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A controversial “incentive pay” policy and long-awaited closure in Ohio’s Coingate scandal highlight two of the 90 completed investigations into wrongdoings recently listed in the Ohio Inspector General’s 2014 annual report.
At year's end, the OIG received 363 complaints of wrongdoing in 2014. Read up on the agency's findings while you can, as the I-Team recently reported that these investigations are routinely being scrubbed from the public record by court expungement orders.
Some of the highlights (with links to our original reports):
Extra time off
The Miami Valley Juvenile Rehabilitation Center was giving employees time off for good behavior in violation of state law, one investigation found. Administrators said they did give workers extra leave based on merit, though the OIG said that was in violation of Ohio Administrative Code.
Records indicated 24 instances where leave time was taken by 15 employees, but the hours did not appear to have been deducted from their leave balances. The total value of this leave was poorly tracked and cost taxpayers between $4,630 and $69,640, according to investigators.
Free football tickets
Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center employee Shawn Brown accepted free meals, OSU football tickets and a bachlor party from a man who worked for a company that had a contract with the school. (No tattoos or championship rings were found to be involved, the I-Team notes.)
Investigators found Matt Daugherty, while working for the company Accu-Tech, bought $7,600 worth of meals and entertinament for OSU staffers, including $4,900 just for Brown.
Both Brown and Daugherty lost their jobs.
Coingate scandal
The story broke in April 2005 about corruption stemming from two Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation multi-million dollar investments in rare coin funds. Ohio’s $50 million total investment was mismanaged by coin dealer Tom Noe, who was indicted in October 2005 on three felony counts for his presidential fundraising, related to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign.
Nine years later, the OIG concluded that 17 people committed criminal acts, including Noe, who was found guily in 2006 on 29 charges including corruption, theft and money-laundering. Former Gov. Bob Taft paid $5,000 after copping to misdemeanor ethics charges in 2005.
The scandal left Noe and investment advisor Mark Lay owing the state $226,714,804, and led to significant reform at the OBWC.
Missing fuel
Two Clinton County Ohio Department of Transportation garages lost 14,765 gallons of fuel, worth $52,637, an investigation found.
Investigators note that all ODOT garages have some discrepancy between the amount of fuel they have and recorded usage, but these two garages were off by more than four times the average.
After initially blaming the difference on replaced fuel tanks, county manager Michael Lovelace admitted to falsifying numbers during an annual inventory.
This revelation led to a review of ODOT policies of spot-checking tanks, increasing the frequency of random inventory from every 24 months to every three months in hopes of reducing the chances for fraud and theft. This investigation is being reviewed by ODOT to determine if administrative actions against Lovelace and Brown were appropriate.
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