Incumbent Denny Malloy wants a second four-year term as a Trumbull County commissioner. Michael J. Hovis, currently a two-term Bazetta Township trustee, is bidding to oust Malloy from office in the May 5 Republican primary.

The winner of that race will face Democrat Kristen F. Rock, an attorney, in November’s general election.

Hovis and Malloy share similarities beyond being Republicans.

Hovis, 57, lives in Bazetta and Malloy, 56, resides in nearby Cortland. Both — questioned during endorsement interviews with this newspaper’s editorial board and a reporter — are concerned about county homeowners’ property taxes, which have increased by an estimated 30% to 40% since 2023. Both say they oppose a grassroots effort to eliminate property taxes in Ohio altogether. They also agree on the county’s hiring of an outside company to seek grant money.

But they have different ideas about how to ease residents’ tax burden, especially on older homeowners. Hovis wants the state to change how it funds public schools. Malloy wants to increase the homestead tax exemption for seniors and wants to double Ohio’s owner-occupancy exemption for all homeowners.

Hovis wants Trumbull County to operate like a business. He said he’ll start by working to tighten the county’s budget belt.

“It needs to begin with the commissioners,” he said. “If you’re going to be a CEO of a $60 million corporation, you better start thinking like a businessman. Government is a service industry. We need to provide good quality services to our residents and all of our taxpayers.”

Like Malloy, Hovis said counties should keep more than 1% of sales tax collected.

One thing the candidates disagree about is the need for a new transit administrator to be hired upon the pending retirement of Michael Salamone, the man currently in that role, whose annual compensation — including salary, benefits and housing — was nearly $150,000 as of 2022.

Malloy said the county doesn’t need to replace Salamone. Hovis favors hiring a replacement.

We agree with Malloy on that point, but on balance, we encourage Trumbull County voters to consider making a change when they vote in the primary. Here’s why:

Malloy seems to believe he deserves a pass for the first two years of his current term, because he and then-Commissioner Mauro Cantalamessa — a Democrat — were handicapped by their counterpart in the office, former one-term Commissioner Niki Frenchko.

“The first couple of years were much different from what they are now,” Malloy said. “We played a lot of defense. We had to react if we tried to initiate something. We were doing anything we could to keep the ship afloat.”

But the drama of those years should not all be laid at the feet of Frenchko. In this case, it took three to tango. Why was one person given the power to turn meetings — Frenchko seldom attended workshops — into circuses and effectively drive discussions off the rails?

Cantalamessa and Frenchko are gone now, as both lost bids for reelection in 2024, with the latter now running in the Republican primary for the 14th District congressional seat against seven-term incumbent Dave Joyce. Since the beginning of 2025, Trumbull County’s three commissioners have all been quieter Republicans Tony Bernard and Rick Hernandez.

But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been controversy. Even Malloy admitted that it took a year for the three current commissioners to begin moving in the same direction.

There have been issues, including Malloy’s focus on attempts to save the doomed Leavittsburg Dam — which cost the county money — and his desire to get the county into electricity and natural gas aggregation programs. Hernandez voted against both, reasoning that he and Bernard had no way of knowing if other plans might come at a better price for county residents. Bernard eventually voted with Malloy.

Most recently, the Hubbard Township trustees complained that commissioners left their residents out of the natural gas aggregation program it entered with Palmer Energy after leaving a similar program with Buckeye Energy.

Malloy said Hubbard Township and other communities were looking to join Buckeye Energy, based on an email the commissioners received from Tom Bellish, Buckeye’s CEO, but Trustee Jason Tedrow said had made no decision to leave the county’s plan and was simply exploring options.

Hovis also questioned the commissioners’ use of $38 million in American Rescue Plan funds.

“We (in Bazetta) took those and used them as local matches to bring in outside grant money,” he said. “We took our money and turned it into more free money. That’s what the commissioners should have done with that $38 million.”

Malloy defended the commissioners’ use of those funds.

“I would not change anything about the process the commissioners took in providing ARP funds to communities after I began serving on the board,” he said.

Hovis called for wiser spending.

“There is no planning or prioritizing of projects in Trumbull County,” Hovis said. “They had ARP money that could have been used, before they had the opioid (settlement) money. They just chose to spend the money on pickleball courts instead of infrastructure. Trumbull County is not keeping up with anything.”

Hovis also was critical of the commissioners’ plans for a new dog pound and to put $6 million into a building the county doesn’t own in Cortland to house its 911 Center.

“Trumbull is operating on a shoestring budget, and there needs to be some tightening of the belt,” Hovis said. “There needs to be an assessment of all of the departments. We need to make sure that everyone that is being paid are doing the job.”