CLEVELAND, OH – The most incompetent mayor in Ohio did not attend the June 20, 2023 Financial Planning & Supervision Commission (FPSC) meeting to learn if the state was going to reduce East Cleveland’s 2023 appropriations to 85 percent of the 2022 budget. The 2022 budget was $30.5 million. Eighty-five percent is $25.9 million. It’s equal to the amount council authorized East Cleveland Mayor Brandon L. King to spend for 2023.
King’s greed got the best of him and he wanted a $36 million budget for a city that’s taking in less than $16 million in taxes. His goal this year has been to siphon off as much of the $27 million federal American Rescue Plan Act money to feed his interests as possible. He’s been doling out $300 and $3000 “stimulus” payments to residents of his choice without legislative permission or oversight. He personally handed out stimulus checks to voters he drove to the polls last year to vote against his recall. He’s even accused of using the federal money to bribe voters who signed recall petitions against Council President Juanita Gowdy, Vice President Patricia Blochowiak and Korean Stevenson. King advised the FPSC in April that he had unlawfully ignored council’s $26 million appropriations ordinance and was spending the $36 million he wanted.
King’s no-show presence was blamed on his being on vacation, though the new $49,000 gray Chevy Silverado 2500 pickup truck he’d purchased a week earlier – without council or FPSC approval – was parked in his space at city hall. The second floor window to the mayor’s office was open.
The $49,000 Chevy Silverado compliments the more than $50,000, 2019 black Chevy Tahoe King also drives to his home at 20230 Glen Russ Lane in Euclid, Ohio. Euclid is the city where King claims to be a “dual resident” with his weekend Cleveland Clinic nurse practitioner wife, Stephanie Marie McCarroll-King. King rushed to create the $49,000 new truck debt knowing it would already be encumbered once the FPSC was empowered to approve his future expenditures.
Council President Juanita Gowdy wants the $49,000 truck returned to the dealer and the city’s money returned to its treasury. Council knows nothing about the transaction or the dealership from whom King purchased the truck. The 2023 budget did not include yet another vehicle for the city’s selfish mayor to drive. Gowdy said she long ago lost all patience with King’s misconduct in office; and wants authorities to intervene, forcefully, to stop what she describes as his “stealing.”
King directed the payroll clerk / unsworn interim director of finance, Latasha Williams, to pay for his truck from the school safety zone fund. Instead of being spent on school safety the grant money is now King’s personal slush fund. He’s got the perfect finance director in Williams who doesn’t know it’s her duty to obey laws and not the mayor when he’s not obeying laws. If she knew laws, Williams would be reminding King of her duty to obey them during their interactions. She would have known not to write a check for the truck; and not to give him password access to the city’s accounts. In less than 30 days on the job, Williams has made herself a “person of interest” in federal and state criminal investigations.
Pursuant to Section 118.05 of the Ohio Revised Code, the mayor and council have always been required to obtain prior FPSC approval before creating any debts since the city returned to fiscal emergency under recalled ex-Mayor Gary A. Norton, Jr. on October 9, 2012. To keep from appearing so pathetically incompetent, King tells his gullible supporters East Cleveland has always been in fiscal emergency. It’s a lie.
Ohio Auditor of State Thomas Ferguson originally placed East Cleveland in fiscal emergency on September 9, 1988 at the request of the late Councilwoman H. Elizabeth Omar. The late Mayor Darryl E. Pittman presided over the city and the reason for his fiscal emergency was his deficits in the water department. The city was released from fiscal emergency on February 6, 2006, one month after I was sworn in as mayor. We operated without state oversight during all four years of my administration until my last day in office on December 31, 2009. Norton returned the city to fiscal emergency, with an $11 million deficit, 33 months after I left office.
The FPSC had given King a deadline of June 20, 2023 to use his management brilliance to think of ways to save and generate funds; and list his ideas in a 5-year financial forecast. He also had to get council to approve it. The derelict mayor never completed the 5-year forecast. His only discussion about it with council was to arrogantly tell legislators to review the last document he gave them. On June 23, 2023, three days after the FPSC meeting and vote he failed to attend, council received an outdated 5-year forecast from private attorney Willa Mae Hemmons that hadn’t been updated since 2020.
King’s failure to comply with the FPSC demonstrates his refusal to obey laws and management incompetence; and shows how it affects employee jobs and city services for East Cleveland residents, property and business owners. The tall grass will only get worse as he’s forced to layoff workers, cancel contracts and realign the municipal workforce to discharge essential, statutory services. It’s no mystery why he’s spent over $30,000 this year in an unapproved and unbudgeted contract with Shred-it to destroy public records weekly without council and the public’s knowledge and permission. King has his secrets.
His is an administration that lets a vendor, OHM Advisors, write its own legislative requests for contracts that it submits to private attorney and law director impersonator, Hemmons; who submits them to council. Hemmons has admitted she doesn’t write OHM Advisor’s legislation because she’s busy; but has never told council its legislation is vendor-created.
King’s even got OHM Advisor officials opening bids during non-public bid openings and recommending contractors. The vendor then holds onto bid documents instead of delivering them to the council office as East Cleveland’s charter requires. Anyone with statutory knowledge of municipal bureaucracies can readily see the administrative practices of the King administration do not resemble the instructions to mayors found in constitutions, charters and laws.
A DOUBLE DOSE OF BAD NEWS FOR MAYOR KING
King appears to have avoided attending the monthly FPSC meeting to keep from hearing the bad news Chairwoman Barbara Mattei-Smith delivered about his irresponsibly reckless, deficit-growing spending habits. Instead of projecting a $30 million deficit over the next 5 years, like the mayor and his former finance director, Charles Iyahen, told the FPSC in March, the Ohio Auditor of State is contradicting King with the prediction that his 5-year deficit forecast will double to over $60 million.
At its June 20, 2023 meeting, in addition to reducing the city’s 2023 budget to 85 percent of the 2022 budget, the FPSC limited King to paying only current wages and debts. He can’t create any new debts without the FPSC chairwoman’s approval irrespective of what he think is the mayor’s spending authority. All of the public improvement projects he wants to give OHM Advisors engineering firm must be approved in advance by the FPSC. Even if he wants to give 3-D Moore no-bid demolition contracts to demolish properties, King can’t award them without the FPSC chairwoman’s prior approval.
The commission’s chairwoman, Mattei-Smith, also delivered more bad news to the mayor’s administration about his line item veto of the 2023 budget. Senior Assistant Attorney General Chad Kohler authored an April 27, 2023 opinion that King lacked the authority to veto the $26 million 2023 budget council approved. He, also, had no authority to spend the $36 million he penciled into the budget over council’s $10 million in reductions once his veto was overridden. King didn’t know what the word “void” meant as it pertains to line item vetoes; although the instruction is written in plain English under Section 113(E) of the city’s charter.
“The Mayor may approve or disapprove the whole of any item or part of any ordinance or resolution appropriating money, and the whole item or part so disapproved shall be void unless repassed by the Council in the manner herein prescribed.”
In relation to the mayor’s veto authority the word “void” is interpreted as “zero.” Once he vetoed line items the amount council appropriated was reduced to zero dollars. King couldn’t write in his own amounts. That’s what director of law impersonator Hemmons should have advised King and the council. Council’s budget didn’t include her wages so Hemmons’ self-serving advice to King included a wrong legal interpretation that benefited her and caused him to continue down a criminal path that created conflict with council. Kohler explained that Hemmons cited four inapplicable court rulings to justify the mayor’s derelict violation of Section 113(E) of the Charter.
It wasn’t just Hemmons’ wages she called herself using a bogus legal opinion to protect. Michael Smedley and McCollough’s were gone. Not only were their wages removed from the 2023 appropriations, council vacated the offices of director and deputy director of law on January 26, 2023. Kohler, by implication, has proved Hemmons uses legal opinions as a criminal tool to protect her unlawful interest in the public employment contract the mayor is violating Council’s 2023 appropriations to continue paying her. The same with McCollough. Not one time have they appeared before council to explain a legal action that was filed against the city; or to seek legislative authority to initiate any legal claim in which the city is a party of interest. The two shysters have even made the city responsible for their defamatory statements against public records seeker Mariah Crenshaw; all without public knowledge or council approval.
King has known since at least April 27, 2023 that he lacked the authority to continue paying Smedley, Hemmons and McCollough since council removed their wages from the 2023 appropriations ordinance in January. The Ohio Attorney General reiterated King’s duty to enforce the duly enacted ordinances and resolutions of council pursuant to Section 113(A) of East Cleveland’s charter. It didn’t matter if King agreed with the budget council enacted, he had no other duty but to enforce the appropriations ordinance once council overrode his veto.
The Ohio Attorney General’s opinion supported council’s claims that King was criminally derelict in discharging the fiscal duties of the mayor’s office; when he and ex-finance director Charles Iyahen recklessly exceeded the amount council appropriated in numerous line items. The criminal complaint council submitted to Judge William Dawson – seeking charges against King and Iyahen on April 6, 2023 – has not been assigned to a visiting judge as more evidence against the criminally derelict duo has been uncovered. Iyahen’s wife is former Clerk of Court Wendy Howard.
One of Howard’s duties was to process East Cleveland city council and the clerk of council’s request for criminal charges to be filed against King and her ex-finance director husband in Dawson’s court. Howard was supposed to be handling the Dawson court’s request to the Supreme Court of Ohio for a visiting judge to discharge duties that would allow the judge not to have to choose between council and the mayor. Her husband resigned four days after the complaint was filed against him. Iyahen’s last day was April 21, 2023. Howard resigned on May 4, 2023; with an effective date of May 5, 2023. Dawson learned King’s former finance director, Iyahen, and his wife, Howard, were involved in a scheme that gave her $107,000 a year instead of the $64,500 he’d approved.
Because she used the Clerk of Court’s office to protect King and her husband, city hall sources say King wants to reward Howard by paying the 1000 hours of unused vacation and sick time she actually lost for not using it. East Cleveland has a “use it or lose it” policy when it comes to unused vacation, sick and compensatory time that King and his human resources director, Jamikia Burton, do not enforce. Howard wants the money at the $107,000 salary she wasn’t authorized to receive instead of the $64,500 salary she was authorized to receive. Dawson is saying no. It’s another example of the financial turmoil the city is involved in because of King’s refusal to live on his side of the government aisle and obey the laws mayors must enforce.
King and Burton have been obstructing Dawson’s decision to transfer and pay King’s former chief accountant, Valencia Meeks, to replace Howard as Clerk of Court. The mayor doesn’t want a judge who’s got three criminal complaints about him in front of his court; knowing from his former chief accountant that he’s as criminally derelict and corrupt as accused. It’s Meeks who’s now responsible for processing council and the clerk of council’s criminal complaints against King through the visiting judge Dawson said he asked the Supreme Court of Ohio to assign.
Dawson trumped King by appointing the mayor’s former chief accountant who knows how he, Iyahen and Howard were mishandling the court’s funds. It’s Dawson, not King, who should be purchasing the court’s new $104,000, unfitted, conference table. King has made himself the purchasing agent for every branch and department of East Cleveland’s municipal government; just as he’s made himself a signer on the city’s bank and grant fund accounts with password access and funds transfer authority. This is a mayor who directs employees to order business products from Amazon instead of local vendors. He’s slick enough to create an Amazon affiliate account to get a secret commission off the city’s orders.
Mattei-Smith’s legal opinion came from the office of Ohio Attorney General David Yost and the commission voted to release it to the public. It makes any legal opinion King received from fired private attorney Hemmons a fraudulent lie. King had falsely claimed in the February 2023 commission meeting how an Ohio attorney general had told him a law director’s legal opinion became the law. That’s not what the state attorney wrote about Hemmons’ legal opinions in his harsh analysis of it.
“The mayor previously relied on an advisory memo submitted to him by the city Law Director. However, the cases cited in the Law Director’s memo do not support the proposition that the mayor has the power to re-appropriate vetoed items.”
If King knew how to read below the surface of Hemmons’ legal opinions, the same way the Attorney General did, he wouldn’t have invested the past six months building a criminal dereliction of duty paper trail of exceeded budget line items. There’s no section of the Ohio Revised Code, or East Cleveland’s Charter and Codified Ordinances, which supports King’s ridiculous claim that Hemmons’ legal opinions replace laws.
One of King’s fatal management beliefs is he thinks the mayor has the authority to spend up to $50,000 without competitive bidding and council approval. King doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to know, Section 72 of East Cleveland’s charter limits the mayor’s spending authority without competitive bidding to $2500.
There are a series of Ohio laws, beginning with R.C. 735.05 and ending at R.C. 735.27, that instruct municipal officials how to spend up to $50,000 without competitive bidding, but with council approval. There is no section of the charter, ordinance or state law that authorizes King, in his official capacity as East Cleveland’s mayor, to spend more than $2500 without an ordinance of the council that approves goods and services to be purchased by him without competitive bidding.
KING IS OPERATING WITHOUT THE OATH SWORN DIRECTORS THE CHARTER REQUIRES
Currently, King has no authorized and oath sworn director of law, no oath sworn and bonded director of finance, no director of public service and no director of public health. Acting chief of police Brian Gerhard’s temporary 180 day calendar year appointment expires on June 30, 2023. He is prohibited by local and state civil service laws from remaining in the chief of police’s job past that date.
The temporary payroll clerk King appointed to replace Iyahen as finance director, Williams, has no oath of office filed with the clerk of council and no bond with an amount determined and approved by council. King, not council as required by law, established the minimum qualifications for the job. Williams hadn’t completed her probationary period as a payroll clerk before King bypassed the chief accountant, Meeks, to appoint the former temporary worker to manage all of the city’s finances.
King was relying on Williams to know enough about the city’s finances to help him create the 5-year financial forecast; just as he relied on her to write the $49,000 check for his 2024 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 truck. Meeks was removed by King as Iyahen’s replacement after she refused to sign off on an unauthorized payment of $2 million to the Cleveland Metroparks and the $49,000 truck King wanted for himself. King also wanted password access to the city’s U.S. Bank account and wanted to personally handle the transfer of school safety zone grant funds. Federal and state investigators reviewing the King administration’s corruption should assume Williams has given him the account access he sought.
Council never authorized King to become the authorized treasury management signer on the city’s U.S. Bank or grant accounts. U.S. Bank government accounts officials failed to validate that King was authorized by a resolution of council to be granted check writing, check signing, funds transfer, account opening and closing authority. King’s criminally direct access to the funds of the city’s finances trashes all internal controls that make the director of finance or treasurer the responsible fiscal officer. It exceeds the authority Ohio laws and East Cleveland’s charter and ordinances grants a mayor.
Three sections of East Cleveland’s charter, codified ordinances and state laws order Williams, as the director of finance, to attend every meeting of council; and to answer council’s questions about the city’s finances. Williams has attended none and doesn’t realize she can be criminally charged with dereliction of duty for discharging the director of finance’s statutory duties without an oath of office and bond. Section 731.49 of the Ohio Revised Code gives council the authority to vacate the jobs of employees when they work before their oaths of office are filed with the clerk of council.
“The legislative authority of a municipal corporation may declare vacant the office of any person elected or appointed to such office who, within ten days after he has been notified of his appointment or election, or obligation to give a new or additional bond, fails to take the required official oath or to give any bond required of him.”
The unbonded payroll clerk’s continued presence in an office Williams has no legal authority to hold serves as another reminder of King’s recklessly derelict mismanagement of East Cleveland’s finances. By failing to deliver an oath of office and bond to the Clerk of Council, and discharging the director of finance’s duties without completing the process, Williams is obstructing the city’s official business from a usurped public office.
WHY KING’S $60 MILLION DEFICIT WILL GROW LARGER
The $60 million deficit King has created as a debt for East Cleveland taxpayers will grow larger as more Americans file civil rights claims against the city for his criminally-violent, Third World policing practices. King’s respect for law and constitutional rights is so offensive he hired or supervised 18 East Cleveland organized criminals who impersonated police officers; and who have been indicted by the Cuyahoga County prosecuting attorney since September 2022. The son of a West Indian alien operates like he was raised under the foreign political consciousness of brutal Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier and his Tonton Macoute instead of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. The police he supervises obey his orders instead of constitutions and laws.
Nowhere is this more evident than during council meetings when he obstructs police from removing his unruly resident supporters when the president of council orders it as the city’s codified ordinances require. Police discharging council’s sergeant-at-arms duties during meetings are dutybound to obey the president of council and not the mayor.
The unlawful arrests and criminal charges King’s brutal police organized crime gang used against innocent Americans were ratified by malicious attorneys Hemmons and McCollough. They ignored the civil rights abuses FBI agents and the Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney found in East Cleveland police body and dash cams. Instead of criminally charging the police, Hemmons and McCollough filed criminal charges against their victims and defended the police impersonators King assigned a twice convicted felon, Scott Gardner, to manage. Gardner pleaded two previous felony indictments down to misdemeanors and his Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy certifications should have been revoked. King appointed him chief of police without a civil service test.
Instead of dispensing “justice” from East Cleveland’s prosecuting attorney’s office, the two disgraceful attorneys defended and conspired with the police criminals in violating the constitutional rights of American citizens under the “color of law.” The largest claim filed against the city’s taxpayers won the plaintiff, Arnold Black, a $50 million verdict. The Supreme Court of Ohio handed Hemmons another defeat this year when the justices ruled that East Cleveland taxpayers must pay Charles Hunt, and the late Marilyn Conard’s estate, $12 million spread out in 10 percent payments over the next 10 years.
To highlight King’s complete disregard for logic, he just appointed the police officer I fired during my term as mayor in 2008 for Hunt and Conard’s $12 million injuries, Todd Carroscia. King elevated him to commander as a replacement for indicted ex-cop Larry McDonald. When Carroscia crossed East Cleveland’s border into Cleveland, and injured Hunt and Conard, he was illegally driving a public safety vehicle with a suspended drivers license. Conard has since died from the injuries she sustained from Carroscia crashing into the car in which she was a passenger. It is King’s failure to hold dirty cops accountable that has empowered them to engage in acts that cost East Cleveland taxpayers millions in civil rights litigation.
KING’S COMING AFTER EVERY EAST CLEVELAND RESIDENT’S CAR AS A WAY TO CURE HIS $60 MILLION DEFICIT
King thinks he’ll cure the projected $60 million deficit he created by raising impound fees and directing police to tow more cars from the 13,000 East Cleveland residents who haven’t fled the city. He’s towed well over 5000 already. Even if King collected $175 in towing fees from each of the city’s 13,000 residents, by abusing police powers to take their vehicles, the amount generated is only $2,275,000. The mayor’s other big deficit reducing idea is as crazed as his tow-every-car-for-profit scheme.
King told the FPSC at its February 2023 meeting to let him keep adding to his deficit until 200 new housing units are built and higher income residents relocate to the city. It is an answer that causes the listener to question if it’s not just the mayor’s drug trafficking felon brother he described as a mentally ill hoarder, who is the only mentally ill member of the household. King’s financial recovery suggestions raises questions about his own mental status. The income taxes of 200 new residents won’t replace the income taxes lost from former Huron Hospital’s 1100 workers and the 600 workers General Electric once employed.
There’s another problem with King’s car towing-for-profit scheme. In January 2023 Council ordered King to close the city’s impound lot in response to the FPSC’s suggestion. There are no records showing city legislators authorizing him and Smedley to negotiate and enter a contract with Kufner Towing.
King is what East Cleveland gets for electing a mayor whose only skill is his proud possession of a commercial drivers license to drive trucks. Though he has masters degrees in business administration, finance and real estate between Ohio University and Cleveland State University, Ward 3 Councilman Lateek Shabazz has noted King’s resume doesn’t include any corporations or governments that trusted him to manage its business and affairs. Not even a McDonald’s or Subway restaurant franchise; or a sneaker store. His East Cleveland real estate includes his own alleged family-owned residence that was cited for being an illegal dumpsite by a city inspector on March 23, 2023.
King has no choice but to beg East Cleveland voters for tax increases to give him more money to misappropriate on himself. He’s a former councilman the Ohio Ethics Commission warned in December 2016 not to lease office space to the city after he assumed office as mayor. King ignored the warning to keep the $14,100 in annual rent payments. He’s brought none of the lease agreements the city enters with his family’s commercial property before the council to approve.
