According to this morning's newspapers there was a Sewage Committee meeting held yesterday that was described by committee member Tony Cataldo as a "kind of an emergency meeting". Neither the media nor any of the individuals that requested notification of such meetings were advised of the meeting. That is a blatant disregard of the notification provisions of Ohio's Sunshine Law. That law is also known as Ohio's Open Meeting Act and is covered in Ohio Revised Code. It's not new. It's been around for years.
Randy Allmon is Chairman of the Sewage Committee. The news account didn't give all the names of the people at that meeting but did state that Chris Gagin, staff attorney for Congressman Wilson, Village Solicitor Andy Beech, G,G&J Engineer Bill Boyle, F.O. Dale Davis and Cataldo were there. Gagin travels from D.C. I think Boyle travels from somewhere up near Cleveland. The meeting was in regards to justifying expenditures in regards to the STAG projects that include the proposed Highland Avenue sewage project. It is clearly not one of the exemptions allowed by the law for a closed door session.
In Chapter II of the Sunshine Law it states a "'special meeting' is any meeting other that a regular meeting". The rule for special meetings such as Committee Meetings is that a 24 hour advanced notification must be given to those that asked to be notified. It goes on to state "An emergency meeting is a special meeting that is convened because a situation requires immediate official action. For this type of meeting, the public body must immediately notify all media outlets that have requested such notification, as well as people who have specifically requested such notice, of the time, place and purpose of the emergency meeting". In other words if some one requests to know about such meetings, by law village officials must notify you whether it is a regular committee meeting or an emergency meeting. This is not a product of my imagination. It is covered under ORC Ann. 121.22.
According to the newspaper report this morning no one at the MJ, the ER or the reporter was notified. They probably have written requests on file at Village Hall to be notified. At the council meeting December 16 I requested to go on record to be notified of any future committee meetings. The first I heard of yesterday's meeting was reading about it in the paper.
This was probably a hastily called meeting. Clearly the ball was dropped. One would think that with two lawyers in attendance all the bases would be covered to keep everything legal. It's things like this that causes the integrity of those involved into question. A "kind of an emergency meeting" is still not justification of not following the law. To get all those people listed in the paper together there had to be time to have someone notify those that asked to be notified.
Dang, they were doing so well...
ole nib
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24 comments:
Vote the bums out.........
What can be done about this, and who would have to do it?
Nib, I was told that meeting had been set up over a week ago. Finally, a reporter who does not fall for their lies.
When will they learn ? What is the punishment for ignoring the Sunshine Law ?
It's funny, everytime there has been illigal meetings going on at Village Hall, Tony Cataldo's name is involved. Take a good look, he is always in the middle. Joann Bobby has his number already.
When are they going to learn Nib, you can't do things wrong, if that meeting was not about wrong doings, then they would have called the press. Just another attempt by the Surace administration to hide something, with Cataldo being the ringleader.
Here Here:
Nobody knows what they are doing down there. And they cant be embarrassed, so you have to vote them out.
I don't think the meeting was anything about "wrong doings". I think it was just not following the right procedures in notifying those that wanted to be advised of it.
nib
No they were NOT "doing so well." This has been going on for years and no reporter had reported it.
Now someone finally is.
ANY citizen can bring a lawsuit against a public body for failing to obey the sunshine law, even in this case, since it was written about in the paper.
Or the paper can do it.
When they don't want something in the paper, believe me, there is wrong doing. They got in trouble with the E.P.A., about 8 months ago. They were investigated for missing paperwork on sewage work.T hey still have not produced all the paperwork. Believe me they didn't want any of this to get out. They are scared, so they called Wilson's office, and he sent his lawyer down. Look for the Village to pay a big fine.
Maybe the meeting was about "wrong doings" Ole Nib, what was done wrong when using the STAG monies for projects. Why do they feel the citizens of Wellsville are not entitled to know how they used government funds to do various sewage projects in our town? Cataldo is famous for these types of meetings and he is teaching Allmon everything he knows. Cataldo has been there long enough to know the Sunshine Laws and I agree with the first poster.
fact: wellsville will never move forward until these folks are voted out. It is time for a change and it is up to us to make that change happen.
The EPA thing is what they are working on. Some of the receipts or cancelled checks they are trying to find go back to the early 1990s. From what I understand is that the EPA is holding up the release of the STAG money until they are satisfied that the money the village received for that sewage project was properly spent. The biggest problem right now is that record retention was not the greatest back then. So far they have found receipts that cover somewhere around $1,000,000 of $1.2 million that was spent. Cataldo & Davis are doing most of the grunt work trying to find those receipts. I think it goes back before either one of those gentlemen were involved in our village government. If you read the article in Wednesday's paper Gagin commended them for "leaving no stone unturned" in their efforts which included digging through boxes in the basement and crawl spaces. Nothing was computerized back in those days.
I don't know how Gagin got to town but I'm getting the impression Charlie Wilson is following this. Being a staff attorney for Wilson Gagin would be the logical man to sit down with village officials to explain what to expect when the record trail comes to an end, meaning they can't find any thing additional on this. In the newspaper it said "Gagin stressed that the EPA has not alleged any mishandling of funds on the part of the village, just a lack of documentation". I think they have been doing pretty good trying to clear up someone else's mess.
Getting back to the Sunshine Law snafu - I think you'll be seeing a remarkable improvement. Thanks to Jo Ann Bobby G. I'm getting the impression that our officials are getting very familiar with the provisions of that law. One councilman found out yesterday when you have a three person committee and two of them show up for a meeting then that meeting falls under the guidelines of the Sunshine Law.
nib
who are the people that called the epa and inspector general to invistagate wellsville to do an audit when nothing is wrong. it goes back to the last election . keep trying you will lose again
from these comments it looks diane dinch is running for council again
Sooner or later it will come out who turned the Village in to the E.P.A. I bet the person who turned the Village in, was a loser in the last election. I hope when they find out, it is made public.
I don't think that they all should be voted out, there are some in there that are doing good for the Village.
I hope that Dinch will not run again, that is only more of the same old crap and the people obviously did not want her in office or they would have elected her. We need new people and new, fresh ideas not the same old tired faces and do nothing attitudes.
I'm curious. Why do you think some one "narc'd" on the village to the EPA??? It's my understanding that there is still a significant amount of money left in the STAG funds awarded to the Wellsville. Instead of losing this money village officials got the idea to use it on the Highland Avenue, etc, project. That's when the EPA told the village that before they can do that they have to submit documentation that what was used earlier was handled properly. Therein lies the problem with the sloppy book keeping. Before Davis our fiscal officer &/or treasurer were "men off the street" with little or no training in accounting principles. The STAG funds goes back to the days of Lascola and was obtained by former Congressman Jim Traficant in the early 1990s. That was in the days when our village book keeping was basically we got an invoice, write a check to pay it. It was before Village Hall had any kind of computer system for book keeping and invoices & cancelled checks were thrown in a box & stored helter skelter. I think in all this time if there was any suspicion of wrong doing it would have surfaced by now. We're talking 16 to 17 years since this began. I remember sometime back there were records stored in the basement of village hall that suffered major water damage & were beyond salvaging. Many of them were historical going back many years. I'm wondering if some of those moldy, crumbling boxes of paper were records that they are currently trying to find. Do you know something we don't? Am I being mislead? I'm curious why are trying to organize a lynch mob.
nib
I was told that the Village was told that somebody called the E.P.A., and that they know who it was. Nib, ask a Councilman, if they know who called, and how they know, believe me, there is a narc who is out to get the Village in trouble.
Nib, there indeed was a "narc", the E.P.A. would have never came into this, fact is, they were called. The Highland Ave. project and others would have been done by now. The Village was told that this was highly unusual that you get looked at in the middle of a grant. It is always done after you spend all of the money. That's the truth Nib, ask a Village official, they will tell you, they know who called.
If they know who called then why not just say who did it?
If the Councilmen know who turned the Village in, and put projects on hold, they need to let the Ville Residents know who it was. Hopefully when the investigation is over, the name will come out, we have a right to know. If the person found out the Village did wrong, then the person would have every right to call. If the Village did no wrong, and this is a personal issue, shame on that person.
Why is it when anyone questions anything, someone makes it look as though the questioner is the bad guy?
Doesn't anyone else wonder why the EPA felt this was serious enough to look into? If it thought nothing was going on, no investigation would have been launched and the village wouldn't have been required to produce records.
We are talking about tax money here, even if it is called a "STAG."
Apparently no one in Wellsville cares whether their tax dollars were misspent.
Who cares who "told on" the village? Apparently, it was something that needed told or the EPA wouldn't be involved, asking to see records.
There is no excuse for a public agency not to have its records anyway. We're not talking about records from the 1800s for God's sake, just 10-15 years ago. They should have been stored properly so they could be easily located.
If they're missing, they're missing for a reason.
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