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WARREN -- The attorney for former Liberty schools superintendent Joseph Nohra said his client is willing to "roll the dice" and go to trial before the court Wednesday in a felony case involving the wiretapping of a school district office.
Joseph Nohra, 51, of Topper Hill Drive, Hubbard, was in court Thursday for his final pretrial hearing before Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Ronald J. Rice.
He refused the final offer made by Assistant Prosecutor Charles Morrow to plead guilty to six misdemeanor charges of dereliction of duty and be found guilty by the judge to offset any trial.
Attorney David Betras explained that he can get no assurances from the state that Nohra's license to sell insurance would not be in jeopardy by any findings of guilt in this case.
"He needs to be able to make a living," Betras said about Nohra's job after he resigned as school superintendent in 2020.
Rice is scheduled to preside over a bench trial Wednesday to decide six felony wiretapping charges and five misdemeanor counts of interfering with civil rights.
The bill, reintroduced this week in the House, would require the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to make up the difference between the partial retirement benefits PBGC already has paid retirees and what they originally were due in one lump sum. PBGC took over the pensions in 2009.
The retirees also would receive 6 percent interest on the retroactive pay to help ease the tax burden.
Then, moving forward, the retirees would receive their full pensions as if they never were disrupted.
House lawmakers approved the legislation in July by a 254-175 vote. It stalled in the Senate, not getting the procedural support it needed. An attempt to include it in a year-end spending bill also was unsuccessful.
More than 5,000 of the retirees live in Ohio.
Republicans in the last Congress argued, in part, the bill created a bad precedent that other plans controlled by the PBGC would follow. It also was viewed as a bailout.
Supporters, meanwhile, said the bill is about fairness and restoring the retirement benefits the salaried retirees rightfully earned.
"We're going to work diligently to try to get this bill back out of the House again and over to the Senate, and then to try to persuade our fellow senators that this bill is paid for, this bill is rectifying an injustice and these retirees earned these benefits," Turner said.
Bruce Gump of Howland, chairman of the Delphi Salaried Retirees Association, said the government picked winners and losers in the auto crisis of 2009.
"They singled out Delphi salaried retirees for harsh treatment, deeming us as too small and too weak to fight back. It was a very disheartening day when one Auto Task Force member said our retirees had 'no commercial necessity,'" Gump said. "While actions took place to assure certain union-represented Delphi workers and retirees received their full earned pensions, the government treated our group differently -- something that has never happened before."
For the group of retirees, its 13-year legal battle with the PBGC to try to win back the involuntarily terminated pensions ended in January 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider the case.
Delphi, formerly Packard Electric that at one time was part of General Motors' parts division, filed for bankruptcy in October 2005 and emerged four years later. While Delphi was in bankruptcy protection in 2009, it relinquished responsibility for all its employee pensions to PBGC.
In its own government-planned bankruptcy in 2009, it was determined GM would fund fully union pensions for Delphi hourly employees. The salaried retirees weren't as fortunate and have argued their pensions should have been covered as well.
The bill is named after the deceased wife of a Delphi salaried retiree, David Muffley. Susan Muffley was a member of the association's leadership team and when her health began to fail, and she chose not to see a doctor given the financial constraints on her family. She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died in August 2012.