Frequently in this space we have urged judges to oppose requests from convicted criminals who committed crimes while serving on the public payroll.

Our position has not changed, but our approach should. While we, once again, will stress the importance of maintaining for public inspection — not erasing from the public eye — conviction records of Ohio’s public servants, this time we urge our Ohio lawmakers to take action necessary to keep it that way. It’s our state legislators who should introduce and pass legislation limiting the courts’ ability to erase cases involving crimes committed by those on the public payroll.

That should include those who serve the taxpayers in roles like elected or appointed officials, safety service officers or any other position in which their paychecks come from the taxpayers. Certainly, anyone whose pay originates from tax dollars should be held to a standard higher than those in the private sector.

This call for legislative change comes after a third failed attempt this week by former Bazetta police Chief Reggie L. Potts to seal his records on 1993 and 1994 convictions for theft in office, tampering with records and falsification.

The theft-in-office felony conviction in 1993 involved non-police personnel driving a car loaned from the department, while the falsification conviction involved false information about a man who had not worked for the department. These offenses occurred in the late 1980s. The tampering charge in 1994 was linked to police drug records. That offense occurred on or about Jan. 1, 1991, through March 1992.

A written decision released Monday by Trumbull County Common Pleas Court Judge W. Wyatt McKay correctly denied Potts’ attempt at expungement because, as McKay noted, Potts’ request does not meet the criteria set by state law to have his criminal record expunged.

That criteria dealt specifically with issues stemming from things like the number of convictions — not the fact that Potts was the police chief of an Ohio township when the crimes were committed.

It’s that fact that, we believe, warrants prohibition against expungement.

In fact, we believe that any public official or employee who violates the public trust by committing crimes while on the public payroll is so important that maintaining those records for public access far outweighs the interest of the defendant in having those records sealed.

Without a doubt, police officers, elected officials — or anyone who is being paid by taxpayers, for that matter — should know better from the beginning.

With an expunged record, nothing is standing in the way of any attempts to seek public employment again, or even public office in the future.

Any time a public employee or official commits a crime in public office, that crime doesn’t have just one victim. Rather, it has a rippling effect on thousands of victims. Those victims include every taxpayer he or she represented when the crime was committed.

editorial@tribtoday.com