Never Ending Circus Continues

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Arshinkoff / Coughlin
• Date: Jul 23,2008

From Ohio.com and Stephanie Warsmith, yesterday:

The Ohio Ethics Commission and the Summit County prosecutor will decide if the chairman of the Summit County Board of Elections had a conflict of interest when he voted on issues involving his party's finances.

Brian Juliao, a Republican board employee, filed the complaint against Morrison with the board. He said Morrison's law firm, Amer Cunningham Co., has done work for the Summit County Republican Party and Morrison is a party officer. He said Morrison twice voted on issues involving the party's finances, rather than recusing himself.

Juliao claims this violated Ohio's ethics policy, which forbids board members from voting on issues involving family members, business colleagues or other close associates.

Both the Summit County Prosecutors office and the Ohio Ethics Commission will now determine if Morrison had a conflict of interest. The two Democratic board members, Wayne Jones and Tim Gorbach voted to refer the case. Morrison and Daley abstained. My favorite part of the write up: Morrison remained silent during this exchange and the subsequent vote, even temporarily relinquishing his position as chairman to Daley. I just think that is funny. Of course he did, the complaint was about him.

Juliao told the board members that Morrison "has a history of not recusing himself.'" Daley did however take full advantages of his temporary chairmanship to take the time to ask Juliao pointless questions about his employment that he could have just looked up in a file. At one point Juliao reminded Daley that he was part of a lawsuit to have him removed from his job (as a Varian appointee, background on that story here) and Daley said "uh, I didn't know I was part of a lawsuit." Ha, I didn't know I was part of a lawsuit!! Who wouldn't know that? Well, I guess a Republican board member of the Summit County Board of Elections. It is almost like Daley didn't know about the whole situation and didn't even care and just wanted to put on some show trial. For his part, Morrison declined comment for the original Ohio.com article.

On a side note, in the past Daley has gotten a check ($2500) from the GOP Central Committee. The difference is that he abstained from voting on that financial matter. Morrison does not. He voted on checks that were made out to Amer Cunningham. This is all stuff anyone off the street can look up; it is public record, you just need to know where to look. It doesn't strike me as smart (to say the least) by Morrison as this happened when the party finances were being watched, already under suspicion by some.

I am going to be honest. I saw this headline yesterday on Ohio.com and kind of rolled my eyes and clicked on it, read it, shook my head, and went back to whatever I was doing, which I think was racing my Facebook car. Not because I didn't think it was important, but because these stories just seem to run together anymore. My surprise level was at a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being totally shocked, like if I found that the Browns traded for Brett Favre or if I came to a revelation that I liked the Mets better than the Phillies. This is indicative of how Alex Arshinkoff and his associates have been doing business for 30 some years. However, after thinking about it some more, here we are.

Brian Juliao showed a lot of courage to file this complaint against his supervisors. Probably not an easy thing to do, but I am guessing he felt it was the right thing to do. I don't know how this will be decided, but it seems clear to me voting on party money going to your employer might be a conflict. I've never met Jack Morrison. He might be the nicest guy in the entire world. But he shouldn't be voting on financial matters like the ones raised in the complaint.

Someone should write a book about the Summit County Board of Elections.