, indeed.
Also, what you won't find in the pages of the Dispatch is any record of the horrendous whitewash Roger Makley did on the investigation. Here's a typical exchange between Makley and Paul Voinovich as he tries to get to the heart of the identity of the mysterious person:
Q [Makley]: "And that was, this conversation you refer to, is the first time you ever became aware of the fact that the issue of Mr. Gallagher and his employment in some capacity by Mr. Fabiano was even on the table, is that correct?"
A [Paul Voinovich]: "That's correct..."
Q: "You simply brought to Senator Voinovich's attention the fact that this matter had occurred and let him deal with it as he best saw fit to do so?"
A: "That's exactly correct."
Here is the questions that should have been asked: Why is the investigative attorney for the Ohio Elections Commission leading the witness into the correct way of answering so as to exonerate him from any wrongdoing?