CHIEF CIVIL DIVISION PROSECUTOR ROSS RHODES SAID THAT MARCELLI LAWSUIT TO RECOVER $5,000 TO COUNTY GENERAL FUND IS"... A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME." REALLY?????

UPDATE:  10:00 AM

INQUIRY OF CLERK OF COURTS
NANCY REINBOLD

HER RESPONSE

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 BLOG TOPICS

Is Ross Rhodes eating his words today?

Conley:  correctly identifies his online detractor?

The Repository's "double standard!"

Judge Forchione's temperament? 

Conley has a motive? LINK 

 
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ADDED MATERIAL

Email from SCPR to Stark County clerk of courts Nancy Reinbold

>>> Martin Olson <tramols@att.net> 2/8/2013 9:12 AM >>>
Clerk Reinbold,

What do you plan to do with the $5,000 returned by the agent for the Sandy Hook Support Fund in response to Judge Forchione's request?

Do you have any indication [that Judge Forchione] is going to (or, perhaps, already has) amended his original order to empower/direct you as clerk to place the money in the Stark County general fund.

MartinOlson/SCPR

Response from Clerk Reinbold:

It will be held on deposit on the Studer case until an order is signed and filed by Judge Forchione directing distribution.

Nancy S. Reinbold
Stark County Clerk of Courts
110 Central Plaza North Ste 160
Canton, OH 44702
(330) 451-7622nsreinbo@co.stark.oh.us

ORIGINAL BLOG

First,  Stark County chief civil prosecutor Ross Rhodes said the judge had absolute immunity when there was speculation in the media that civic activist and local attorney Craig T. Conley would be filing a lawsuit on behalf of Thomas Marcelli seeking to compel Stark County Court of Common Pleas judge Frank Forchione to see to it that a $5,000 fine he ordered convicted criminal defendant Scott D. Studer to pay for the Sandy Hook shooting victims was repaid to the Stark County treasury and into the county general fund.

Secondly, in what the SCPR took as an implied intimidation to Conley proceeding with the lawsuit was Rhodes' statement to the effect that if Conley lost the case, he might be looking at paying costs of the action out of his (Conley's) own pocket.

The suit in declaratory judgment (LINK to SCPR blog providing more details of underlying facts of case) was filed on February 1st in the Stark County Court of Common Pleas.  And wouldn't you know it, guess who gets assigned the case by the court's lottery system of assigning cases?

Of course, who else, in a case of super-irony:  Judge Forchione.

Thirdly, after the suit was filed Rhodes said "[i]t was a complete waste of time."

Obviously, if the case continues on, the judge will be recusing himself as will the entire panel of Stark County judges.

Conley tells the SCPR that his/his client's intention was for the $5,000 to come out of the judge's pocket.  Moreover, he says for the judge to deprive the victims of the money already paid to the Sandy Hook Support Fund was disgraceful.

So when news broke last night (LINK) that the agent for the Sandy Hook Support Fund had returned the $5,000 at Judge Forchione's request, one would think that Conley would pack up the lawsuit as being moot and he and his client go away.

For any of us thinking that is not to know Craig T. Conley.

Conley is a guy who pretty much says what he means and means what he says.

His client's (under the counsel of Conley) primary reason for filing the suit in the first place was because of his all consuming passion to "the rule of law" in American jurisprudence.

And Conley is doing all of this pro bono (without charge - for the public good).

He has advanced $300 in filing fees to file the case which he may or may not recover as part of the resolution of the case.


And in filing the case, Conley has incurred the ire of at least a couple of Stark County attorneys (one of whom Conley says has a matter pending before Forchione and the other of which has received some four appointments to cases over the last year or so at the hand of Judge Forchione) and members of the general public.

To boot, Conley believes that Stark County Democratic Party chairman Randy Gonzalez chimed in on the comments section of The Repository in support of Judge Forchione under the screenname "warmsunshine."

The Report has asked Gonzalez whether or not Conley's suspicion was well founded.

Gonzalez answered with an emphatic NO!

Conley says that his suspicion is grounded in his belief that information shared in the comment was information that it is likely is uniquely ready at hand to Gonzalez.  Moreover, he points out that as an official in the Canton Municipal clerk of courts office, he thinks Gonzalez would have developed a government interaction relationship with Forchione as a consequence being a prosecutor in the Canton law department.

Conley indicates to The Report that he has put his mouth where his suspicion is as a testament to his certainty of the identity of the anonymous commenter.  He compiled a packet of information on the Judge's order and sent it to Gonzalez without comment.

Finally, Conley tells the SCPR that as far as he can determine, warmsunshine has not commented on the Forchione fine situation or any other Repository story since he transmitted the packet to Gonzalez.

Could be a mere co-incidence, no?

But Conely does not think so.

The Report repeats, that notwithstanding Conley's suspicion, Gonzalez has denied to the SCPR that Conley's speculation is true.

The main point of the foregoing discursive is to share with SCPR readers that folks like Conley are brought under enormous pressure by friends of those he holds to public account to back off.

And for a guy like Ross Rhodes to suggest that Conley's work "... is a complete waste of time" is outrageous for a person who is obligated to cherish the rule of law.

Lawyers 101 in law school is very clear in instruction that the way lawyers determine what the rules of law are, when disagreed upon, is through litigation.

Rhodes undoubtedly knows such to be the case and for him to suggest that Marcelli through Conley accessing the courts is "a waste" is the equivalent of placing himself in a three-in-one role of being jury, judge and executioner.  Pretty arrogant, no?

Nonetheless, Conley having an underlying motivation for participating in the filing the lawsuit merits examination.  This the SCPR has done.  Here is a LINK to that blog.

Beyond Rhodes, there is the conduct of The Repository editorial board in its processing letters to the editors on the Forchione fine issue.

Conley alleges (and has provided substantiation to the satisfaction of The Report) that two attorney letter to editor writers have connections with Judge Forchione.

One, Conley says, has gotten case appointments from the judge.  The other has a case pending before Forchione.

For Gayle Beck (the chief) and her fellow editorial editors to allow those who have a connection to get "letters to the editors" published without the editors having vetted the writers on whether or not they may have a motivation to write the letters they write is astounding.  Had she checked them out and detected Conley's allegations, one would think that she would certainly had inserted an editorial board disclaimer.

For some "letter to the editor" writers, Repository instituted vetting hurdles they have to overcome seem beyond reasonable.  For others, it appears the bar is very low, if not non-existent.

In a one-newspaper-town and in a county which has one-countywide-newspaper; double standarding is unacceptable. 

To The Report, the leadership at The Repository have irresponsibly (from an editorial standpoint) handled their monopoly of Stark County sited media.

The SCPR does not begrudge those with ulterior motives getting their letters published, but the editor, if they are doing proper editorial board journalism, should ensure that letters include disclaimers detailing connections between the writer and the subjects so that readers can make an informed judgment as to how much credibility those writers should be accorded.

So shame on The Repository editorial board for not doing its due diligence!

As it turns out, the Stark County's general fund is ultimately going to get the $5,000 courtesy of Conley and his client Marcelli at no cost to the taxpayers.

A waste, Prosecutor Rhodes?

Judge Forchione's given reason for retrieving the $5,000 is so that the Marcelli/Conley litigation will fade away for mootness thereby saving Stark's taxpayers the expense of protracted litigation.

For Conley, this is not good enough.

He is insisting that the judge correct his order so as to be in compliance with ORC 2949.11 and thereby, at least impliedly, admit that he did not have the legal authority to do what he did in ordering Studer to monetarily assist the victims of Sandy Hook.

In a letter to Prosecutor John Ferrero, Conley lays you his requirements to resolve the declaratory judgment action:

Conley has filed an amended complaint so as to include developments whereby Forchione asked for and received (via the clerk of courts office) the Sandy Hook money back.

Conley says that it is his intent to, by legal redress, compel Judge Forchione to restructure the order so as to put Stark County Clerk of Courts Nancy Reinbold in a plausible legal position to deposit the $5,000 with the Stark County treasury on it way into the county general fund.

While he thinks such will not totally cure the problems with the order, he said that he and his client will not stand in the way of the matter coming to an end if the order is restructured.

At the end of this blog, the SCPR has placed a copy of those paragraphs of the amended complaint wherein Conley endeavors to give life beyond the mere fact that Judge Forchione recovered the money from the folks of Newtown, Connecticut.

For Prosecutor Ross Rhodes, he should issue a press release to effect that he misspoke when to termed the complaint as being "a waste of time," which by definition is not accurate witness the recall of the $5,000 by Judge Forchione owing to the Marcelli/Conley complaint being filed.

For The Repository Editorial Board, they should start applying the same vetting standard to all letters to the editor that appears in the pages of The Rep.

For Judge Forchione, he should reconstruct his order to be in full compliance with the provisions of ORC 2949.11 in such as fashion that Clerk Reinbold is on solid footing in terms of forwarding the $5,000 to the Stark treasury or deposit in the Stark County general fund.

Moreover, it would be helpful for Judge Forchione (who is held in high esteem by many Stark Countians) to admit point-blank that he overstepped his legal bounds.

But will his general disposition, his demeanor, his temperament allow him allow to do so?

Let's all hope that the Forlchione assessment of one highly placed Stark County elected official to the SCRP is on the mark (i.e. that Judge Forchione is a classy guy) and that Conley's is off-the-mark.

For therein lies a quick solution to what Craig Conley is now calling Forchionegate a la his 2009 - 2011 labeling  of Stark County treasury problems as being Zeiglergate.

Forchione's handling of this matter should go a long way towards answering the question of whether or not he gets re-elected when the next comes on the ballot.

Here is the core of the amended complaint:

IS "THE REP" SYSTEMATICALLY TRYING TO REHAB HEALY?

In what appears to the SCPR to be a "puff" piece (Healy goes extra mile for Canton to gain call center, Ed Balint, August 6, 2011) that is more likely to come from a public relations type (or, in the case of Canton government, the likes of former communications director Adam Herman) than MSM (main stream media).

It seems as if The Repository - realizing that Healy is highly likely to be around for four more years - has embarked on a rehabilitation project of the mayor and his administration?

The Report has long maintained that The Rep should do a disclaimer each and every time it does publish anything on Canton officials in light of the contract that Stark County's only countywide newspaper (its parent company:  GateHouse) has with Canton to publish a glossy quarterly Canton public relations magazine:  The Canton Connection.

Repository publisher Kevin Kampman has promised Stark Countians that The Rep's commercial ties to the Healy administration would not affect its reportorial/editorial coverage of the mayor.  Promises, promises!  So Kampman has the audacity to ask us to trust them?  A newspaper man should know better than to ask readers to suspend their critical faculties.  What a perversion of what a newspaper ought to be doing.  Newspapers are to encourage reader "due diligence;" not falling back to "blind faith."

Trust, but verify is more in order.

However, how can one verify that Kampman, Gauger and Beck keep their hands off the reporter staff or are unaffected by The Rep's financial interest in their journalism. 

Answer:  You can't.

So we have come full circle to simply trusting the poobahs at The Rep.

The SCPR is not willing to do that.  Neither should any discerning reader.

In hypocritical fashion, then, The Rep's editors annotate letters to the editors and the like indicating any interests/connections/associations the writer of the letter may have in the subject matter of the letter. 

Readers of The Rep should be constantly be reminded of its money making ties to Canton government so they are equipped to factor same into the credibility and reliability of the published material.  Moreover, the same should apply with other units of Stark County government that The Rep writes about and has commercial ties with.

In his writing Balint seems to be praising Healy for doing what Healy ought to have done without seeking/receiving any recognition for the effort.

But that wouldn't be Healy.

For The Repository to be a willing conduit of Mayor Healy seemingly incessant need to have his ego stroked is disturbing.

Going the extra mile?  You have to be kidding. 

In reality, Healy's effort has been a matter of survival for him personally in the political sense and for Canton in the economic development/financial sense. 

While getting jobs - any jobs - even those VXI Global Solutions call center jobs paying $10 - $12 an hour (not likely a living wage job for a breadwinner with family) are worthwhile; these are hardly the kind of jobs that are going to return Canton to a "new" glory, to wit:  “My vision is not about going back to the glory days of the past.  My vision is to create the new glory days.” (William J. Healy II - City 'is far better today.' The Repository,  Balint, April 23, 2011)

In the City 'is far better today' article, Healy is also portrayed as follows:

Detractors of the mayor describe him as a pompous dictator. A leader who is arrogant, boasting of his master’s degree in business administration from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University.

Asked about that image, Healy fired back with the swagger of a gunslinger. “If you want to know the root of brain drain, it’s the small-minded folks who criticize those who go out and get our education and come home and want to give back to their community, and are criticized because they did something (with) their lives.”

“... If every kid could do that ... the city would skyrocket to success,” he said.

Leave it to Healy to invent a word ("those") that was never used in the critique he is referring to.

The SCPR is the critic he is referring to.  The Report has never criticized people in general who try to improve themselves with advanced education.  Yours truly has a daughter who is a medical doctor, another who is an attorney working on her PhD and a third who has a masters degree and is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve.


It would be strange indeed if they were to have had a father who did not promote higher education as they were growing up right here in Stark County, wouldn't it?

No, Mayor Healy, cannot hide behind his contrivance of "those" in order to divert attention from himself.  He stands alone in The Report's critique of his misuse of having an advanced education.

When one trumpets ad nauseam as he did and continues to do  - his NYU degree - such suggests a certain insecurity on his part.  The way he has used his achieving an MBA from the NYY Stern School of Business has been as an play on arrogant superiority and as a club; not as an inspiration/motivation for others to follow.

The SCPR honors those who achieve intellectually.  Canton and Stark County does need the best and the brightest to stay in, return to and come anew to the area to provide the intellectual power that we need to get out of the deep, deep hole that unthinking, self-serving, power grabbing politicians have put us in over a number of decades.

The Report does not see Healy as being an intellectual powerhouse who has the potential to bring on a "new glory" to Canton, his NYU degree notwithstanding.  He is way too much into himself to be thinking much of others and their well being.

The SCPR continues to see him as smart in the sense of having political street smarts with the chutzpah to bully his way through most any tough situation so that he can be king of his own little world.

Apparently, the folks at The Repository see him differently.

Time will tell who is right.

In the meantime, it would be real nice if The Rep writers started applying disclaimers to themselves when writing about their customers.

One other thing about Balint and his pieces on Healy.

It has to do with Balint's discussion about the viciousness, horror (Healy's terms) perpetuated by The Repository in its article Healy Fakes Illness and its column Healy's time off debated which were, according to Balint, written "in late 2000 and 2001."

From Balint: (William J. Healy II - City 'is far better today.'  Balint, April 23, 2011)

But “there was nothing anyone could do that was more horrific” [Healy said to Balint] than the article and column about his father, he said, referring to bloggers, council members, the media and the public.

Who specifically were:

• the bloggers, 
• the council members, ... and 
• members of the public circa late 2000, early 2001 had anything to do with The Rep's article and column about Healy's father?

Were these Healy's words or were they Balint's fill?  Hmm?

The reference to "the media?"

Of course, we know its identity.

But who at The Repository ('the media") wrote Healy Fakes Illness?

Who at The Repository ("the media") wrote Healy's time off debated? 

It is interesting that Balint does not identity the writers!

REP EDITORS HAVE TO BE THE ENVY OF STARK'S "CHEERLEADER-IN-CHIEF" AND FORMER CANTON MAYOR JANET CREIGHTON: NO?

When you don't have the moxie to challenge Stark County's leadership to excellence, what is there left to do?

Cheer-lead, that's what.

Even losing teams have cheerleaders.

And cheerleading seems to be a quality that The Canton Repository editorial board is set on honing and emphasizing these days.

For the life of yours truly, there's nothing to cheer about with the Stark Education Partnership (SEP), if you judge the organization by its president Doctor Adrienne O'Neill (PhD) and her interaction with the hoi polli public.

O'Neill is a lady who did not have the good sense to respond to an e-mail question yours truly sent her about the performance of the SEP about a year ago. As the SCPR is wont to do, the unanswered e-mail was followed up with an "embarrassing to her" telephone call. If that had not worked, then at one of her frequent public appearances, the question(s) would have been asked in that forum.

The goal of the SCPR is not to embarrass, but to get answers to incisive questions. and to prod Stark community leaders into questing for excellence. Undoubtedly, on the Stark high brow social circuit O'Neil gets a steady diet of "softball" education questions. Accordingly, she would not be practiced in handling the really difficult ones.

If O'Neill's take on improving Stark education is indicative of what is going on in Stark County education, then we should all embark on a fervent prayer life.

Back to The Repository Editorial Board.

The Rep editorial board picks up O'Neill's and SEP's claim to fame in touting the increasing number of graduates from Stark's high schools (which apparently is the "main claim to fame" achievement stretching over 20 years). The truth of the matter is that rates could not go anywhere but up from the abysmal levels that existed when SEP took up this project. You have to start somewhere.

The more important question of SEP and O'Neil is what do Stark's graduates know (core knowledge) and what are the graduates' processing skills (ability to think critically, creatively and innovatively)?

Wouldn't want to spoil a good cheerleading session with questions like those, would you?

Last week Governor Ted Strickland was in town to tell us that the Jackson school system has arrived to the point that if all Ohio schools were like Jackson, Ohio would have no need for educational reform?

Unbelievable!

And guess what we got out of The Rep's editors?

Yes, yes and yes again: SILENCE.

The governor failed to mention Jackson's 36% remediation rate when its graduates go to college and the heavens only know what employers have to spend in extra - make up for what was missed in high school - "education" dollars when these grads hit the workplace.

The SCPR has asked educators throughout Stark County (including O'Neill) about the extraordinarily high remediation rates and has gotten no meaningful answers: only a shrug of the shoulders or some nonsense like "we didn't have the college evaluative tests beforehand."

O'Neil takes a page out of a politician's book and "changed the subject when asked by the SCPR about what is being done about the high remediation rate. All she wants to talk about is the increasing rates of graduation among Stark's high schools. Why shouldn't she. Changing the subject is working. She and SEP gets cheered on by The Repository on cherry picked data that has not been examined critically as to the "real" significance to quality education occurring in Stark.

So Doctor O'Neill, if a school with a 50% graduation rate and a 70% remediation rate increases its graduation rate to 95%; what, pray-tell, would be the new remediation rate?

Since the emphasis is pushing more students out the door with degrees, wouldn't it stand to reason that the remediation rates will escalate. Maybe a little sacrificing quality for quantity might be going on?

Yours truly, in the comments sections of The Repository and perhaps in a "letter to the editor" or two used to chide former Canton mayor Janet Creighton for functioning mainly as a cheerleader in her role as Canton's chief executive.

But for Creighton there was nothing else to do.

Stark County's leadership infrastructure has evaporated with the loss of Canton's industrial base.

The Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce sat and watched and wringed their hands. The chamber is the only game in town as a specific attempt to rebuild Stark's lost leadership capability. But yours truly suspects its curriculum and regimen is not nearly tough enough. Not everyone who engages the program should be able to get through it. And, for the ones who do, there ought to be an accountability-esque report on the chamber's website detailing how the leadership school experience enabled specifically identified graduates to produce measurable results for Stark County.

Back to The Repository Editorial Board.

If Canton had a newspaper with aggressive, thoughtful, reflective, penetrating and a "no nonsense" public accountability qualities about its editorial board, there would be reason to be cheered about the future of Stark.

But the opposite is true.

The Rep appears to be in death throes. The folks at 500 South Market Avenue appear to be just trying to get from day-to-day. Just talk to the everyday Rep employee. Despair abounds everywhere.

Except that is with the editorial board.

Like the cheerleaders for the bottom dwelling team, they will cheer on until the bitter end.

REPOSITORY EDITORIAL BOARD INSULTS RON/KYLE DEVIES & SNICKERS AT "SMALL TOWN" MARLBORO?

In his own mind Repository Executive Editor Jeff Gauger - even though he hails from Rockford, Illinois (Rockford where?) - is a very important guy.

From the tone and the smugness that emanates from yesterday's Rep editorial Chief, trustees must move on, the SCPR is guessing that Gauger was the editorial writer.

Yours truly would e-mail Gauger and find out who wrote the editorial, but it would probably be blown off; like his sidekick Gayle Beck blew off an e-mail asking a mundane question about whether or not The Rep had endorsed in the Chandra/Dann attorney general primary race in 2008.

The SCPR had been hearing that the Rep editors were unhappy with the penetrating critiques that The Report has been doing on their work.

Beck's blow off was all the confirmation the SCPR needed. The SCPR is pleased to put "only countywide newspaper" under the microscope. As former editor David Kaminski once said, The Rep likes being the 800-pound gorilla. Even though he is gone, his statement accurately reflects the attitude among the editors at The Rep today.

The Canton Repository is fast fading as a respected investigatory newspaper. Staff cuts galore are being made at The Rep except for the sports department - of course, many Stark Countians cannot do without their sports.

New owner GateHouse Media Ohio is disliked by the folks who work at The Rep about 60/40 (with 60 being the negative number) according to a source from deep inside the bowels of the Canton daily.

The biggest drop off at The Repository has been with the quality of the editorial staff headed by Jeff Gauger. Let's put it thise way: he is no M.L. Schultze!

The editorial being commented by the SCPR on is about as bush as editors get.

It's done in what the editorial writer thinks is a clever way to demean the Devies and Marlboro Township without it being clearly apparent.

Some examples.

"Let’s put aside the snickering about small towns ... " The writer goes on to cover his/her tracks by bringing in Canton, Massillon and North Canton and their "silly politics."

Not so fast. Apparently, Gauger (et al?) betray themselves and conversation that has been going on in The Rep editorial board room. Frequently, such is the case. He who disses "anonymous" others is covering up his own dissing.

A clever attempt to ridicule Marlboro, while appearing to take the high road.

The clincher is this line: "It’s time for the trustees to put Devies back to work, for him to drop any thought of a lawsuit, and for both sides, now, to put the public first."

The Devies have always put the public first. But not Wise and Wolf. No! They got this mess started. And Marlboro has suffered at their hands. Not the Devies.

To equate the Devies with Wise and Wolf is a huge insult.

And, the Devies are "to drop any thought of a lawsuit."

No, no and no again.

It is obvious that the member(s) of The Repository editorial board do not fully understand the American system of justice.

There is a civil side to our system of justice. The Devies unjustifiably experienced the criminal justice side. Now is their turn to have justice. That is the beauty of the American system.

If the Marlboro trustees damaged the Devies in violation of legally recognized rights in established tort law, then making them pay money damages is the civil side of the American system of justice way sending a message that such conduct could be costly and therefore is check on any who would follow their example.

Where were the editors when the trustees made a mole hill of a matter into a gigantic mountain?

Why weren't the editors editorializing the trustees to not make this a criminal justice matter? Why weren't they editorializing the Stark County sheriff to proceed on a criminal basis with the greatest reluctance. Why weren't they editorializing the Stark County prosecutor to make double, double sure they had a solid case before going to the grand jury?

It is said that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.

The Devies matter is a classic case of the Stark County prosecutor doing just that? Except the Devies are not ham sandwiches. The Devies are real breathing, feeling and thinking human beings. With his sloppy work (as confirmed by Judge Sinclair), Ferrero and his involved staff deeply hurt and damaged a pillar of the Marlboro community. Feel good about that John?

There was no case against the Devies. As one who attended a good part of the trial, that became apparent to me by noon of Tuesday, the 19th. Of course, yours truly knew that long before the indictments came down. Check The Report's blogs.

But where was The Rep editorial board?

Nowhere to be seen!

But now they want to weigh in.

Go get a life Rep editors - outside the editorial board room!