By Jennifer Edwards Baker
Published: Jul. 9, 2024 at 10:57 AM EDT|Updated: Jul. 9, 2024 at 11:02 AM EDT
HAMILTON, Ohio (WXIX) - Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and Ohio Solicitor General T. Elliot Gaiser are urging the state’s top court to intervene after an appeals court overturned the public corruption-related felony conviction of a Greater Cincinnati officeholder.
Allowing this flawed decision to stand - public officials can only be convicted of corruption that actually occurs, not for the planning of it and/or pressuring others to go along with it - weakens the state’s ability to prosecute such cases, they wrote in their request for Ohio Supreme Court review.
This case also “presents a question of public or great general interest” because the lower court’s decision punishes those who bravely speak out to expose corruption, it states.
It’s not clear how soon the Ohio Supreme Court will decide whether to get involved.
The case originated in southwestern Ohio, where Roger Reynolds was forced to step down as the Butler County auditor in late December 2022, just before his fifth term began, when a jury convicted him of a felony count of unlawful interest in a public contract.
State law prohibits a public official from authorizing or influencing a public contract that either the official, a family member, or a business associate has an interest in.
The jury acquitted Reynolds of three other felony charges including bribery and one misdemeanor charge, and prosecutors dropped another charge just before his trial started.
Reynolds, 54, was convicted of trying to convince Lakota Local Schools to build a golf academy on private country club golf course property in the Four Bridges subdivision where his family lives in Liberty Township, using public money that Reynolds, in his capacity as auditor, routinely returned to taxing bodies.
Reynolds’ lawyers argued that the auditor was simply brainstorming how to use the surplus money and it never happened.
The school district’s attorneys advised the treasurer against it, school emails show.
The state said Reynolds’ efforts were criminal, pointing out that Reynolds’ daughter was a member of the Lakota East High School golf team at the time.
The appeals court determined that while Reynolds had conversations with then-Lakota Local Schools Treasurer Jenni Logan about the indoor golfing facility at Four Bridges, the state presented insufficient evidence for a conviction.
If their decision stands, that means Reynolds is no longer a convicted felon and can run for public office again in Ohio.
“This is a case about brazen corruption,” the state wrote in their motion asking the state to court to take up the issue.
“While Roger Reynolds served as the Butler County Auditor, he pressured a local school district to use its surplus funds to build a golf facility at a private country club in which he was a member. He pitched the indoor golf facility as a potential winter training facility for the high school’s golf team, on which his daughter played golf,” the court filing states.
“The school district’s officials saw right through his self-dealing scheme and were reluctant to engage further with his proposal. But they did not rebuff him at the outset for fear of reprisal from his office. Sensing their reluctance, Reynolds applied pressure time and time again to get his way: he cleared the room of members of his office before laying out his proposal; he proposed creative ways to structure the deal to avoid detection; and when that failed to persuade, he lied that the county prosecutor had signed off on one such deal structure.
“Nevertheless, recognizing Reynolds’s proposal for what it was—illegal self-dealing— the school district’s officials ultimately thwarted his plans, and the proposal fell by the wayside. But the damage to public integrity was done. Reynolds was indicted and convicted by a jury” (under a state law that) “prohibits public officials from knowingly “[a]uthoriz[ing], or employ[ing] the authority or influence of the public official’s office to secure authorization of any public contract in which the public official” or “a member of the public official’s family ... has an interest.”
“If left standing, the (appeals court’s) decision blunts an important tool in the State’s anti-corruption toolbox. Public corruption laws protect the public’s confidence in their government as well as integrity in the administration of government itself. These laws intentionally cast a wide net over any use of public office or authority to coerce or influence an unlawful outcome.”
Ohio’s anti-corruption laws cover a broad swath of conduct, the court filing notes.
“They criminalize public officials’ efforts to use their office to obtain private benefits because it is the corrupt effort and not just the corrupt outcome that erodes public trust in their elected officials. Put another way, it does not matter whether the official was ultimately successful in accomplishing his corrupt ends.
“This Court should accept review of this question of great public importance and correct the (appeals court’s) harmful interpretation of Ohio’s self-dealing law.”
FOX19 NOW requested comment from a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and Reynolds’ attorney but did not hear back.
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