YOUNGSTOWN — Attorneys Subodh Chandra and Martin Desmond sued the Mahoning County commissioners, alleging they violated the First Amendment rights of their client, Ricky Morrison of Poland, when Morrison was fired as a county maintenance worker.

The recently filed lawsuit alleges Morrison was fired for supporting the candidacy of Geno DiFabio in his run against incumbent Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti in the November general election, which Rimedio- Righetti won.

But the suit also alleges commissioners violated the Ohio Open Meetings Act Dec. 1 when when Rimedio Righetti and Commissioner David Ditzler allegedly voted during a private “staff meeting” at the commissioners’ offices to terminate Morrison. The lawsuit states Commissioner Anthony Traficanti voted no, and Traficanti has told The Vindicator that is what happened.

According to the lawsuit, voting during an executive session violates the Open Meetings Act.

The commissioners hold one or more “staff meetings” nearly every week and notify the news media / public of the time and date, but they do not notify on the topics they will discuss, despite all three commissioners being present for most meetings.

First Amendment and media lawyer David Marburger said he believes the topics the commissioners discuss during their staff meetings should be disclosed to the public in advance because the meetings act appears to require it.

Furthermore, he said calling such gatherings “staff meetings” is misleading because the commissioners attend them and discuss the public’s business.

The Morrison lawsuit alleges the Dec. 1 executive session during a staff meeting involving Morrison was illegal because “none of the requirements for an executive session were met. There was no notice and no proper purpose.”

“The Open Meetings Act is designed to prevent public officials from meeting secretly to deliberate on public issues without accountability to the public,” the lawsuit states. “No vote or other decision-making on a matter discussed may take place during an executive session,” the lawsuit adds.

The suit also points to a staff meeting the commissioners held Nov. 17 during which they met with then-county prosecutor Paul Gains and then-chief assistant prosecutor Gina DeGenova and others. It was the day before Gains publicly announced he was retiring. The suit alleges that meeting also was illegal because the public was never notified in advance that it was going to happen.

The lawsuit alleges that meeting also was illegal because it was held “without public notice,” and “none of the requirements for a public meeting or executive session were met.”

The lawsuit does not elaborate on the specific reasons why Morrison’s lawyers feel the Nov. 17 meeting was illegal.

INFORMING THE PUBLIC

But Marburger, a longtime Cleveland-area First Amendment and media lawyer, said last week that the way the commissioners hold “staff meetings” appears to violate the meetings act and are also highly misleading to the public.

The Nov. 17 and Dec. 1 meetings were held under the title of “staff meetings,” which the commissioners hold regularly, but the time and place of such meetings vary. The commissioners also hold a regular weekly board meeting, usually in the basement of the courthouse, where they vote on matters, such as the hiring of personnel and entering into contracts. Those meetings are recorded and viewable on the commissioners’ website.

A difference between the the regular meetings in the courthouse and “staff meetings,” which are generally held in a private area of the commissioners’ office, is that “staff meetings” are where the commissioners generally hold executive-session meetings — meaning meetings not open to the public.

There are specific requirements under the Ohio Open Meetings Act that must be followed before a public body can hold a public meeting, including notification to the public.

One is the requirement to notify the public “when and where each meeting will take place and must sometimes give notice of what matters will be discussed” in a public meeting, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

The commissioners provide notices to the media on their meeting at the courthouse, but The Vindicator has questioned the legality of the commissioners’ staff meetings because the commissioners do not always provide specific times when each part of the “meeting” will happen or give the purpose. Both types of meetings are open to the public.

The question is whether the public should be better informed of the topics to be covered at staff meetings, Marburger said.

“If a staff meeting is, in fact, functionally a board meeting — that is a meeting of the commissioners — the notice has to give the purpose of these staff meetings because they function as special meetings,” he said.

NOV. 17 MEETINGS

In the case of the Nov. 17 “staff meeting,” a Vindicator reporter was denied entry. The meeting took place starting about 1:30 p.m. and resulted in a 1:40 p.m. executive session as part of “staff meetings” that began at 9:30 a.m., according to the meetings notice this newspaper received and statements from county officials.

Though sources said Gains was going to reveal to the commissioners at the meeting that he was retiring, and Rimedio Righetti confirmed that Gains did discuss his career at the meeting, Gains denied that he talked about his retirement.

According to documents obtained last week, the commissioners met during a 9:30 a.m. staff meeting with the facilities department and went into executive session to discuss personnel matters at 9:45 a.m.

They held their regularly weekly commissioners meeting at 10 a.m. in the courthouse, then were scheduled for a 10:30 a.m. staff meeting with the Department of Job and Family Services, but documents do not reflect that they held that staff meeting.

It appears they held that meeting at 12:30 and went into executive session at 12:50 to talk about personnel matters and other issues.

The Vindicator attended a commissioners budget hearing with Sheriff Jerry Greene that day at 11 a.m. — also in the commissioners’ hearing room, and another budget hearing followed at 12:30 p.m. Then the commissioners met with Gains and DeGenova at about 1:30 p.m. County Administrator Audrey Tillis said the meeting with Gains and DeGenova was part of the staff meetings notice that began at 10:30 that day.

The commissioners told the news media / public in an email that on Nov. 17, there would be staff meetings beginning at 9:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., in addition to the commissioners regular weekly meeting in the courthouse at 10 a.m, but the email does not say anything about a staff meeting starting at 1:30 p.m.

Rimedio Righetti has said staff meetings sometimes stop and start this way, but it is necessary because the commissioners need flexibility to address unexpected matters that arise.

“We may have something come up, regardless of where it is when it comes up in the county,” Rimedio-Righetti said. “We don’t know what will come up. Most of them are scheduled, but if you have an emergency, someone comes in and says we need to see you. By law, we are registered as having staff meetings.”

STAFF MEETINGS

Marburger said the way the commissioners hold “staff meetings” appears to violate the meetings act and is highly misleading to the public.

Marburger said the commissioners’ staff meetings appear to fall under Ohio Open Meetings Act classification as “special meetings,” which require not only advance notice of the time and place, but the purpose of the meeting.

Guidance on public meetings on the Ohio Attorney General’s website states something similar.

Regular meetings, which are held at “predictable intervals, such as once a month,” do not require notification to the public of the purpose of the meeting.

But a “‘special meeting’ is any other kind of meeting,” the AG’s website states. Special meetings require a public body to notify the public of the purpose. “Only topics related to the stated purpose of the special meeting can be discussed,” the site adds.

Multiple attempts last week to ask Bethany McCorkle, communications director for Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, for someone at the Ohio Attorney General’s Office to comment on whether the Mahoning commissioners staff meetings violate the act were unsuccessful.

Marburger called the commissioners’ staff meetings “really just a special meeting of the board of commissioners in which they include others.”

Marburger said if such meetings “function as a special meeting” — and he thinks they do — then the commissioners’ office would need to notify the public of the time, place and purpose, which they do not.

Marburger said he thinks an ordinary understanding of a “staff meeting” would be a meeting in which administrators or staff have discussions without the county commissioners being present. But the three county commissioners generally attend and participate in all staff meetings, said Tillis, who also participates in the meetings.

The Vindicator attended the commissioners’ staff meeting Thursday. All three commissioners were there and participated. Topics discussed included flooding, the county jail and a controversy over the McGuffey Pond in Coitsville. They also went into private session to talk about contract negotiations. Also attending the session were Tillis and commissioners’ deputy clerk Hollie Musolino-Goodin.

‘MISLEADING’

The Vindicator provided Marburger with the meeting notification for the commissioners’ Nov. 17, 2022, meetings.

“Do you see how misleading this is? At 10 a.m. they have what they call a board meeting, which plainly identifies that the commissioners themselves are meeting. But when they have the other meetings, called staff meetings, it … does not signify that all three (commissioners) will be there,” Marburger said.

“What matters to me is they are using the term ‘board meeting’ when that plainly signifies that it is the three county commissioners. When they use ‘staff meeting,’ it functions as a meeting of the board, but they give it a different label, and that is very misleading and I think on the whole is wrong.”

He called the staff meetings “meetings of the board of commissioners” and opined that they are “irregular, meaning they don’t always have them on Thursdays at 10 a.m.” As such, they are “special meetings” under the meetings act “and they have to provide the purpose of the special meeting, which is, in effect, an agenda.”

Marburger said: “I have quite a few criticisms of the way the commissioners are conducting the public’s business because the so-called staff meeting suggests that it is not a meeting of the board of commissioners, when in fact it is. It is a functional equivalent of a meeting of the board of commissioners.”

He said for the commissioners to suggest that the staff meetings do not include the commissioners is “false. It’s misleading, and it’s wrong.”

When The Vindicator attended the commissioners’ staff meeting Thursday, a reporter learned that the staff had produced a meeting agenda for the meeting. The Vindicator was provided a copy and was told the newspaper could have a copy for future staff meetings. The Vindicator was unaware prior to Thursday that agendas for any staff meeting had ever been produced.

The newspaper also was provided Thursday with copies of the minutes of staff meetings during November and December. It also was the first time The Vindicator reporter was aware that minutes of staff meetings were being compiled. The Vindicator requested minutes of the Dec. 1 meeting Jan. 4 without knowing whether they existed, but a paralegal working for the firm hired by the commissioners in the Morrison lawsuit has not yet filled the request.

RESPONSE

When The Vindicator asked the commissioners Thursday about Marburger’s opinion that the commissioners’ use of the term “staff meetings” is misleading, Tillis spoke for them, saying she would advise the commissioners not to answer because of the pending litigation over Morrison.

“What I can say is this has been a consistent practice of this county” for many years, Tillis said.

Traficanti, who has been a county county commissioner for 18 years, said the commissioners’ office has held “staff meetings” and called them that since he became a commissioner.

MORRISON LAWSUIT

The Morrison lawsuit alleges the commissioners violated the Ohio Open Meetings Act at the Dec. 1 staff meeting. Traficanti has told The Vindicator that Rimedio Righetti and Ditzler voted to terminate Morrison from his job as a county maintenance worker at that meeting. Traficanti voted against it, he told the newspaper.

Morrison’s termination was later rescinded, and Morrison was returned to work with full pay and benefits. DeGenova said the termination was rescinded because Tillis fired Morrison without authority to do so.

The lawsuit states that Morrison is entitled to a ruling by federal Judge Benita Y. Pearson, who is overseeing the Morrison lawsuit, ordering damages to Morrison for the “multiple Open Meetings Act violations.”

A lawyer representing DeGenova has filed a response to the Morrison lawsuit. The commissioners have not yet responded.

DeGenova’s response denies that the Dec. 1 meeting was illegal and cited “public records” that document that the “Board of Mahoning County Commissioners held a public meeting Dec. 1, 2022, and properly entered into executive session at approximately 1:14 p.m. to discuss personnel matters.”

None of the documents provide any information upon which someone could determine whether the public was properly notified of the purpose of the meetings. When DeGenova was asked last month whether she thought the proper notification was issued for the Nov. 17 meeting, she said that was a question for the commissioners’ office staff because she does not know what notifications that staff sent to the news media.

The public records DeGenova cited include a two-page document provided to The Vindicator that states the names of the commissioners who attended the executive session, who voted to enter executive session, what time it started and ended, and checked boxes for the topics discussed: “to consider the dismissal of a public employee or official,” to “consider the compensation of a public employee or official,” and “security matters.”

The document is called the “Commissioners Weekly Staff Meeting Sign In Sheet.”

There was no mention in the document whether any decisions were reached.

Minutes of the Dec. 1 meeting obtained by The Vindicator on Thursday state that the three commissioners met with Tillis, Human Resources Director Karen U’Halie; and Alan Landfried, head of the department that handles maintenance, called Facilities. The minutes do not indicate that any decisions were reached.

DeGenova’s response also addressed the allegation in the lawsuit that the Nov. 17 meeting was illegal by stating she “expressly denies the allegations” and further states “that public records document that the Board of Mahoning County Commissioners held a public meeting Nov. 17, 2022, and properly entered into executive session at approximately 1:40 p.m. to discuss several identified topics.”

The two-page record The Vindicator obtained for the Nov. 17 meeting lists who attended — Gains, DeGenova and chief Assistant Prosecutor Linette Stratford — and who voted to enter executive session — Ditzler and Traficanti — what time the executive session started and ended, and has checkmarks beside three topics that were discussed: “appointment of a public employee or official,” “to consider the investigation of charges or complaints against a public employee or official,” and “matters required to be kept confidential.”

It states “no action” was taken.

The minutes The Vindicator obtained Thursday for the Nov. 17 meeting state the meeting was with the “Prosecutor’s” and restates much of the information as the two-page “Commissioners Weekly Staff Meeting Sign In Sheet.”

erunyan@vindy.com