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Former mayor left holding bag
(by Dave Lange - April 05, 2012)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Former mayor left holding bag
According to the Ohio Elections Commission, Robert A. Paulson should still be the mayor of Solon.
OK, that's a stretch by 14 years. But the fact is, after serving in the city's highest office for 10 years, Mr. Paulson was defeated in his 1997 re-election bid by just 281 votes out of 6,723 that were cast that November. And there's no doubt that his defeat was brought on by a multimillion-dollar, ongoing FBI investigation, which eventually culminated with a petty charge of mixing $3,000 or $4,000 from his campaign fund with personal expenses. Making the charge even more petty was the fact that the accounting was corrected even before the FBI witch hunt was launched.
Fast forward to February 2012. That's when the Ohio Elections Commission, in a 4-2 vote, decided that it's perfectly legal for former Cuyahoga County Sheriff Gerald McFaul to pay $127,000 in court-ordered restitution from his campaign fund.
The restitution was ordered by retired Geauga County Common Pleas Court Judge H.F. Inderlied, who also placed the ex-sheriff under house arrest and on five years of probation upon his guilty plea in 2010 in the theft of $130,000. He gets to use his dormant campaign fund for the personal use of paying back money that he stole from the same campaign fund for his personal use.
Clearly, the $130,000 taken from Mr. McFaul's campaign fund with no intention of replenishing it is a lot more money than the $3,000 or $4,000 that was used from Mr. Paulson's campaign fund and then replaced.
Unlike the ex-sheriff, who faced a visiting judge in the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas, the ex-mayor faced his charges in federal court. Threatened with eight years in federal prison and fines of up to $350,000, the broken Mr. Paulson eventually pleaded guilty to one count of filing a false federal income-tax return and one count of mail fraud.
According to the Ohio Elections Commission, its ruling on Mr. McFaul was based on a recommendation by Mr. Inderlied, but there was no reflection of that in the court records, and the judge himself disputed it.
This grotesque inequity in law enforcement is nothing new. The late U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, whose congressional district included part of the Chagrin Valley, was caught by the Federal Election Commission with her hand in her campaign till in 2003 for the purchase of jewelry, art and clothing, among other personal expenses.
The amount of those purchases came to $8,311, about double the amount that Mr. Paulson was accused of taking from his campaign fund. The former Solon mayor was caught after returning his funds, while Ms. Tubbs Jones said she intended to return hers only after she was caught. Her punishment amounted to some mild public embarrassment but no legal repercussions.
While Mr. Paulson is a Republican and Mr. McFaul is a Democrat, as was Ms. Tubbs Jones, I cannot say that partisan politics played a role in this system of injustice. What I do know is that Ms. Tubbs Jones is fondly remembered as a hero in Greater Cleveland, Mr. Paulson is remembered as a scoundrel by many people in Solon, and Mr. McFaul was on vacation in Florida when the Ohio Elections Commission gave him a $127,000 bonus.
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