PrintBATAVIA – Clermont County Commissioner R. Scott Croswell III has been cleared of wrongdoing in voting to approve payments to a company in which he is part owner.
“There is insufficient evidence to support a potential violation of any of the ethics laws or related statutes, and, therefore, no criminal prosecution is warranted,” Special Prosecutor Lynn Alan Grimshaw wrote in a letter to the Ohio Ethics Commission.
Grimshaw reviewed a report on an Ethics Commission investigation of Croswell. A violation could have brought up to 18 months in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.
Croswell, a Miami Township resident who is a prominent defense attorney, said he also could have been disbarred if found guilty.
A state audit revealed that in 2006 Croswell approved eight payments totaling $2,027 to Croswell Bus Lines Inc., a company of which he is part owner.
However, only $977 of that involved county purchases. Croswell said he didn’t realize the company had been hired occasionally by Common Pleas Court to take jurors to view sites related to cases.
The remaining $1,050 involved court-ordered restitution to the company from an employee convicted of misusing a Croswell Bus Lines credit card, Croswell said.
The restitution checks were submitted to the county, and Croswell simply approved passing on the payments to the company.
The $977 was insignificant considering Croswell Bus Lines does about $15 million in business a year – and that he votes on budget items totaling about $56 million a year as a commissioner, Croswell said.
Nevertheless, to avoid an appearance of impropriety he wouldn’t have signed off on the vouchers had he realized what they were for, Croswell said. He didn’t know because the vouchers didn’t include the name of the company.
Croswell, 61, said he never voted on a contract involving the bus company run by his brother, John.
While he was confident he would be exonerated by the ethics investigation, “no one enjoys going through the process and all the public speculation,” Croswell said.
“There were others that delighted in it and tried to use it for political purposes,” said Croswell, who plans to run for re-election in 2010.
“I guess the irony of this thing is I’ve spent my entire career as a lawyer representing people in controversial situations and always managed to do it without anyone criticizing me personally or questioning my ethics or integrity,” Croswell said.
“I cooperated 100 percent with the Ethics Commission, and they determined I had done nothing wrong,” Croswell said. “I don’t believe there would even have been an investigation of anything I did but for the fact that it was contained in an audit that involved Commissioner Walker.”
Last week, Mary Walker resigned as a Clermont County commissioner after being found guilty of violating an ethics law that bars public officials from using their office to benefit family members. Walker, 62, avoided a possible jail sentence by agreeing to a plea deal, but she was fined the maximum of $1,000.
Walker, who lives in Union Township, admitted that she knowingly voted in 2006 on a $58,500 contract for a water main replacement project with Professional Engineering Group, which was run by her son, Mark D. Walker.
