Pictured is former Cuyahoga County prosecutor Bill Mason, and embattled county executive Armond Budish, who has named Mason his new chief of staff as an ongoing county public corruption probe led by the FBI looms
By Kathy Wray Coleman, investigative reporter, editor-in-chief
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com- Embattled Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish has selected former county prosecutor Bill Mason, a partner in the the Cleveland district office of the law firm of Bricker and Eckler, as his new chief of staff.
An announcement on Mason's new job is expected today, sources said.
Mason, 60, and from Parma, resigned as county prosecutor in September of 2012, taking the job with Bricker and Eckler.
Why he would leave a job as partner in a prominent law firm like Bricker and Eckler to return to public life to work for Budish is questionable, sources said, and could be because Budish is on his way out and Mason has been slated by the Democratic regime to replace him.
Bricker and Eckler and its attorneys, led by attorney Nelson Reid in the Columbus district office, are under fire for stealing homes from county residents along with common pleas judges, JP Morgan Chase Bank attorneys, and the office of the sheriff via illegal foreclosure activity.
Black county residents who complain of the theft of their homes per illegal foreclosures are sometimes maliciously prosecuted and are either harassed or stalked by police and some judges like Shaker Heights Judge K.J. Montgomery and Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, public records reveal.
Mason was succeeded as county prosecutor by Tim McGinty, whom voters and his own Democratic party comrades ousted in 2016 for current county prosecutor Mike O'Malley, a Democrat also, and who was chief deputy under Mason.
Mason replaces Matt Carroll, who was interim and replaced Sharon Sobol Jordan, whom Budish appointed as chief of staff at the beginning of his first term in January 2015, Jordan quitting in February of last year for a new job after her office was raided by the FBI regarding a public corruption probe that is still underway.
Jordan's salary was at $170,000 annually before she left the county.
As chief of staff, Mason will directly supervise cabinet officers and is chief strategy officer and policy adviser to Budish, a Democrat like Mason, once one of the most powerful Democrats of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party.
The 29 percent Black county includes the largely Black city of Cleveland and is a Democratic stronghold, the second largest of 88 counties statewide behind Franklin County, which includes Columbus.
Mason is not a favorite of Black leaders, some of them saying he escaped indictment on public corruption charges because he is White, male, and well connected across partisan lines, and he knows too much, sources said.
Mason's appointment comes as a county public corruption probe led by the FBI broadens, the former county prosecutor avoiding an indictment in spite of ongoing claims that he is allegedly corrupt too, and was allegedly corrupt when he was county prosecutor.
That extensive public corruption probe has seen two former common pleas judges, former county commissioner Jimmy Dimora , and former county auditor Frank Russo imprisoned, among others, Russo and Dimora among some 65 county affiliates, mainly Democratic businessmen, who have either been convicted, or have pleaded guilty to public corruption related crimes in the last decade
A voter-adopted change in county governance implemented in 2011 replaced three county commissioners and the county elected offices, all but the still-elected judges and county prosecutor, with a county executive and 11-member county council.
Those appointed county offices include the sheriff, county auditor, clerk of courts, fiscal officer, and county treasurer.
Black leaders and the Cleveland NAACP, led by former county commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, Congresswoman Marcia L Fudge and then Cleveland NAACP president George Forbes, a former Cleveland City Council president, opposed the change in county governance before it was approved by voters in 2009 by a two-to-one margin. And they still say the current set up disenfranchises voters and Black people, and puts too much power in the hands of one official, a county executive, now Budish, whose office was raided by the FBI twice this year and who has not commented publicly on whether he agrees that the county sheriff should be elected rather than appointed.
Cuyahoga County Council is expected to vote soon on putting a charter amendment on the ballot for next year that would give voters the option of restoring the position of sheriff to an elected position.
Last month Sheriff Clifford Pinkney, the county's first Black sheriff, announced he will resign, effective Aug 2., for personal reasons.
Also at issue are problems with the county jail, including nine inmate deaths in roughly a year, some of them unexplained and many of them allegedly ignored by Budish and jail officials, both the former jail director and former warden indicted this year.
A damning report released last November by U.S. Marshals on county jail conditions generated local and national news, a dreadful look at how inmates are mistreated such as withholding food for punishment, jailing juveniles with adults, rat and roach infested jail facilities, and a paramilitary jail corrections officers unit dubbed "The Men in Black" that intimidates and harasses inmates.
The FBI and other authorities have been swarming the jail since last year after inmates began popping up dead.
Activists have been picketing regularly over jail conditions, even in front of Budish' gated home in affluent Beachwood, where they called for his resignation, and at county administrative headquarters in downtown Cleveland before county council meetings.
Inhumane and unconstitutional jail conditions are at the heart of the investigation by federal officials, prompting an impending lawsuit seeking a court injunction and a federal takeover of the jail.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
