Crawford County Prosecutor Responds

“…The Rest of the Story”

By Stan­ley Flegm,

Craw­ford County Prosecutor

I read with great inter­est the open forum let­ter from Mr. Crall, and defense attor­ney Geof­frey Stoll’s recent finan­cial analy­sis of the County Prosecutor’s Office. While I agree with Mr. Stoll that it is impor­tant for vot­ers to be informed as they cast their vote for County Pros­e­cu­tor on March 6, I am dis­ap­pointed with how Mr. Crall and Mr. Stoll have mis­rep­re­sented cer­tain bud­getary and finan­cial infor­ma­tion for the County Prosecutor’s Office. As Paul Har­vey always said, here is the “rest of the story.”

Polit­i­cal Rhetoric and Self-Serving Motivation

Before I address spe­cific points, I think it’s fair to ques­tion Mr. Stoll’s moti­va­tion for sup­port­ing my oppo­nent, Mr. Crall. I found Mr. Stoll’s asser­tions par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing because he has taken the lead for Mr. Crall’s cam­paign by lim­it­ing his polit­i­cal rhetoric to fis­cal mat­ters of the Prosecutor’s Office and never com­par­ing the can­di­dates for knowl­edge, expe­ri­ence or job performance.

Vot­ers need to con­sider the fact that Mr. Stoll makes a liv­ing by defend­ing crim­i­nals. It would seem obvi­ous that Mr. Stoll has a self-serving agenda for sup­port­ing an indi­vid­ual who does not have a proven record of pros­e­cut­ing felons or a suc­cess­ful jury trial con­vic­tion record. In fact, when Mr. Crall pre­sented his pro­fes­sional record to the Repub­li­can Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, he stated that he had only tried (2) cases before a jury dur­ing his pro­fes­sional career. Court records indi­cate that he lost both.

35 Years of Expe­ri­ence and a High Con­vic­tion Rate vs. Two Jury Trials

I would be very sur­prised if Mr. Stoll appre­ci­ates my tough on crime, zero tol­er­ance posi­tion against crim­i­nal activ­ity in our County. It’s not sur­pris­ing that a defense attor­ney, who makes a liv­ing pro­tect­ing the legal rights of an accused crim­i­nal, isn’t sup­port­ing a County Pros­e­cu­tor whose office has an extremely high rate of jury trial con­vic­tions. But it does explain the dis­torted polit­i­cal rhetoric that has come from both Mr. Crall and Mr. Stoll — in the same way that has taken over many state and national campaigns.

Unlike my oppo­nent and his two jury tri­als of expe­ri­ence, I have a 35 year career in the legal pro­fes­sion, and have suc­cess­fully tried both mis­de­meanor and seri­ous felony cases. My Jury trial expe­ri­ence includes con­vic­tions for arson, bur­glary, rob­bery and child molesta­tion. As County Pros­e­cu­tor, I use my expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge every­day to over­see and set the pro­fes­sional stan­dards for all crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tions by staff for my office.

The Job Must Come First, Not Polit­i­cal Aspirations

If there is any ques­tion about Mr. Crall’s pri­or­i­ties, you only need to look at his actions. As some­one who has more than three decades of ded­i­cated pub­lic ser­vice as a County and City Pros­e­cu­tor and as a Juve­nile Court Mag­is­trate, I am con­cerned when I see some­one who asked the vot­ers in Bucyrus City to re-elect him as City Law Direc­tor in Novem­ber of 2011, turn around just a few weeks later and file peti­tions to seek yet a dif­fer­ent office.

A County Pros­e­cu­tor CANNOT BE POLITICAL or per­ceived as being POLITICAL in the man­age­ment of the Prosecutor’s Office, and vot­ers need to con­sider the fact that Mr. Crall only recently resigned his posi­tion as Repub­li­can Party Chair­man, and only after he made the deci­sion to run against an incum­bent Repub­li­can County Prosecutor.

Which Office Does He Really Want And How Strong Can His Com­mit­ment To The Job Be?

To fur­ther illus­trate the disin­gen­u­ous actions of Mr. Crall, vot­ers should con­sider that he even held a polit­i­cal fundraiser on Octo­ber 22, 2011, and the writ­ten invi­ta­tion stated, in part, “Matthew Crall will soon be announc­ing his run for Craw­ford County Pros­e­cu­tor in 2012”. I hope that vot­ers con­sider the fact that I have cho­sen a pro­fes­sion that involves the pros­e­cu­tion of crim­i­nals and that I have been pro­vid­ing effec­tive lead­er­ship, with­out any per­sonal and polit­i­cal agen­das my entire legal career.

Only One Can­di­date Is Endorsed By Law Enforce­ment Officers

I would encour­age vot­ers to please remem­ber that the County Pros­e­cu­tor is legally respon­si­ble for pro­tect­ing the cit­i­zens of our com­mu­nity, and in that capac­ity, I am bound under the law to indict those indi­vid­u­als who are accused by law enforce­ment offi­cials of vio­lat­ing our citizen’s pub­lic safety. That’s why I am extremely proud of the fact that I have been endorsed by the County Sher­iff and the Galion and Crest­line FOP. In con­trast, my oppo­nent is not endorsed by any law enforce­ment offi­cial or organization.

There Is No Dis­par­ity in What Pros­e­cu­tors and Attor­neys Are Paid By Taxpayers

Despite the asser­tions of Mr. Stoll and Mr. Crall that my Chief Assis­tant is paid too much, it is a fact that he is paid $62.71 per hour while Mr. Stoll and Mr. Crall both are paid $60 per hour when being reim­bursed by the County for ser­vices they pro­vide. The biggest dif­fer­ence is this: my assis­tant is on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week when needed to help pro­tect the cit­i­zens of Craw­ford County.

By law, Mr. Crall, in his PART-TIME capac­ity as Bucyrus City Pros­e­cu­tor, is paid by the County the same $60 an hour rate as the defense attor­neys, like Mr. Stoll, who are appointed by the Courts to defend accused crim­i­nals. In fact, pub­lic records indi­cate that since 2003, Mr. Crall has been paid from the County $84,012. These pay­ments are in addi­tion to the $80,434 that Mr. Crall receives annu­ally from the City of Bucyrus for his TWO PART-TIME posi­tions as City Pros­e­cu­tor and City Law Director.

No “Raise” But a Pay Increase Of 104.32 Percent

Fur­ther­more, Mr. Crall has claimed that he has “refused a pay raise for the third year in a row;” not dis­clos­ing to vot­ers that Mr. Crall’s PART-TIME salary with the City has increased from $39,366 in 2007 to $80,434 in 2012 or as Mr. Stoll might say a, “whop­ping” 104.32 per­cent. Vot­ers should not be con­fused by the fact that these pay­ments from the City are in addi­tion to monies Mr. Crall receives from the County.

As for Mr. Stoll, pub­lic records show his law firm has received $302,371 in County tax­payer money since 2007 for pro­vid­ing indi­gent legal ser­vices to defend crim­i­nals such as Mal­colm Stall, who was con­victed in the Siclair home inva­sion case cur­rently being appealed – at taxpayer’s expense – to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Should Defense Attor­neys Make More Than Pros­e­cu­tors Who Defend The Safety Of Citizens?

Do Mr. Crall and Mr. Stoll want us to believe it would be a bet­ter sys­tem for tax­pay­ers to pay defense attor­neys more per hour for defend­ing accused crim­i­nals than the Assis­tant Pros­e­cu­tor who is there to pro­tect the safety and inter­ests of our cit­i­zens? I would hope not.

I would ask vot­ers to also con­sider that I have cho­sen to pay my Chief Assis­tant a rate of pay that is sim­i­lar to that estab­lished by the County’s over­all bud­get­ing author­ity, the Board of County Com­mis­sion­ers, and that this Chief Assis­tant has 15 years of suc­cess­ful employ­ment with the County.

As County Pros­e­cu­tor I have always taken my statu­tory respon­si­bil­ity for rep­re­sent­ing and pro­tect­ing the cit­i­zens of this County seri­ously, and that is why I have cho­sen to hire highly com­pe­tent indi­vid­u­als, while still exer­cis­ing fis­cal responsibility.

Don’t Be Mis­led: My Office Has Been Very Fis­cally Responsible

My fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity can be demon­strated by review­ing the County’s audited annual finan­cial state­ments and the expen­di­tures related to the County Prosecutor’s Office. These are the facts:

• Mr. Stoll’s claim that my bud­get has increased 77.73 per­cent over the last 10 years is NOT accurate;

• The first year I was respon­si­ble for sub­mit­ting a bud­get to the County Com­mis­sion­ers was 2003;

• The bud­gets for 2001 and 2002 belonged to my predecessor;

• Despite dou­ble digit increases in county health insur­ance costs, my office’s actual expen­di­tures have increased, on aver­age, by 3.10 per­cent, for the nine years between 2003 and 2012;

• The Board of County Com­mis­sion­ers has the legal author­ity to reduce my bud­get if it is believed to be exces­sive; instead, this body has endorsed my candidacy.

Asser­tions that, so called, “dou­ble dip­ping” is some­how detri­men­tal to the county’s bud­get are sim­ply not true. Unlike Mr. Crall, I receive one salary for one job, and I have paid the required yearly ser­vice cred­its under the OPERS sys­tem, and dis­closed the same pub­li­cally pur­suant to Ohio law more than five years ago. I was assured by OPERS that this option does not cost the tax­pay­ers any addi­tional money, nor is it detri­men­tal to the OPERS sys­tem. Now this issue is being offered for polit­i­cal gain by Mr. Crall and Mr. Stoll in hopes of divert­ing atten­tion away from my suc­cess­ful record, and Mr. Crall’s lack of suc­cess­ful record, and lack of endorsements.

Remem­ber This Fact When Cast­ing Your Vote for County Prosecutor

Stan Flegm is the only can­di­date endorsed by the County Recorder, the County Trea­surer, the County Audi­tor, the County Sher­iff and the County Commissioners.

Con­sol­i­dat­ing Child Sup­port Ser­vices Has Pro­vided Rev­enue for the County Gen­eral Fund

Mr. Stoll also dis­cussed the Child Sup­port Enforce­ment Agency, assert­ing that the monies received by my office for legal ser­vices relat­ing to Child Sup­port Enforce­ment, are “not the same as truly being paid”… and in order for it to be con­sid­ered real money … the money paid “must come from an out­side source.”

In these tough eco­nomic times, col­lab­o­ra­tion with other gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies in an effort to be more effi­cient with tax­payer money is crit­i­cal, and pur­su­ing State and Fed­eral reim­burse­ments for work that is already being per­formed is respon­si­ble stewardship.

While these reim­burse­ments are also tax­payer monies, it would be fis­cally irre­spon­si­ble of my office not to par­tic­i­pate in a pro­gram that helps return fed­eral and state tax dol­lars to Craw­ford County. With­out these funds, Craw­ford Coun­tians would still be asked to pay more in local tax dol­lars to pro­vide these man­dated services.

By con­sol­i­dat­ing these ser­vices, my office:

• Has gen­er­ated more than $400,000 for the county’s gen­eral oper­at­ing fund

• Saved the county the cost of a full-time posi­tion by absorb­ing those duties into my office

• Saved tax­pay­ers more than $70,000 in addi­tional health insur­ance and retire­ment ben­e­fit costs

Look At the Record of Per­for­mance As Well As the Qual­i­fi­ca­tions of Both Candidates

In con­clu­sion, I would encour­age vot­ers to con­sider both candidate’s pro­fes­sional record and licens­ing before cast­ing their vote:

• Mr. Crall, while claim­ing to have civil lit­i­ga­tion expe­ri­ence, failed to respond to requests for admis­sions in the recent pub­lic records case (Davila v City of Bucyrus), and the Court had no choice but to ren­der a sum­mary judg­ment for $1.4 mil­lion against the tax­pay­ers of Bucyrus

• When Mr. Crall had the legal oblig­a­tion and author­ity to remove the for­mer Bucyrus Mayor, the City Coun­cil autho­rized my office to han­dle this legal mat­ter since Mr. Crall did not want to face the Mayor or his attor­neys before a jury in Pro­bate Court. I suc­cess­fully took care of this case, and the removal was even­tu­ally upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court

• I am the only can­di­date licensed to prac­tice in the Fed­eral Court respon­si­ble for Craw­ford County; a fact vitally impor­tant because if the County is sued in Fed­eral Court and the legal costs have to be out­sourced to a pri­vate firm, those costs are gen­er­ally $200 per hour

Finally, I would respect­fully ask vot­ers: who do you want as your County Prosecutor?

Do you want a County Pros­e­cu­tor whose main sup­port­ers and polit­i­cal advis­ers are mem­bers of the defense bar, or do you want a County Pros­e­cu­tor who is inde­pen­dent and has a proven record of lead­er­ship, knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence, and who is endorsed by County law enforce­ment offi­cials and orga­ni­za­tions, and many of the County Elected Officeholders?

I can think of no greater honor than being re-elected so I can con­tinue to help pro­tect the peo­ple of Craw­ford County.

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Feb 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.