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YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County Clerk of Courts Michael Ciccone insists his office's failure to file routine monthly financial reports predates his administration and other county departments used an accounting firm "to address similar reconciliation concerns."
County Auditor Ralph Meacham, who first raised concerns about the failure of the clerk of courts to handle the reports, said Ciccone's statements in his defense are "false and completely inaccurate. This is all nonsense. Any representations to the contrary are erroneous."
Ciccone on Wednesday sent an email to The Vindicator contending a Tuesday article in which Meacham and the county commissioners said the Canfield accounting firm of Schroedel, Scullin & Bestic LLC had to be hired to clear up problems with his office "omits significant facts that are important for the public to understand."
Based on Meacham's recommendation, the commissioners voted on April 28 to pay up to $25,000 to SSB. When the firm discovered how bad the situation was in the clerk of courts' office, the commissioners on July 18 authorized an amended agreement for an estimated $50,000 more to the firm -- for a total, so far, of $75,000.
In Ciccone's email, he wrote: "On April 4, after learning that other Mahoning County offices had successfully utilized an independent accounting firm to address similar reconciliation concerns -- including the Mahoning County Treasurer's Office -- we formally notified the Mahoning County commissioners that we welcomed their assistance in securing a qualified third-party accounting firm. We had nothing to hide and voluntarily opened our records because our goal has always been to ensure complete compliance and accuracy."
Meacham said no county office, besides the clerk of courts, has experienced this problem.
The clerk of courts stopped filing routine financial reports after March 2025, three months into Ciccone's term, and Meacham said he asked the commissioners to get SSB to do the clerk of courts' job with reconciliation reports because if that wasn't done, a state audit of the county's finances couldn't be completed.
Ciccone's office didn't have a choice in welcoming anyone's assistance, Meacham said.
Meacham and Ciccone are both Republicans.
The issue with the county treasurer that Ciccone references dates to the departure of an employee in that office who handled reconciliations, with the county auditor doing that work for the treasurer's office from June 2021 to March 2022. Treasurer Dan Yemma hired an outside firm after that to help his office, but that relationship didn't last long with his department resuming the responsibilities.
The state auditor found the county auditor in the 2021 and 2022 audits failed to carry out its "most basic and primary" responsibility to reconcile county accounting records with cash bank balances and issued a finding of noncompliance Yemma disputed the state auditor's findings, saying at the time that some reconciliations were late, but resolved, were not "accounting errors" and did "not rise to the level of a finding."
Meacham said the two issues are different and Ciccone's contention that it's happened with additional county offices is wrong.
In the clerk of courts' case, the failure was in its inability to do bookkeeping and reconcile what money was collected with bank statements, Meacham said.
BOUNCED CHECKS
Ciccone's office twice failed to handle its finances, resulting in bounced checks, Meacham said.
In May, Ciccone's office put $1 million into the wrong fund and it wasn't discovered until numerous checks written on that account bounced, Meacham said.
Just a few weeks ago, Ciccone's office again put money into the wrong account and checks written for appraisers to handle sheriff's sales bounced, Meacham said.
"After the $1 million, that's when I asked to up the SSB work," Meacham said.
He added: "They put it in the wrong account because they don't know what they're doing."
Ciccone declined Wednesday to respond to a request from The Vindicator to discuss the bounced checks or to further elaborate on Meacham's statements.
In Ciccone's prepared statement, he wrote in the April 4 notification that his office "acknowledged that financial reports dating back to 2022 required review and reconciliation. Our objective was not to assign blame, but to establish an accurate financial baseline and ensure all reporting met applicable standards moving forward. We remain confident that the independent audit process will document when these deficiencies originated and provide a complete factual record."
Meacham said until Ciccone took office, there was never a problem with the clerk of courts' accounts.
Meacham said: "That office had people who knew what they were doing before Mr. Ciccone came in. The issues with the clerk of courts didn't go back to 2022. If there were issues, they would have been findings or comments by the state auditor. There aren't any. It's because Mr. Ciccone fired people and others couldn't stand him so they left. He can talk all he wants, but the county auditor is required to have accurate records and raised this issue."
All three county commissioners on Monday told The Vindicator that Meacham brought the problem to their attention.
County Commissioner Geno DiFabio, a Republican, said on Monday that the clerk of courts' financial "books are bad. They didn't inherit bad books. They created this situation. To me, it shouldn't have been necessary. It's unprecedented."
Asked about the increase in pay to SSB, DiFabio said: "They got in there and they learned there was more to do. There was more there than anyone anticipated. We felt it necessary to get this straightened out. The county's business has to be fixed."
Regarding SSB's costs tripling, Ciccone wrote: "While historical reconciliation issues required additional work, the accounting firm's engagement ultimately exceeded its original timeframe, requiring contract extensions that increased costs to approximately three times the original agreement. To date, the clerk of courts' office is still awaiting a final reconciliation report that has been accepted by both the county auditor and the board of commissioners."
BLAMES AUDITOR
In his prepared statement, Ciccone wrote that Tuesday's article "failed to acknowledge that the monthly reconciliation reports were not requested or identified as delinquent by the auditor's office for approximately eight months. Standard internal oversight would ordinarily identify missing monthly reports within a reasonable period. Had the clerk's office been notified after the first missed report, the matter could have been addressed immediately rather than allowing a significant backlog to develop that ultimately had to be resolved by newly hired staff."
Meacham said that claim is ridiculous.
Meacham said: "Did anyone remind you to breathe today? We don't make formal requests for this stuff. It's expected. It's not like we have to tell him. It's required of his office."
Also, two different fiscal officials for the clerk of courts spent so much time in the auditor's office that it's almost like they work there, Meacham said.
"It is the clear and sole responsibility of the clerk of courts to handle his own issues and that's where it stops," Meacham said. "When it became so bad that it was going to affect the county, we had to step in."
Since SSB's hiring, the reconciliation reports for 2025 were filed by the firm, Meacham said, so a state audit for that year was able to be done.
SSB is working through 2026, but isn't finished yet, Meacham said.
Those reports are supposed to reconcile what money the clerk of courts collects, how it distributes it to the state and county, and what it deposits into the bank.
In Ciccone's prepared statement, he wrote: "Financial accountability is a shared responsibility. While the clerk of courts accepts its obligation to maintain accurate financial records, effective oversight also requires timely communication and prompt identification of reporting deficiencies. Delays in notification only increase the amount of work required to resolve issues and ultimately result in additional costs borne by the taxpayers."
In reading Ciccone's statement, Meacham said it sounded like it was created with the help of artificial intelligence.
Ciccone wrote that his office will continue to cooperate with SSB, the state auditor, Meacham and the county commissioners "until this process is complete. We believe the final audit and reconciliation records will provide the public with a complete and accurate picture of the facts."
CICCONE CONTROVERSIES
Leaders in the county Republican Party, including DiFabio and Meacham, called on Ciccone, a fellow Republican, to resign Oct. 18, a day after Jennifer Ciccone, fired Oct. 17 as his chief deputy and chief of staff, posted several incriminating and embarrassing text messages from and photos of her former boss and once close friend on Facebook. That included the use of a racial epithet a number of times and slurs about elected officials.
Ciccone's Wednesday statement to The Vindicator is the first communication he's had with the newspaper since Oct. 19, when he refused to resign.
Since then, the newspaper has attempted to contact him several times about the controversy surrounding his brief time as clerk of courts.
Thais Scott of Girard, a former clerk of courts' administrator who is black, filed a lawsuit July 21 against Ciccone and his office contending he fired her after she reported to the human resources department that he called her a racial slur. Scott is suing Ciccone for racial discrimination, retaliation and having a hostile work environment.
Ciccone fired Scott on Dec. 4, less than a year after she started working for him, without providing a reason or explanation for her termination, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit contends the firing was "racially motivated and without just cause and was made in bad faith."
The chairmen of the Mahoning County Republican and Democratic parties, and top officials in both parties, called for Michael Ciccone to resign after Jennifer Ciccone on Oct. 17 posted several text messages from him in which he used racial slurs as well as derogatory language about several people, including public officeholders.
The two political parties announced Dec. 19 it would seek to remove Ciccone through legal action that started in January. There has been little movement on that effort.
The political parties accuse Ciccone of repeatedly abusing the authority of his office, using "discriminatory and degrading language," and failing to "perform core statutory duties and administered the clerk's office in a manner that undermined fiscal integrity, employee safety and public confidence in the judicial system."
The Ohio Clerk of Courts Association censured Ciccone in November, and then removed him from all committees and asked him to resign from the organization a month later. Ciccone has refused to resign.
The commissioners suspended Ciccone's access privileges in December to the courthouse entrances, except the main one, for what they said were violations of security rules and protocols. At the time, DiFabio said that was an "unprecedented" decision.
Ciccone owes $1,385.53 in delinquent property taxes for his house at 18 S. Edgehill Ave. in Austintown, which is co-owned with Patrick W. Ciccone.