New law keeps inspector general reports public


State law changed

The state law that went in effect this week is in response to our I-Team’s reporting that records of misdeeds by state employees were being procedurally scrubbed from the public record.

A new state law effective Wednesday prohibits Ohio courts from completely scrubbing findings of wrongdoing by state employees from the public record, a practice first revealed by the I-Team.

Court expungement orders no longer will apply to investigative reports produced by the Ohio Inspector General. Previously, sealing these reports wiped out agency recommendations meant to improve oversight and prevent misdeeds from re-occurring.

Prior to the law, the OIG had to pretend like sealed reports never existed.

A half dozen reports have been expunged, including one that uncovered an "encyclopedia of fraud" used by a former state employee to steer millions of dollars in state contracts to his son and other preferred vendors.

State Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, pushed for the bill language to keep OIG reports public record.

“It was important so that agencies and others can read these reports in their entirety so they would know what not to do in the future by learning from the employee who screwed up and was convicted,” he said.

OIG reports can still be sealed, however, if the public employee is found not guilty of allegations in court, “because at that point we don’t want people to be wrongfully accused, we don’t want people to be wrongfully besmirched,” he said.

Seitz’s amendment was to a bill that increased the number of people able to have their criminal records sealed.

That bill is part of a recent effort by the General Assembly to make Ohio’s criminal justice system more rehabilitative. People convicted of an increasing number of isolated, non-violent crimes can petition a judge to have their records wiped clean, making it easier for them to get a job and move on with their lives.

The bill passed the General Assembly in May and became effective Wednesday.

Sealed reports

Investigative reports that are already sealed will remain so unless the OIG goes back to court and convinces a judge to unseal them.

According to records obtained by the I-Team, the most recently expunged OIG report was of a 2009 investigation that led to criminal charges against a Bureau of Workers Compensation employee who improperly accessed confidential state records to find the owner of a car that rear-ended her outside of work.

The report notes that the employee, Tonya Claborn, also was disciplined in 2004 for improperly conducting credit checks on her relatives.

Claborn was convicted in 2011 of charges including theft in office and unauthorized use of property, but those convictions no longer appear in the Franklin County Clerk of Courts public records. The report was wiped from Ohio Inspector General’s records in June.

State records suggest she now operates a roadside assistance company in Columbus. She could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this month, a judge in Hamilton County denied a motion to seal the conviction and investigative reports of the company Quattro Inc., which pleaded guilty in 2012 to felony charges in a bid-rigging scheme involving companies with offices across Ohio.

ODOT contracts

Another investigative report expunged in 2015 laid out how an Ohio Department of Transportation official steered contracts to his son and dozens of other vendors. The report, which the I-Team obtained before it was sealed and posted online, said OIG officials found a box of records in the man's garage attic containing ODOT records showing how he circumvented competitive bidding rules.

“(Dennis) Kratochvil inadvertently provided investigators with a blueprint of his scheming by holding onto the ODOT records that were found at his home. This box of records … is an encyclopedia of fraud,” the report concludes.

“Colorcoded and meticulously organized, the files document the extraordinary lengths to which Kratochvil went to alter and manufacture records in order to steer business to favored contractors and dupe ODOT auditors.”

Ohio Inspector General Randall Meyer released a statement Wednesday saying the new law in effect this week helps his office meet its mandate to expose misdeeds in state government and strengthen safeguards.

“I strongly believe that the government should never have the power to cover up criminal acts that have been committed in government,” he said.

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