Blade Files Seneca County Courthouse Brief With Ohio Supreme Court: Ex-Tiffin Reporter Swears Nonpublic Talks Were Held

By Jim Provance, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Oct. 10–COLUMBUS — A former Tiffin newspaper reporter said yesterday that the Seneca County commissioners admitted to her last year that they discussed and exchanged e-mails about a plan to raze the county’s historic courthouse away from public view before they voted on the plan.

A sworn affidavit from Kendall Cable, formerly with The Advertiser-Tribune and now with The News-Times in Newport, Ore., was filed with the Ohio Supreme Court in support of The Blade’s lawsuit seeking to force the commissioners to show e-mails related to the planned demolition of the 1884 courthouse.

“I agreed to sign the affidavit because I believe it is the right thing to do. I believe in the transparency of government and I believe the current Sunshine Law should be enforced,” said Ms. Cable, who worked for the Tiffin newspaper from December, 2004, until October, 2006.

The Blade contends the affidavit and some of the e-mails released by the county contradict sworn court testimony by the commissioners in a separate lawsuit that they had never exchanged “words, comments, or ideas” about the demolition plan before public meetings.

“Thus, one of two inferences — both of them damning — arises: Either the e-mails reflecting those conversations are among those unlawfully destroyed or otherwise not produced, or the communications referred to were oral and took place in face-to-face discussions that were at least arguably governed by the Meetings Act,” wrote The Blade’s attorney Fritz Byers in yesterday’s brief.

Ms. Cable stated she regularly attended meetings of the county’s board of commissioners and was present at the Aug. 31, 2006, meeting when the commissioners approved their Space Needs Master Plan calling for demolition and replacement of the courthouse.

In her affidavit, she stated that she had never heard the commissioners previously discuss this specific plan at a prior public meeting, so she approached them afterward to ask how they drafted the report.

“Commissioner Joseph Schock said that he would go into Commissioner Ben Nutter’s office and they would talk things over in regards to the (master plan),” reads her sworn statement submitted to the Supreme Court. “One of the commissioners stated that they also e-mailed each other while drafting the document, sending their comments back and forth by e-mail.

“All three of the commissioners appeared to agree with this description of the process by which they had drafted the Space Needs Master Plan and reached the decision reflected in that document,” she wrote.

When contacted for comment, Mr. Nutter said, “I am not responding to questions from The Blade, which is suing the county and costing the taxpayers money.”

Ms. Cable noted that she tape-recorded the conversation and later made a transcript. She said she had previous Sunshine Law issues with the commissioners.

“I spoke with them per direction of the Advertiser-Tribune to educate them about the law,” she said in an interview yesterday. “I had shown them a copy of the Ohio attorney general’s Sunshine Law book, and they acknowledged it, and then they proceeded to operate in a gray area outside the law.”

Dave Murray, The Blade’s special assignments editor, said the newspaper was unaware of Ms. Cable until she contacted The Blade last week.

The Blade’s lawsuit asks the court to force the commissioners to produce e-mails sent, received, or deleted by the commissioners since Jan. 1, 2006. The county initially provided a smattering of e-mails, but after the newspaper filed suit the county produced a flood of 700-plus pages of e-mails, saying they were not originally made public because of “an oversight.”

The Blade asked the court yesterday to force the commissioners, at their expense, to recover e-mails the newspaper contends were illegally deleted.

“Deleted e-mail, as well as other data and files, is frequently recoverable by scanning a hard drive with the appropriate forensic data recovery software and hardware,” said Matthew Zuccarell in another affidavit filed with the court by The Blade.

Mr. Zuccarell is the networking manager of Computol Inc., of Perrysburg, a computer services company that performs computer forensic data recovery.

The newspaper also asked the Supreme Court to prohibit the courthouse’s demolition until the county fully complies with the newspaper’s public-records request.

“The destruction of crucial e-mails and the failure to produce other e-mails until after this action was filed are of a piece with the scofflaw decision-making that produced the commissioners’ vote to destroy the courthouse,” Mr. Byers wrote in his brief submitted to the high court yesterday. “Under the circumstances the likelihood is high that additional e-mails, if recovered, will reveal even more about this pattern of law-breaking.

“It is long-settled equitable principle that a wrong-doer, especially one in an official position of public trust, cannot be permitted to reap the benefits of the wrongful acts,” wrote Mr. Byers.

Mark Landes, the Columbus attorney hired to defend the commissioners, said he objects to Ms. Cable’s use of terms like “appeared to” in describing events in her affidavit.

“We categorically deny that anything like that happened,” he said. “[The local case] was tried in court with cross-examination by the judge. There was the opportunity to bring every piece of evidence they could and they tried. There’s no basis in fact for any of this.

“The Blade has confirmed that it is interested in imposing its big-city judgment on small county citizens who are trying to do the best they can with what they have,” Mr. Landes said.

John Barga, the Tiffin attorney representing members of the Tiffin Historic Trust in their lawsuit to stop the commissioners from destroying the courthouse, said last night the affidavit of Kendall Cable is the evidence preservationists need to prove the commissioners violated the state’s open-meeting laws.

“This information was never disclosed. I want to know when Mr. Nutter and Mr. Sauber testified if they were telling me the truth and, if not, we’ll look at our options,” Mr. Barga said. “As a prosecuting attorney Kenny Egbert has an obligation to search for the truth and if he knew about this he had an obligation to disclose it.

“He represents every citizen of Seneca County and he’s suppose to defend the commissioneers but he goes to Columbus and hires a law firm that comes in here and twists the facts,” Mr. Barga said.

Mr. Egbert last night said he was “not aware of any prior discussions” by the commissioners about the courthouse demolition before they approved the plan.

And he said it was the commissioners who decided to hire a Columbus law firm to defend themselves.

Contact Jim Provance at: jprovance@theblade.com or 614-221-0496.

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