Reform-minded medical examiner coming to town

Even death can be reformed.

So we learn today, as Ed FitzGerald announces the bona fides of his latest appointee: Dr. Thomas Gilson, the No. 2 coroner in Connecticut, his pick for Cuyahoga County medical examiner.

“Dr. Gilson was credited for reforming and turning around the Rhode Island Office of the Medical Examiner," FitzGerald said in a statement. "When Tom arrived, the office had long delays for service and was not accredited by the National Association of Medical Examiners, but he changed that." Gilson also reportedly worked through a two-year backlog of autopsy reports. (I hope that means the writing of reports, not a backlog of bodies on ice.)

A crusading, reform-minded medical examiner may just be what Cuyahoga County needs right now. FitzGerald needs Gilson to help sort out whether departing coroner Frank Miller brought on any patronage hires. The FBI, prodded by the Plain Dealer, is looking into whether or not Bill Mason or a Mason deputy nudged Miller into hiring Strongsville councilman Patrick Coyne, who's been implicated but not charged in the county corruption investigation. FitzGerald's administration, in turn, is re-examining other hires at the coroner's office for possible ties to Coyne.

Gilson's nomination ends Cuyahoga County's long, weird era of the politician-coroner. Yes, our chief cadaverist ran for election every four years, flummoxing voters who had to figure out whether there was truly a Republican or Democratic way to autopsy. But we haven't had a hard-fought, fiercely partisan coroner's race since 1936, when Samuel Gerber defeated Arthur J. Pearse and took charge of the Torso Murders investigation. Since then, the coroner's office, like most of our county government, has been a Democratic barony, an office where the science of death investigation mingled with the art of one-party rule.

FitzGerald replaces engineer, coroner, children's services director

Here comes the ax. After a quiet first month as county executive, Ed FitzGerald announces that four county officials are heading out the door.

FitzGerald won't keep engineer Robert Klaiber, who failed to notice how his top deputies corrupted his office. He's saying goodbye to coroner Frank Miller, who hired corruption-implicated Strongsville councilman Pat Coyne, then blamed Bill Mason. He's showing the door to Deb Forkas, head of children and family services, who's been held accountable for the deaths of six kids in families her agency monitored. He's also replacing Susan Axelrod, head of senior and adult services.

It's FitzGerald's second dramatic break with the past this week. Wednesday, he announced that four county employees elected to suburban city councils as Democrats will have to resign from either their council seats or their county jobs.

Interestingly, three of them are Parma councilmen: Brian Day, Tom Regas, and Roy Jech. You may remember Regas as Bill Mason's drunk-driving buddy and Day from the board of revisions controversy; also, Day's brother Tom is very close to Mason. Jech is best-known lately for sticking his finger in Dale Miller's face on the Plain Dealer's front page.

The fourth, Danny Colonna, is from next door, in Brook Park. The move is part of the new government's attempt to implement civil service rules and abolish the patronage machines in the auditor's office, recorder's office, and so forth.

The next question is whether Bill Mason's employees who serve on partisan city councils will also have to resign one job or the other. Last March, the Plain Dealer reported that 11 suburban councilpeople worked in the prosecutor's office. If their towns have nonpartisan elections, they're OK. But the ones that have partisan elections may also have to choose.