CLEVELAND, OH – Jeffrey Johnson had no legal right to serve on Cleveland city council after he married and lived with his wife and her two children in Twinsburg; and should have “forfeited” in obedience to state residency laws for public officials. The state’s “residency requirements for public officials” are clear. The boldfaced words in the preceding paragraph are the actual caption of section 3.15 of the Revised Code of Ohio.
3.15 Residency requirements for public officials. (A) Except as otherwise provided in division (B) of this section, at all times during one’s term of office: (1) Each member of the general assembly and each elected voting member of the state board of education shall be a resident of the district the member represents. (2) Each judge and each elected officer of a court shall be a resident of the territory of that court. (3) Each person holding an elective office of a political subdivision shall be a resident of that political subdivision. (4) Each member of a municipal legislative authority who represents a ward shall be a resident of the ward the member represents, and each member of a board of education of a city school district who represents a subdistrict shall be a resident of the subdistrict the member represents. (B) Any person who fails to meet any of the requirements of division (A) of this section that apply to the person shall forfeit the office. Division (A) of this section applies to persons who have been either elected or appointed to an elective office. Division (A) of this section does not apply to a member of the general assembly or the state board of education, to a member of a municipal legislative authority who represents a ward, or to a member of a board of education of a city school district who represents a subdistrict, during the remainder of the member’s existing term of office after there is a change in the member’s district’s, ward’s, or subdistrict’s boundaries that leaves the member’s permanent residence outside the district, ward, or subdistrict.
Had Johnson obeyed the law above, the $10,000 he collected between East Side Market developer Arthur Fayne’s wife, Gina Fayne, and NEON’s CEO Willie Austin wouldn’t be listed on his 2017 campaign finance report as evidence of his accepting “a thing of value” from the contractor and health agency director his lack of legislative oversight was helping to empower their fraudulent invoicing scheme. His name would not be again be on the lips of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and the prosecutors in the United States Department of Justice who have obtained an indictment against Fayne.
Fayne’s bank records were obtained by federal agents. They know everybody who received a check.
Johnson should assume information like this is and more is available on him in the FBI’s full criminal investigation file of the facts that led to Fayne’s federal indictment. He should assume he’ll be, again, facing “federal” questions about how he avoided discharging his oversight duties to enforce laws to disobey them as he enriched himself with campaign funds that came from their theft and misappropriation of health care dollars.
Johnson wasn’t using the office of a member of council to oversee the successful development of the Glenville Shopping Center. He was actively pushing his “dream” to make himself look like he was doing something.
Johnson was using the office to acquire “things of value” for himself like he did the first time the Hobbs Act violator was indicted by the United States Department of Justice on March 4, 1998; after FBI agents arrested him for “caught on tape” request for $17,000 in bribes from Aly Hamed. He was facing up to 20 years in prison.
At least he’s not cheap like former Councilman Robert White and his $500 dolla holla bribe that got him convicted. Emmanuel Onunwor’s cut of the $10,0000 a month Nate Gray got off the OMI/CH2M Hill contract was $700. Jungle money.
Mayor Frank Jackson has “mandatory” oversight duties to supervise, pursuant to section 733.34 of the Revised Code of Ohio, the conduct of all the city’s officers and employees. He’s supposed to be the “punisher” instead of the “enabler” of criminal misconduct.
Annually, every “subrecipient” receiving federal and city dollars are supposed to be “audited” or “monitored.” At some point Austin and board chairman Rodney Thomas should have received a “site visit” from a designee of Jackson wanting to see the books if they received city funds.
Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell told EJBNEWS Johnson was promoting the development project to him when the city’s wards were redrawn after the last census; and he inherited the project as one his former colleague asked him to support. Johnson is now employed as a bailiff by former Atlanta, Georgia resident Mona Scott. The city newcomer was elected to the housing court in 2017.
The federal investigation that resulted in the late Judge Raymond Pianka receiving a visit by agents of the U.S. Department of Treasury for his collusion with James Rokakis and Gus Frangos at the county landbank is ongoing. Rokakis recently resigned as the landbank’s director. Pianka died of a heart attack within two weeks after his talk with federal agents. There’s no difference in the practices of the housing court that got a panicky Pianka his heart attack inducing visit from federal agents. Scott’s kept rolling right along.
Conwell said he had no idea Austin’s last year’s earnings were $511,000; and that his wages for managing a $24 million federally-funded health agency had exceeded $400,000 a year over the past 5 years. He said board chairman Rev. Rodney Thomas has problems.
“You [this writer] were a mayor with more responsibility and a bigger budget and you were paid $40,000. He earns more than Mayor Jackson. More than the President of the United States. This is money that’s being taken from poor people that would improve their health and it’s not right,” Conwell said. “The board is going to have to answer a lot of questions.”
Johnson went through great “lying” and “deceptive” lengths to remain on council and involved in the East Side Market deal during his 2017 campaign for mayor from Twinsburg. Attorney Inajo Chappelle works for Ulmer & Berne and chairs the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. Cleveland city council and Jackson control the school and CMHA boards feeding her law firm with contracts.
I challenged Johnson’s residency and he admitted to residing in Twinsburg as a married man with his family. The home at Parkgate in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood was one in which Johnson claimed he intended to return. The state’s residency law and Chappelle’s authority ended with his admission to being married with a family in Twinsburg.
Johnson would have had no fundraising success campaigning for Cleveland mayor as a Twinsburg resident had he obeyed the state’s residency law for elected officials and forfeited as he was mandated to do by the state law. He had no legal authority to be using Cleveland’s public office to communicate with Winston or Fayne as a Twinsburg resident on Cleveland’s council; and in truth was obstructing them from interacting with an “authorized” official of the municipal corporation with his own criminal scheme as he used them for campaign cash instead of obeying and advising them to obey laws.
Jackson knew Johnson wasn’t a city resident. With his duty to supervise the conduct of the city’s officers he failed to ensure that neither Fayne nor Winston were both out of compliance; or involved with a non-resident impersonating a municipal officer and his criminally-obstructive schemes to keep the office he had an individual duty to forfeit.
Johnson’s legislative influence over Ulmer & Berne’s Cleveland Municipal School District and Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) contracts appears to have compelled Chappelle to twist a ruling that accepted his “intent to return” claim instead of applying the residency statute for candidates pursuant to Title 35 of the Revised Code of Ohio as written. Johnson returned to Cleveland and moved to a home once home by Mayor Carl Stokes in Shaker Square. The lying politician didn’t return to Glenville even when he ran for the Ohio Senate after losing for mayor in 2017.
Johnson’s campaign finance reports for 2017 also show him receiving an in-kind donation from attorney Dynda Thomas’ Glenville Commons that rents to Oak Tree Health Care at 10553 St. Clair Avenue. $625 a month in free rent for 7 months. An extra thing of value from NEON’s competitor.
It’s difficult to feel any sympathy towards Johnson as a review of the records associated with NEON’s misappropriation of federal care funds that made their way to his campaign through Winston and Fayne through his wife is what it is: evidence of monies intended to benefit the poor being misdirected away from the poor by people who look like the poor and who the poor should have been able to trust. He’s a Case Western Reserve University-educated attorney. Johnson’s got no excuse “not” to know the laws he has duties to obey as someone I competed with for the Glenville council seat in 1984 after Mike White joined the Ohio Senate as Morris Jackson’s replacement.
There were nine of us in that race. He’s the only person among the 9 to have been indicted and convicted of a crime in any office of public trust or in their employment. The character of every other candidate was better than this career political grandstander as the years have shown.
Johnson now wants to run for the 11th Congressional District. Why? After 36 years in and around public life, including living off the taxpayers in jail, what has he got to show for that much time even in life? Johnson didn’t even father or raise a child. He married into another man’s family after his children were almost grown. Throughout his adult life Johnson lived in the duplex on Parkgate his father owned and left him and his sister.
Johnson’s going to have a story after he reads and reacts to this one; and has to explain himself all over again to those who trusted him … again. He claimed to have been “entrapped” in 1998. He seemed to neglect the truth that he was entrapped stealing. In Johnson’s mind maybe his stealing didn’t matter. Only his own selfish civil rights; and not the health rights of the poor people from whom he was stealing a public office to enrich himself. It’s why in 36 years with time off in prison he didn’t read R.C. 749.01 to know he could have fought on council and in the Ohio senate to deliver free health care and improved the laws that provided it.
Johnson even used his office to get another thing of value from Cleveland taxpayers when they paid the cost of the personal litigation from his assult on Don Bryant. He called him a “white radical type.” On Johnson’s campaign finance report for Cleveland mayor is a $25 donation from Rick Nagin.
I interviewed Nagin for my 1985 “Cleveland Perspective” talk show on AM850 WRMR. He was the head of Cleveland’s Communist Party in a nation where the National Security Act of 1950 and the Communist Control Act of 1954 outlawed Communism. He also ran the office of Dennis Kucinich, the son of an illegal Croatian immigrant, when he served in Congress.
Kucinich interviewed Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad for FOX in violation of the Logan Act of 1799 and the Espionage Act of 1917. Journalists have no authority to communicate with a foreign government’s officials simply because they’re journalists. Kucinich’s interview with Assad was exactly the type of disregard for the nation’s laws the Communist Control Act of 1954 identified as justification for criminalizing the political party Nagin led; and that Russian Bolshevik Bernie Sanders, another child of illegal aliens, is trying to infiltrate into the nation under the guise of his “Progressives.”
It seems a feeble argument for Johnson to use Bryant’s skin color and false claim about his radicalism as justification for his criminal violence against him with him taking money from Nagin; and for Cleveland taxpayers picking up the costs of the litigation and damages for his assault. Bryant, unlike Johnson, was looking out for the poor when he was questioning police chief Michael McGrath at the Glenville YMCA about the 137 bullet slaughter of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in East Cleveland in November 2012.
Johnson snatched the microphone from Bryant and committed his assault, unchecked against the American citizen, right in front of McGrath. This was supposed to be the meeting council members like Johnson claimed gave the Cleveland public the opportunity to speak about their acts during city council meetings and as public officials; instead of allowing them to speak about their acts during city council meetings like in every other city. The only “radicals” at the public meeting were Johnson and the police chief covering up for killers.
Federal law enforcement officers are not perfect and like local police make mistakes. The investigatory environment they operate in is more specific and geared towards protecting rights while at the same time investigating criminals.
Fayne’s got a conviction from 2019 that came right after he got the East Side Market open. It involves him and a cop being accused of stealing a dead man’s home by the dead man’s mother. Now this. He also has a past. He wants to have some type of future.
He’s the first piece to fall in this network of criminals and all I’ve done is follow the public records. The FBI has a guy with a past who wants a future; and he’s on record as passing money around to politicians who ignored duties to investigate his fake invoices and gambling habit. The story I see unfolding is not going to be pretty. The net the FBI and USDOJ is casting is wide.
The easiest job in the United States of America is that of an elected or appointed public official administered an oath of office to obey two constitutions, federal, state and local laws that are free and online; and written in plain English that requires no interpretation. The problem is getting curve graded politicians and bureaucrats to read and obey them as written in plain English.
At least Jeff’s parents don’t have to be embarassed at their lazy-azzed and self-entitled son fucking up again. His wife’s smart enough to cut her losses. She’s filed for an annulment.
[All photos fairly used for educational purposes].
