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Willard: Convicted UA trustee is no quitter
Ohio Senate delays vote on removing UA trustee
Upgrade Ohio's laws for petitions
Strickland needs respect on his ticket
Strickland needs to pick an electable second in command
Strickland controlling his own fate
Lawmakers still fighting over casinos
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Dad accused of forcing son into field, killing him
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Man found dead in North Akron home is identified
Browns' roster nearly devoid of consistent players
Does it work? Test team returns to try out new products advertised on television
Coventry man killed in crash at I-77 ramp
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Cat-loving chihuahua suckles seven abandoned kittens
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Friday Night Notebook
Patrick McManamon:
Browns vs. Lions live …
Akron Zips:
Akron trounces Howard to reach .500
Tribe Matters:
Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
Cleveland Browns:
Robiskie, Harrison inactive
Kent State Sports:
Kent State blown out in second half, loses to Temple 47-13
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers
Buckeye Blogging:
OSU – Michigan college football rivals meet in Baghdad
Varsity Letters:
Four area football teams play tonight
All Da King's Men:
The Sunday Sanity Challenge
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Will Health Care Reform Pass?
Akron Law Café:
Health Care Financing Reform: (69) The Brookings Institute Study on "Bending the Curve" – Four General Strategies
See Jane Style:
Vintage Chic
Car Chase:
TIME TO GET YOUR COLLECTOR CARS WINTERIZED
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Silverdome Potentially SOLD!
Ohio Travels with Betty:
George is looking for a Thanksgiving buffet in Akron.
Sound Check:
Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall
HRLite House:
A Random Rant on Testing
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
External investigation would be a good idea
By Dennis J. Willard
Beacon Journal staff writer
Published on Sunday, May 11, 2008
COLUMBUS: Democrats put the donkey before the cart this past week in their efforts to oust Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann from office.
They would do better to continue to push hard for a comprehensive external investigation that calls upon a wide cast of witnesses to testify under oath about what they knew and when they knew it in the attorney general's office.
Instead, when Dann failed to heed two phone calls from Gov. Ted Strickland last Sunday to resign, Democrats started to act like political blowfish.
Seven top Democrats signed a letter imploring Dann to step down or they would introduce a resolution in the Ohio House to initiate impeachment proceedings.
By week's end, the resolution had yet to appear and for good reason.
At this point, Dann has admitted to having a tawdry affair with someone he supervised.
He acknowledges the affair set an example in the office for others, like Anthony Gutierrez, to sexually harass women.
Dann has even confessed he was not prepared to manage an office of 1,400 employees, including 400 lawyers, when he became the accidental AG by upsetting Republican Betty Montgomery in the 2006 election.
So Dann is a lothario and a lousy manager, but impeachment? On what legal grounds?
Throughout the week, not one Democrat was able to cite one misdemeanor charge that they could bring against Dann, who countered that he would defend himself in any impeachment proceedings.
Democrats are right to call for Dann to resign, but a quick rush to judgment and a clarion call for impeachment is a bad precedent to establish at the Statehouse, especially on the grounds of infidelity and mismanagement.
It doesn't help that some of the blowfish are being hypocritical.
Strickland and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, were members of the U.S. House and voted against impeaching President Clinton in 1998. Like Dann, Clinton did have sexual relations with a subordinate, but unlike Clinton, Dann did not commit perjury by lying about the affair under oath.
One of the seven signees is Senate Minority Leader Ray Miller, D-Columbus.
For six years, Miller broke Ohio election law by not filing proper campaign finance reports. He skipped an entire election cycle.
Like Dann, Miller is obstinate. The secretary of state's office filed four complaints against the lawmaker dating back to 2004 and Miller's recordkeeping worsened rather than improved through the years.
As of late February, he still has not answered all the questions surrounding his raising and spending of more than $100,000 since 2006 although the Ohio Elections Commission fined him $1,500.
In 2005, the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee investigated Miller for sending a staff member from his state office to his private office to perform work. He paid a small fine and said he was sorry.
Instead of calling for Miller's resignation, Strickland passed him the pen and said sign here because he is an obscure figure to voters compared to Dann.
In a presidential election year in which Democrats are optimistic they will pick up four seats and the majority in the Ohio House, Dann has become a huge political liability
for the party that has as its mascot a jackass.
Republicans would like Dann to stay for the same reasons Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern, one of the seven signees, argued against calling for Gov. Bob Taft to resign in 2006 — if he goes he takes all those headlines and daily reminders of corruption and incompetence with him.
A more productive route to pressure Dann into resigning is to quickly launch an independent investigation by a trusted individual.
Ben Espy, Dann's executive assistant attorney general, did yeoman's work in his investigation, but the scope of his probe was limited so there are crucial questions he did not ask and key witnesses he did not put under oath.
It is clear from the timeline of events that all the problems plaguing the operations of the office — cronyism, harassment, hostility, affairs — came to a head in December when the wives of Dann and Gutierrez became more acutely aware and actively involved in events occurring three hours from their homes in Youngstown.
In the aftermath, people were reassigned and transferred. Dann moved out of the condo he shared with Gutierrez and Leo Jennings III, his communications director.
There is enough conflicting testimony in Espy's report to merit a second round of questions from an outside investigator, but this time with the knowledge that Dann had an extramarital affair.
Dann said he told his wife months ago, but he continued to hide his infidelities from the public and that meant ensuring those closest to him remained mum too.
And Dann acknowledged in his news conference on May 2 that others in the office knew his behavior encouraged an environment in which hostility and sexual harassment was tolerated.
When the investigator places the affair at the nexus of the investigation, rather than charges of sexual harassment and a hostile work environment, then the behavior inside and outside the office makes more sense and takes on new meaning.
Suddenly, Dann, and not Gutierrez or his accusers, will be wearing the bull's-eye.
And when that happens the seven signees won't need to talk about impeachment any longer.
Dennis J. Willard can be reached at 614-224-1613 or dwillard@thebeaconjournal.com.
COLUMBUS: Democrats put the donkey before the cart this past week in their efforts to oust Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann from office.
Get the full article here.
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