CAMPAIGN FINANCE: STARK AUDITOR RACE - HAROLD V. PEREZ

Former banker Alan Harold (Huntington Bank and FirstMerit Bank) who now works as the chief financial person for Coon Restorations & Sealants, Inc is running as the Republican candidate for Stark County auditor against incumbent Democratic Auditor Kim Perez.

Interesting enough, they raised similar amounts of money.  Perez:  $22,030.00; Harold:  $21010.00

As far as their individual campaign finance reports go (pre-general election), here is the SCPR take:

PEREZ

 

There are a couple notable things about the Perez report.

• the number of contributions coming out of Summit County, but the lack of contributions from Cuyahoga County (Several years ago Perez had numerous contributions on his report from Cuyahoga including contributions from legally troubled Jimmy Dimora (Cuyahoga County commissioner) and Frank Russo (former Cuyahoga County auditor who is now serving prison time for a public corruption conviction in federal court).
• the number of contributions he has received from employees who work for him in the Stark County auditor's office.

As indicated in the graphic above, Sheriff Drew Alexander, a Republican who runs the sheriff's department for Summit County is a Perez contributor as is John Donofrio who is the fiscal officer for Summit County.  Moreover, there are quite a number of contributions from Summit County residents on Perez's report.

Perez says he has 99 employees.   If the SCPR counted them correctly, 42 of them made contributions to Perez.  Such is legal as long as the employees do so on a completely voluntary basis.  A special form is set out by the campaign finance section of the Ohio secretary of state office for reporting such contributions.

Two of the better known employee names from the public's standpoint are those of Gary Zeigler, II (son of former Stark County Treasurer Gary D. Zeigler) and Jimmy Babcock (son of a former Canton mayor and a longtime Canton councilwoman).

HAROLD

Alan Harold has the distinction of have Stark County's most famous (currently) political personality supporting him in his effort to wrestle the auditor's post away from Perez.

Phil Davison, whom the SCPR filmed at the Stark County Republican Party executive committee meeting to select a Republican candidate for county treasurer to replace the commissioner removed Gary D. Zeigler, made a small contribution.  

Another note on the Harold campaign finance report is the fact that Republican county treasurer candidate Alexander Zumbar contributed to Harold.

So?

Not necessarily anything.  However, the Republicans and The Repository Editorial Board did make a big deal about the long term "political" relationship between Auditor Perez and Gary D. Zeigler while he was treasurer.  And the SCPR agree with the Republicans that the county treasurer and county auditor (since the auditor should be working as some sort of a "check and balance" on the treasurer) should keep a political distance.

Won't the same standard be applicable to the Republican tandem of Harold and Zumbar, should they be elected?

Finally, Alan Harold gets the SCPR award for being the most exacting of all the candidates filing campaign finance reports.

How so?

Harold, very meticulously, place in his "in-kind" section of his report that he contributed a self-photo valued at ten cents ($0.10) to the campaign.

Attaboy, Alan!!!

(VIDEOS) STARK COUNTY AUDITOR RACE - PEREZ ANSWERS HAROLD CHARGE OF "INEFFICIENCY?"

In August, the SCPR wrote about Alan Harold's (Harold is the Republican candidate for county auditor) charge that a State of Ohio Auditor (SOA) report showed the Stark County Auditor's office (run by Harold's Democratic opponent and incumbent officeholder Kim Perez) to be highly inefficient. 

Yesterday, the SCPR sat down with Perez and discussed Harold's charges with Perez.

Perez's defense is two-fold.

First, he says that the "peer group" developed by the SOA is not an apples-to-apples comparison.  A main substantiation of Perez's point is that whereas his peers farm out their appraisal function, Stark County does its six and three year appraisals (and ongoing adjustments) in-house thereby keeping the jobs in Stark County at a lesser cost to taxpayers.  Moreover, he says that Stark has a map department, a Bureau of Motor Vehicle operation and a geographic information system (GIS) to run as extra over and beyond what the peer group does.

Second, he says that his peers serve much larger populations and, therefore, by virtue of "economies of scale;" they would have more efficiency.

Watch (from last night's League of Women Voters [LWV] debate) Perez and Harold discuss the efficiencies of auditor office operations.



Somehow the SCPR does not believe that this campaign is being conducted on a rational plane. 

It seems to The Report that it is more about Perez emotionally defending his performance in the light of the recently revealed problems in the Stark treasury.

Moreover, from the Harold perspective it appears to be about his implementing a primary political strategy to tap into the Stark County public's disgust with the goings on in the Stark treasurer's office. Readers will recall that former Chief Deputy Vince Frustaci (according to federal Judge John Adams) made off with $2.96 million of Stark County taxpayer money and some blame Perez for failing to follow through on two occasions that his office spotted "balancing accounts" problems with treasury and failed to push hard enough to get an earlier detection of Frustaci's theft.

Here is Perez's opening statement at the LWV debate at Timken High School last night which provides Perez's overall take of his office's operations under his administration.



Interestingly, at the end of the video he uses former auditor Janet Creighton to exonerate him and his office from any responsibility for the failure to ferret out Frustaci.

Harold, in his opening statement,  focuses on changes he will make if elected auditor and deferring to later in the debate to address his perceived failure of Auditor Perez's stewardship of the auditor's office.



A question was presented by Moderator Dick Kuhn of the LWV, to wit:  "Given what happened in the treasurer's office, what policies or standards that could be implemented weren't, and what policies or statutes would you like to come in the future to prevent what happened?"

What follows is a video of the Harold/Perez responses.



With the election less than two weeks away, Stark Countians will be making a choice between a fresh face candidate and one who has pretty much spent most of his adult life as a public official.

Which way will county voters choose?

It is hard to say.  Perez is, in the opinion of the SCPR, the Democrats' most successful voter getter over the years.

If he does lose, then remaining Democratic countywide office holders had better brace themselves for more of the same come 2012!