Paul Kostyu: Sidaway unlikely to be last charged
If your name is Stephen Mitchell and you work at STRS as the deputy executive director for investments, you should be talking to an attorney, too. And there might be a few others at the pension fund who should consider getting legal advice.
A clear message came from the Franklin County Municipal Court last week. While Hazel A. Sidaway, a former Canton City Schools teacher, was on trial, prosecutors linked her to others on the STRS board and its culture of entitlement. The message: The Ohio Ethics Commission and prosecutors know about your shenanigans, and they’re coming after you, maybe as soon as next month.
Sidaway’s two convictions for violating state ethics law were a test of the strength of evidence in a more than two-year probe of corruption at the pension system. Offered a deal similar to that for former Executive Director Herb Dyer, who was convicted on one charge, Sidaway refused. She claimed she had done nothing wrong when accepting four tickets to a Cleveland Indians game and two tickets to a Broadway show.
She insisted they were meetings for conducting STRS business. The only people with her in the four box seats 10 rows back from the Indians’ dugout were her family. She and fellow board members attended the Broadway show “Hairspray.” She said they talked business before taking their front-row seats at the Tony-winning musical, during intermission and after the show. At least they didn’t give Ohioans a bad name by talking during the performance.
Perhaps the board should be charged with violating Ohio’s open meeting laws for conducting business without notifying the public. “They were not discussing matters appropriate for an executive session,” said Paul Nick, chief investigator for the commission. “Who knows what’s been going on?”
Something more troubling, however, became clear at Sidaway’s trial. Based on her own testimony, former in-house STRS attorney Cynthia E. Hvizdos apparently gave Sidaway bad legal advice, and she may have helped cover up the violations once the ethics commission began its investigation.
“Cindy Hvizdos agreed to assist in purposely disguising the tickets,” Nick said about her testimony. “She might be liable.”
Prior to the trial, Hvizdos offered to help Sidaway, who didn’t disclose that communication with her own attorney. He was caught off-guard and put at legal risk for failure to disclose the communication to prosecutors. Hvizdos retired because she has multiple sclerosis and apparently no longer practices law. So it’s not likely she will face charges or sanctions.
Sidaway’s ethics violations may not be the worst. One poorly kept STRS secret concerns a former board member who took his golf clubs on many, if not all, trips he made on behalf of STRS. I’ve always found it difficult to play golf at night. So does that mean this board member was playing hooky from meetings while he was swinging a club?
Sidaway was not convicted of illegally accepting meals at high-end Columbus restaurants. Those meetings, too, could have been attempts to avoid the state’s open meetings law because the board’s investment counselor was careful to take only three or four members at a time, not a quorum. If board members were so intent on holding meetings over food, they could have eaten in the STRS cafeteria.
Apparently, the food wasn’t good enough, and neither was the show.
Reach Copley Columbus Bureau Chief Paul E. Kostyu at (614) 222-8901 or e-mail: paul.kostyu@cantonrep.com
posted by Kathie Bracy at 12:05 PM
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