YOUNGSTOWN - The Mahoning County Board of Elections director and a worker never served the job suspensions they were issued for errors made during the 2009 general election.
The Mahoning County Board of Elections ordered the suspension because they failed to send ballot language to political entities with countywide issues on the 2009 general election ballot.
Director Tom McCabe confirmed this week that neither he nor clerk Danielle O'Neill have served their three and five-day unpaid suspensions.
The disciplinary action was supposed to be taken against McCabe and O'Neill toward the end of November, after the election had been certified; however, it was delayed until the results of a Mahoning County Sheriff's Office investigation opened in the matter were complete, said Mark Munroe, elections board member.
Munroe said the investigation is done, but requests to be provided the information were denied.
''I do recall talking with Tom (McCabe), let's wait for the results of the investigation because we thought the results might be released in a matter of days or weeks, which would put some context to what this whole thing was about,'' said Munroe, also the Mahoning County Republican Party chairman.
Sheriff Randall Wellington said this week, though, that the complaint was determined to be unfounded. However, he said nothing was documented in the investigation and that he doesn't believe a written report was ever submitted.
''We found nothing criminal there, nothing that was improper,'' Wellington recalled.
The Board of Elections has not formally rescinded the suspension order.
The suspensions resulted from O'Neill failing to send the ballot language regarding the county's half-percent sales tax and levies sought by Mahoning County Children Services and Mahoning County library system to those political subdivisions.
At first, it was thought the county was the only entity to not receive the language; however, it was later determined the other subdivisions also did not. The elections board routinely sends entities ballot language as a courtesy.
McCabe's time off was for lax oversight.
The incident sparked speculation that there were attempts to derail the sales tax. Then Munroe called the assertions ridiculous. Now, he says, the public derserves to know the outcome.