DAYTON DAILY NEWS "LINK"
The SCPR learned that Warren Price has agreed to become Dayton's city manager with a starting date projected to be a week from this coming Monday, January 12.
He is reported to be scheduled to make $160,000 annually working for Dayton.
The SCPR has wondered how long Price could handle working for George T. Maier.
Price has always struck The Report as a "stand up guy" who has demonstrated he can work for imperious government executive types (e.g. Canton mayor William J. Healy) to a point but in the end has a limit how much guff he is willing to take.
Stark County Sheriff George T. Maier got away in his recent successful campaign for sheriff with having not had to explain serious questions about his management style mainly because, the SCPR thinks, of the lack of journalistic due diligence by Stark County's only countywide newspaper; namely, The Canton Repository.
Undoubtedly, Price and Maier will put the best face on his leaving the sheriff's department.
But the SCPR suspects that Price saw enough of Maier's arrogance (as with Healy) and took advantage of the Dayton opportunity.
The "powers that be" at The Repository decided to give Maier a pass during the campaign on explaining to the Stark County Public chapter and verse about a controversy with certain personnel at the Ohio State Highway Patrol when he was second in command at the Ohio Department of Public Safety as the political appointee of former Democratic governor Ted Strickland who was politically close to Maier's brother Johnnie A. Maier, Jr., a former Stark County Democratic Party chairman.
The SCPR frequently has shared links to a August, 2008 article in the Columbus Dispatch about the Maier's Columbus troubles.
A quote from the Dispatch piece:
Some troopers and officers whom Maier once commanded as a captain accused him of threats, intimidation, favoritism and creating a hostile workplace.Of course, there is more (e.g. re: Mike Stevens, Daniel Altieri and others cited in previous SCPR blogs) about George T. Maier; raising questions about Maier's temperament and therefore his suitability to be Stark County sheriff.
The SCPR believes that it is just a matter of time until Maier's temper gets the better of him and thereby, perhaps, put Stark County government into a crisis of confidence in county government.
The likes of "the bigs" at The Rep better hope that the SCPR's expectation is not realized for if it is, they and more than a few Democratic leading Stark County elected officials (and, a few Republican elected officials) will have a "lot of 'explainin' to do to the Stark County public.
The SCRP is encouraged to see that Matt Rink has been added to the editorial board at The Rep.
Rink is one of the few Repository reporters/editors that The Report thinks well of.
It will be interesting to see if he continues to be the Matt Rink of the last ten years or become, by virtue of the promotion, "remade" in the mold of the editors who have staffed the board over the past ten years.
Of course, the SCPR will be watching to see whether or not he can elevate the overall quality of The Rep's editorial staff which The Report thinks has to one of very worst in media markets the size of Canton, Ohio.
His addition could be a positive addition.
Gayle Beck's departure is in the opinion of the SCPR "addition by substraction."
Warren Price will not have to worry about Stark County media and government deficiencies now that he is relocating to Montgomery County.
But we who live in Stark County do.
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