Who was right about Russo? Who enabled him?

One of the saddest things about the Frank Russo bribery scandal is that it didn’t have to happen. Twelve years ago, our political system came very close to taking Russo down -- but his offenses earned him a wrist-slap.

Everyone was forewarned about Russo’s true character. But in the past 12 years, he still got away with pages and pages of misdeeds, and an alleged $1.2 million in cash, because not enough people heeded the warnings. And some of our biggest political names – Jimmy Dimora and the late Stephanie Tubbs Jones -- covered for him.

Here’s the story. Russo was appointed county auditor in January 1997 by the county Democratic Party after 13 years as county recorder. Later that year, new recorder Pat O’Malley -- of all people -- blew the whistle on Russo, calling for a special audit of “bookkeeping irregularities” in the recorder’s office. State auditor Jim Petro’s staff spent a year investigating.

“Mr. O’Malley spoke of employees paying ‘kick backs’ to the former Recorder, Frank Russo, in order to receive pay raises,” Petro wrote in his report.

The audit, released in July 1998, reported that dozens of Russo employees were allowed and encouraged to do political campaigning on county time. Attendance sheets were marked “polls” and “election day.” Employees said they passed out “combs, nail files, literature, gum and signs” at the polls. They said payroll officers told them to sign in as having worked in the office that day, and they were later allowed to take unofficial days off in exchange.

One of those payroll officers was Cindy Calabrese -- now Cindy Bialowas, sister of Russo’s housemate, Michael Calabrese. Russo appointed her to co-supervise the troubled Board of Revisions last month. Back then, Bialowas, subpoenaed by Petro’s investigators, denied granting time off for campaigning.

Three workers also told investigators they felt pressured to donate to Russo’s political campaign. Two said they were pressed to sell or buy tickets to his fund-raisers. One said she was told that employees usually donated 2 percent of their salary to Russo’s campaign. Petro’s office forwarded the statements to the county prosecutor, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, for review.

The state audit came out while Russo was running for a full term as county auditor.

That September, Jim Trakas, then county Republican chairman, brought up Russo in his debate with Jimmy Dimora at the City Club.

“The Russo name used to stand for integrity and decency in government,” Trakas said. “Today, it stands for all that is wrong in county government.” Trakas called on Tubbs Jones to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russo, noting that one of Tubbs Jones’ deputies had taken a leave of absence to manage Russo’s campaign.

Dimora, riffing on Bill Clinton’s legal troubles, joked it off.

“Please, no more special prosecutors,” the then-Democratic chairman sighed. He added, “If she feels there is enough evidence, whether it's civil or criminally, I'm sure [Tubbs Jones will] do the right thing.”

That year, Dimora loaned Russo’s campaign $15,000.

Mike Wise, Russo’s Republican opponent, used the audit against Russo in two hard-hitting campaign commercials. He called on Tubbs Jones (who died in 2008) to act on the allegations before the election. She didn’t. Voters re-elected Russo with 61 percent of the vote.

Russo could’ve faced a theft in office charge, a felony that would’ve barred him from holding office if convicted. Instead, three days before Christmas and 12 days before she left the prosecutor’s office for Congress, Tubbs Jones let Russo plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of dereliction of duty. He was sentenced to 120 days probation and agreed to pay a $750 fine and $26,000 in restitution.

At first, that earned Russo some scrutiny from his peers. The next year, county commissioner Tim McCormack, who’d preceded Russo as auditor, publicly questioned why Russo’s budget was growing. The commissioners held up approval of Russo’s leases for satellite offices until he got his budget under control. Russo tried to blame McCormack for leaving problems to clean up. But it was Russo who had increased the auditor’s staff from 237 employees to 280.

McCormack, a candidate for county executive, now says FBI agents interviewed him about jobs-for-cash allegations involving Russo a year after that, around 2000.

Russo got his revenge. He took the mike at a Democratic party meeting in late 2003 and tried to convince party members not to endorse McCormack’s re-election. Russo threw his support behind Tim Hagan, who also won strong support from business leaders and knocked off McCormack in the 2004 primary.

After that, did the commissioners ever seriously question Russo’s budget again? Not that I know of (and I’d be happy to be corrected on this). When the Plain Dealer ran its patronage exposé in 2008, Russo’s staff was still at 283.

Russo’s 14 bribery counts include a cash-for-jobs-and-raises conspiracy involving six employees -- and those are just the ones the FBI knows about. Anyone in power who says they had no idea Russo was corrupt has to contend with one tough question: After what the town learned about Russo in 1998, why weren’t you watching more closely?

ACORN investigated in Cleveland

Republicans' allegations about voter fraud by the group ACORN are spreading fast, and Cleveland is going to become ground zero in the controversy next week.

Authorities in Las Vegas raided ACORN's office there on Tuesday. They alleged that ACORN, a community organizing group that registers voters nationwide, was filing false registration cards. In Cleveland, the board of elections is looking into problems with some registrations ACORN collected: see the Plain Dealer's stories from Wednesday and from August.

The New York Post ran this story today about Freddie Johnson, a cell-phone kiosk vendor in downtown Cleveland who filled out 72 identical registration cards in exchange for cigarettes and dollar bills.

I just got two e-mails about ACORN within two minutes. Jim Trakas, Republican challenger to U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, sent out a press release calling for federal funds for ACORN to be cut off and asking why Kucinich hasn't spoken out on the issue. And the John McCain campaign just released a Web-only ad attacking Barack Obama for having allied himself with ACORN, "a group now accused of widespread voter fraud across the country." The ad is a sequel to the Web ad about former Weatherman Bill Ayers -- part of a strategy of painting Obama as radical. Meanwhile, in Columbus yesterday, a federal judge, siding with the Republican Party in its suit against the Secretary of State, cited the Las Vegas raid and Plain Dealer article as examples of why registrations have to be checked.

Before Cleveland becomes infamous again for voting troubles, let's ask a couple of questions.

When I debunked left-wing claims that Republicans stole the 2004 election in Ohio, and wrote my own articles about what really went wrong with Cleveland's elections, I decided any careful, skeptical look at voting controversies has to ask a few key questions:

-How many votes is the problem affecting? Do you have solid numbers, or just scary anecdotes?
-If you say votes are "at risk" because of the problem, how big is the risk?
-What's the cause of the problem? Are there other possible explanations besides the most sinister theory?

Voting problems scare people, for good reason. But these stories also excite partisans, feeding into their worst suspicions: The other side is evil. They will stop at nothing. They can't possibly win an election fairly, so they must cheat.

The allegations against ACORN are serious, and it's obvious they need to be investigated. From what I've read so far, though, they look a tad less ominous when you ask the questions I suggest. Wednesday's PD says elections officials have flagged "about 50 names on suspicious cards" out of 65,000 cards ACORN has submitted in Cuyahoga County. The problem seems to lie with paid canvassers, who are expected to register a certain number of people. Some of them would rather register the same person more than once or make up bum cards than do their jobs right. "Supervisors sometimes fail to prevent different canvassers from attempting to register the same person," the PD story says.

If this could lead to people voting more than once, it's very serious. If it just means the board of elections has to throw out a bunch of cards because its database catches the names as already registered, it's more of a nuisance.

I'll be writing about this again. Johnson and two other people whose names appear on multiple cards have been subpoenaed to appear at the board of elections meeting on Monday. The questions are, how many bad cards are there, why was this happening, and how big was the risk that the problem would lead to fraudulent voting?

Update, Sat. a.m.: Good skeptical story in the Plain Dealer today. The print edition headline is, "Registration fraud won't affect vote, officials say."