CLEVELAND, OH – Legendary Cleveland inventor Garrett Morgan’s granddaughter understood by the way she identified herself as “Interim Mayor Sandra Morgan” that her time in office would not extend past now convicted ex-mayor Brandon L. King’s suspension, or until he was found innocent or guilty.
King was indicted last October 10, 2024 and was suspended from holding office as mayor by the Supreme Court of Ohio pursuant to Section 3.16 of the Ohio Revised Code on January 30, 2025. The heading of the state law is “Suspension of local official charged with felony relating to official conduct.”
Morgan was appointed interim mayor by Cuyahoga County Probate Court Judge Anthony Russo on February 28, 2025 pursuant to Section 3.16(E)(4) of the Ohio Revised Code. The language of the unsuspended state law is in English and it’s plain and unambiguous.
“For the duration of the public official’s suspension, an interim replacement official shall be appointed by the probate judge of the court of common pleas if the suspended public official is an elected official of a municipal corporation, township, school district, or other political subdivision, to perform the suspended public official’s duties.”
Russo took no steps whatsoever to mail his order to East Cleveland’s Clerk of Council to be transmitted to the municipal corporation’s officers and read into the record during a public meeting and filed. He issued a news release.
On May 29, 2025, a 12-person jury found King guilty on 10 of the 12 charges against him. At that moment Morgan’s time as East Cleveland’s interim mayor was over. He was no longer suspended from the mayor’s office. A vacancy was created by King’s conviction. He was removed from office.
Pursuant to Section 732.41 of the Ohio Revised Code, and various sections of East Cleveland’s charter, the Clerk of Council certifies the acts of the municipal corporation. A vacancy in an elected office is an act that must be certified and reported.
The municipal acts that follow a vacancy in an elected office are self-effectuating and require no order of the court. The Clerk of Council was required to certify the vacancy created by King’s conviction, the conclusion of Morgan’s interim appointment and the succession of the President of Council to the vacant office of mayor pursuant to Section 114 of the Charter. If White had failed to certify the vacancies as the Clerk of Council was required by law to do, she could face criminal charges for “dereliction of duty” for failing to discharge a duty of her public office. Section 114 of East Cleveland’s charter reads as follows.
“In the case of death, resignation, removal or long-term absence of the Mayor, the order of succession as Mayor shall be as follows: President of Council, Vice President of Council and ranking Council member based upon aggregate years of service or, in the event of equal years of service, aggregate votes received during all successful elections, except in the event that a vacancy occurs in the office of Mayor and there exists a Mayor-elect who has not yet assumed such office, then, in that event, the person so elected to the office of Mayor shall become Mayor for the unexpired term and for the full term for which such person was elected.”
Clerk of Council Stacey White certified to Morgan on June 1, 2025 that King’s May 29, 2025 conviction ended his suspension and Morgan’s time in office. She certified that a vacancy had been created by King’s removal from office that would be filled in compliance with Section 114 of East Cleveland’s charter.
White informed Morgan that President of Council Lateek R. Shabazz had succeeded to assume the authority of the vacant mayor’s office. She had received the oath of office he filed with the Clerk of Council pursuant to Section 92 of the Charter. White certified that Morgan’s interim mayoral duties pursuant to Section 3.16(E)(4) of the Ohio Revised Code had concluded.
White cautioned Morgan that any mayoral acts she committed after King’s May 29, 2025 conviction were unauthorized by law and void. She would be a usurper with no rights to the office. After King’s conviction Morgan should have left city hall instead of hosting events as the interim mayor over the weekend.
Shabazz was sworn in as mayor on June 1, 2025 at 5:35 p.m. inside city hall by at-large Councilor Dr. Patricia Blochowiak. The swearing-in was in front of witnesses that included White in her official capacity as Clerk of Council to receive Shabazz’s oath and certify the official act. Every elected official is authorized to administer oaths of office within their geographical boundaries pursuant to Section 3.24 of the Ohio Revised Code, “Administration of Oaths.”
Morgan signaled last Thursday after an email notice about her expired status from Council’s attorney, Kenneth Myers, that she didn’t agree with his analysis that her tenure was “for the duration of the public official’s suspension.” It’s a stubborn indication that like King she was going to interpret laws her way to do what she wanted.
When Morgan took to Shabazz’s Facebook page to write, “You are NOT the mayor! The Supreme Court will decide who holds the seat until the election.”
Shabazz told this writer he had hoped Morgan wouldn’t damage her grandfather’s legacy and drag the city into another embarrassing drama over a legal matter she can’t win, when R.C. 3.16(E)(4) is clear that her term was only for the duration of King’s suspension. He understood that Morgan was handicapped by being stuck with unethical and incompetent attorney Heather McCollough for advice. Shabazz has promised to terminate McCollough and cautioned Morgan that any advice she’s giving her is based on her self-interest.
He said Morgan was also handicapped because she had no working knowledge of the city’s charter and ordinances, or its complex knot of yet-to-be detected and unsolvable issues that King’s criminal misconduct with Michael Smedley, Hemmons, McCollough and others had embedded into the bureaucracy. Shabazz said Morgan walked into city hall alone and assumed a very difficult elected office she had not campaigned to win.
He said Morgan didn’t know she practices she was normalizing were ratifying the numerous criminal acts that had begun under King, Smedley and Hemmons before her arrival. He said the councilors battling King’s corruption with him, Blochowiak and Twon Billings, were becoming alarmed at Morgan’s growing reliance on corrupt players like McCollough and acting Chief of Police Kenneth Lundy for advice.
Lundy is expected to be indicted for entering a love relationship with the girlfriend of a murder suspect he was investigating. They moved in together and he impregnated her. She eventually revealed that Lundy created false evidence to get him out of the way. Prosecuting Attorney Michael O’Malley was forced to seek Jerry Sims’ freedom from incarceration for the homicide he’d been convicted of after Lundy’s deeds were exposed.
Blochowiak had been complaining that under Morgan, contracts were being awarded by employees that were not approved by council. Morgan doesn’t know that no law allows an employee to singularly bid, award and sign contracts. Two of King’s no bid vendors, Wendell Lovelace and Patrick Peacock, ended up with unbid $75,000 each grass cutting contracts after his suspension that were awarded to them by service department supervisor Antonio Marshall. He was simply repeating the wrong he’d learned from King under Morgan’s unknowing supervision.
Marshall declared Lovelace and Peacock to be the only responsive bidders though council had not given Morgan or King, before his suspension, the authority to seek grass cutting vendors. Lovelace’s wife, Nadia, is the King campaign finance committee treasurer who has failed to report his donations and expenditures to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.
King’s engineering vendor and the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Commission’s developer, OHM Advisors, is opening bids Morgan is required to open in the mayor’s office in violation of Section 72 of the charter. The idea of vendors opening and awarding East Cleveland’s bids is insane. They were ordered to stop in 2023 and returned to the unlawful practice after Morgan’s appointment by Russo. White certified the bidding violation and informed Morgan the bids OHM opened were void pursuant to Section 75 of the Charter. The bidding would have to be redone in compliance with Section 72 of the Charter.
Morgan had allowed an ex-employee, Dorien Hudson, who’d sent nude pictures to female workers, including McCollough, to sign a $200,000 contract with a water proofing vendor for work at the Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center. King’s employees were creating a nightmare of criminal misconduct for Morgan that she lacked the prior inside knowledge to detect.
The drama Shabazz said he doesn’t want a repeat of is what King created when he succeeded recalled ex-Mayor Gary A. Norton, Jr. in December 2016, and there were two council vacancies to fill after the election. President of Council Thomas Wheeler had been recalled along with Norton.
King declared himself to be the president of council without a vote of the remaining councilors who were required to fill the vacancy Wheeler’s recall created in the manner spelled out by law. The convicted ex-mayor’s audacious disregard for laws and rules placed him in the council presidency through his self-appointment to the office and into the mayor’s office and off council.
After his appointment to mayor in December 2016, King decided he could control the council in January 2017, so he illegally called himself appointing Ernest Smith and Ricky Pitts to the seats he and Wheeler had held. His criminally obstructive appointments came after council’s president, Nathaniel Martin, had appointed Devin Branch and Kelvin Earby to the vacant council seats.
King backed up his illegal appointees with threats to arrest Branch and Earby. His intimidation tactic worked. The gangster ex-mayor’s two unlawful appointees remained voting and stealing a $4500 salary, illegally, until after the city’s 2017 elections for mayor and council. By the time the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled that Smith and Pitts’ appointments were illegal, Smith had legally won a seat and returned to council. Smith was convicted with King on May 29, 2025 after being recalled in November 2022.
King created another drama for council when he called himself “recognizing” Martin and Mark McClain as councilors over Shabazz and Billings who had been appointed by council after they were removed from office. McClain never had the eligibility to serve on council since he’d only become a qualified elector in six months and not the required one year.
Instead of obeying Section 113(A)’s instructions in East Cleveland’s charter that mayors do not supervise the affairs of council, King decided he’d order ex-finance director Charles Iyahen and his replacement, Latasha Williams, to pay Martin and McClain the $20,000 in wages that lawfully belonged to Shabazz and Billings.
The two illegal council appointees had no problem receiving the stolen public funds for the year it took the Supreme Court to decide their presence was not unlawful. They also had no problem with King and his now fired ex-law director, Willa Mae Hemmons, using their names on fraudulent legislation and identifying them instead of Shabazz and Billings as casting votes the Clerk of Council did not record. Again, it took the Supreme Court of Ohio months to instruct the ex-thug in chief, again, that he had exceeded his authority.
Having gone through a nearly yearlong and unnecessary court drama with King that he won, Shabazz had hoped Morgan’s May 29, 2025 response to Myers came before she fully understood the laws that ended her term in office. Shabazz said Judge Russo’s authority ended when he appointed Morgan and Section 114 of East Cleveland’s charter has selected the city’s mayor.
Shabazz said he took an oath of office to enforce and not violate the charter and laws. Morgan should have taken the same oath, but White said she hasn’t found it in the council office. Shabazz described Morgan’s response on his Facebook page as regrettable.
Morgan is caught between a rock and a hard place if she attempts to suspend Section 3.16(E)(4)’s instructions that her term was for the duration of King’s suspension and not until the November 2025 election. She’s usurped the mayor’s office since receiving notice of King’s May 29, 2025 conviction, and is in a territory that could land her in violation of offenses against public administration. Morgan’s inexperience caused her to tell an audience of residents in a Board of Zoning Appeals meeting that the past illegally constituted decision-making body that King appointed the wrong members to were okay to remain because they had had established a past precedent.
Every act she’s engaged in and every document she’s signed as mayor since King’s conviction was without authority and usurpers, under Ohio law, have no rights to an elected office. To lawfully oppose Shabazz’s appointment, Morgan has to leave city hall and hire an attorney. She cannot misappropriate the city’s funds to pay for her personal legal expenses as King did with attorney Charles Tyler, James Alexander, Don McTigue and Timothy Kucharski.
Even if her legal expenses as a usurper were not personal, Section 72 of East Cleveland’s charter caps the mayor’s spending authority at $2500 without competitive bidding. Morgan would have to violate another law to direct an already busted Latasha Williams to violate laws to write a check to cover her personal legal expenses. Every expenditure over $2500 requires council’s approval.
Spending public funds to defend her usurpation would be theft in office. Morgan has already delivered information to prosecutors about Williams writing a check to cover King’s $6791 finding for recovery to the Ohio Auditor of State. Williams would be wise to close the city’s checkbooks to former interim Mayor Morgan.
Shabazz said he looks forward to working with authorities working to end the city’s corrupt practices under King. He thinks it’s unfortunate that Morgan appears to have been influenced by his bad habits. Shabazz filed a civil criminal complaint against King last March 11, 2024 where he asked the same probate court that appointed Morgan to remove him from office. They refused to hear the same charges the Ohio Ethics Commission investigated and transmitted to the Cuyahoga County grand jury that brough
“You won’t see me scheming to con two foreign investors out of $10 million from the mayor’s office,” Shabazz said. “I’m here to stop the abuse of the city’s residents. Not perpetuate it. We’ve got a city to save.”
Shabazz, like Morgan, said he intends to campaign for the job in November.
