Mahoning commissioners vote to pay $23,500 for probate court audit

Editor's note: Your ProbateShark believes that an audit of the Probate Court of Cook County would fill all the Illinois jails with corrupt lawyers and judges. This audit would also implicate nursing home  owners and others related to the "Nursing Home Cartel".  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com


Mahoning commissioners vote to pay $23,500 for probate court audit  CommentEmailPrintPublished: Fri, October 10, 2014 @ 12:02 a.m.By Peter H. Millikenmilliken@vindy.comYOUNGSTOWNMahoning County commissioners voted to pay the state auditor $23,500 for the special audit of the county’s probate court.Special prosecutors from the Ohio attorney general’s office asked the state auditor to perform the special audit as part of the ongoing investigation of former probate judge Mark Belinky.Belinky resigned the judgeship March 14, pleaded guilty to tampering with his campaign records May 8, and was sentenced to two year’s probation July 9, but his plea agreement requires him to continue to cooperate with prosecutors and testify, if necessary.Belinky pleaded guilty to failing to record more than $7,500 in contributions, expenditures or loans to his campaign fund between Oct. 23 and Dec. 10, 2008.A special audit is a limited-scope examination of financial records and other information designed to probe allegations of fraud, theft or misappropriation of funds or to quantify the extent of such losses.Judge Robert N. Rusu Jr. was installed as probate judge July 8 after Gov. John Kasich appointed him to complete Belinky’s term. Judge Rusu, an independent, is being challenged by Atty. Susan Maruca in the Nov. 4 election for a six-year term as probate judge.Judge Rusu said he is “cooperating fully” with the probe and is not a target of it.Also on Thursday, the commissioners awarded a $336,913 contract to Butch & McCree Paving Inc. of Hillsville, Pa., for repaving Middletown Road from state Route 170 in New Middletown to State Line Road, improving the Calla and State Line Road intersection, and widening and resurfacing a portion of State Line.The commissioners also awarded a $397,844 contract for the Poland Woods interceptor-sewer improvement to J.S. Bova Excavating LLC of North Jackson.The commissioners also heard from several participants in a 50-member Los Angeles-to-Washington Great Climate March for Action to promote awareness of climate change, who were passing through Youngstown.“Allowing big fracking industry to extract from county land without regard for the well-being of its citizens is irresponsible and unconscionable,” said Lala Palazzolo, a marcher from Union Pier, Mich., who called attention to unprecedented local earthquakes linked to fracking and to injection wells.Jobs linked to oil and gas drilling are “at best temporary,” she said.“To call the Utica shale and Marcellus shale temporary jobs is misinforming and misleading,” said Robert Holton of Boardman, marketing director for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 66.“The cracker plant that is going to go in the Beaver Valley [Pa.] is a $7 billion plant. They’re not putting $7 billion or $8 billion into a facility to have temporary jobs,” he said. “Those jobs are going to be there for a long time, and people from this Valley are probably going to be ending up working there.”