YOUNGSTOWN — A Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge rejected a motion for reconsideration filed by Youngstown over her decision in a longstanding case involving a police detective sergeant — and the city will appeal.
In a one-page judgment entry, Judge Maureen Sweeney rejected the city’s motion for reconsideration, writing that it “is not well-taken and therefore it is hereby ordered that such motion is overruled.”
City Deputy Law Director Adam Buente said Youngstown would file an appeal with the 7th District Court of Appeals or the Ohio Supreme Court.
The city “is highly confident that the higher courts will see through the shell game created by Mr. Cox’s counsel.”
S. David Worhatch, Cox’s attorney, said Buente “never really grasped the theory that Cox advanced in his administrative appeal.”
Sweeney agreed with Cox that he deserved to have an evidentiary hearing in front of the city’s civil service commission to consider him for a promotion to police lieutenant.
Cox has opposed the city’s decision to not promote him for five years and the Ohio Supreme Court has twice heard the case.
Sweeney ruled June 27 that Cox was correct in asserting the commission committed a “clear error” in 2019 and repeated it in 2020 “when it did not convene the evidentiary hearing in (his) timely civil service appeal expressly mandated by the city’s civil service rules.”
In his June 28 motion for reconsideration, Buente wrote Sweeney “is failing to apply the Ohio Supreme Court’s ruling on this exact issue” and is “overstepping (her) jurisdiction.”
The Supreme Court on Aug. 30 rejected the city’s arguments to dismiss the case. But it limited Cox’s arguments when it sent the case back to Sweeney.
Cox objects to how the city civil service commission ranked applicants for that lieutenant position. Mayor Jamael Tito Brown promoted William Ward to lieutenant May 20, 2019, based on scores on a written civil service test given almost a year earlier.
Cox and other detective sergeants took a promotional test in June 2018. During the test, Cox objected that portions of it were based on an outdated examination book.
The commission certified the results of the test on Aug. 15, 2018, with Ward at the top of the list and Cox finishing third, two points behind Ward. Had four questions on the test been properly scored instead of each person getting credit for all of them, Cox states he would have tied for first and based on time of service he would have been No. 1 on the test.
Cox brought the case about Brown’s decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled Aug. 18, 2021, that the officer “did not file a timely appeal” opposing the 2019 commission’s decision. But the court also ruled that the commission didn’t provide “a final and appealable order” to him about the decision.
In that case, the court stated Cox had 30 days from July 17, 2019 — the day the commission approved the minutes from its June 19, 2019, meeting in which it determined Cox’s case was concluded — to appeal to common pleas court. Cox failed to do so in those 30 days. He instead pursued an appeal to the State Personnel Board of Review, which dismissed it.
Cox filed with the commission a “motion for entry of final appealable order and motion for reconsideration” on May 14, 2020. The commission told Cox at its June 17, 2020, meeting that it would take no further action and Cox filed a case on July 17, 2020, in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Sweeney determined May 16, 2022, that the commission “violated its own rule” by not issuing a “final and appealable order” and ordered the commission to do so in compliance with its own rules. The 7th District Court of Appeals agreed with Sweeney after the city appealed.
The city then filed an appeal June 28, 2022, with the Ohio Supreme Court to close out the Cox case contending the commission’s June 17, 2020, decision was a final order and Sweeney didn’t have jurisdiction.
In its Aug. 30 decision, the Supreme Court disagreed with the city’s argument regarding the civil service commission’s 2020 ruling and ordered the matter referred back to Sweeney. But the court told the judge she didn’t have jurisdiction over Cox’s 2019 administrative appeal because that had already been decided.
The Supreme Court determined Cox’s appeal of the June 17, 2020, commission decision was “timely.”
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