Attorney David Betras

YOUNGSTOWN — The Mahoning County Board of Elections and Mahoning County commissioners are at odds.

And election officials say a legal battle may be looming.

Elections Board Chairman David Betras blasted commissioners at Thursday’s regular meeting, and said that if the issue of a new home for the board of elections is not resolved soon, the board may sue commissioners for malfeasance.

Betras has been calling on commissioners for more than 18 months to address the problems at Oakhill Renaissance Place, the board’s current home, and to find it a new home.

Repeated water leaks, mold, asbestos, insufficient security and other problems have plagued the building, he said.

“The people who work there have to bring in bottled water because they can’t drink the water in that building,” he said. “I don’t know if all the asbestos has been remediated. The building has lost its life function, and they’ve known this a long time.”

At Thursday’s commissioners meeting, Betras said the building had another major water leak. Elections Board member and Mahoning County Republican Party Chairman Tom McCabe said a radiator broke just after Christmas, around 4 p.m. on a Friday, and flooded half of a hallway before the water could be turned off.

McCabe and Betras both said it was sheer luck that it happened while employees were still in the office.

“If that happened 35 minutes later, it would not have been caught until Monday morning,” McCabe said.

A similar leak happened two years ago and another in September, which came close to damaging the county’s voting machines.

“This is the third leak in four years. (What happens) when that leak springs on a non-work day and no one is there to catch it,” McCabe said.

Betras told commissioners that their failure to address the issues has brought the Board of Elections close to filing a lawsuit against the county.

“You’re on the verge of malfeasance. You’ve known about this for years. We need a building, and we’re not moving downtown,” he said..

Betras was referring to a $60 million plan that will demolish the former Eastern Gateway Community College building and would likely replace it with a building that commissioners have suggested could house the elections board.

“They’re suggesting they’re going to move us, but it’s not conducive for ease of voting. It’s congested,” Betras said. “We don’t have enough parking now. Where can they put us downtown that will give us adequate parking?”

He said the elections board must be housed in a facility that is either standalone or properly segregated from any other offices, for security purposes. He said he worries not only about parking but people having to take elevators, managing curbside voting, monitoring the ballot dropbox and other concerns.

Betras said the elections board has unanimously passed a resolution declaring that it will not accept a move downtown.

McCabe praised Betras for his leadership on the issue.

“The commissioners need to open this process up and tell us how they got to this point,” he said. “I think Chairman Betras has done a great job of keeping this in the public eye and in front of commissioners and has been a great voice for us, and he’s doing a real public service by being so vocal about it.”

Both Betras and McCabe say they also disagree with some groups that have argued the Board of Elections must remain in the city limits, even if it is not housed downtown.

“I don’t think it matters so much exactly where we put it. As long as there is bus service, I’m OK with it,” Betras said. “I’m not saying put it in Sebring. But there’s no law that says we have to keep it in Youngstown.”

Although Betras said many buildings within the city limits would be suitable, the commissioners are not being receptive to proposed ideas.

Last year, Rev. Ken Simon, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Youngstown, and chair of the Greater Youngstown Community Mobilization Coalition — which represents 25 African-American and Latin-X organizations — spearheaded efforts to persuade commissioners to keep the board in the city limits for the sake of avoiding disproportionate disenfranchisement of minority inner-city voters who already struggle with transportation. At the time, some floated the idea that the elections board might be moved to the newly-purchased Patriot Building in Austintown, the former Infocision call center.

But McCabe said there are fewer and fewer reasons, with modern voting systems, why the board needs to remain within the city.

“There’s no reason we have to keep it in the city. We have 30 days of voting and 30 days of absentee voting,” he said. “The location distance isn’t as important as the facility itself being able to operate properly.”

McCabe said he, too, is frustrated with the county’s communication, or what he perceives as a lack thereof.

“They said they sat down with us and the Western Reserve Port Authority, and they did, but that was a year or two ago,” he said.

McCabe said Commissioner Geno DiFabio told him the board would be moving downtown.

Betras and McCabe said commissioners seem to think that they’ve solved most of the problems by addressing some security concerns, but there is far more to the problems at Oak Hill.

Commissioner Geno DiFabio said he resents Betras’ approach.

“It’s just Dave Betras coming out and grandstanding. There’s no line on a drawing yet, and he’s already saying it won’t work. To us, that is just not productive,” he said. “I told him of course we’ll talk to him to see what he needs. This is him putting on a show and I don’t appreciate him coming out to do it at our meetings while we try to conduct county business. But that’s how he operates.”

DiFabio said that when Betras pointed out the board of elections did not comply with directives from Secretary of State Frank LaRose, commissioners met with the board and found that between the two boards’ responsibilities, commissioners had done a better job of meeting the state’s requirements than the board of elections had.

“They were more out of compliance with what needed done than what we were,” he said. “They’re responsible for so much and we’re responsible for so much, and we had less that needed fixed than they did, and we fixed ours.”

DiFabio said the county is looking into what elections offices require.

DiFabio reiterated that he understands all too well how important voting systems are.

“Nobody knows how much every vote counts more than me, I lost an election by 136 votes,” he said.