Columbus Monthly / August 2010 / The sheriff of Capitol Square

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The sheriff of Capitol Square

The Ohio inspector general has wrongdoing to uncover, budget dollars to chase, headlines to grab. And even the ugliest political showdown of his career won't stop him. That is, if it doesn't cost him his job.

Tom Charles’s office is sweltering. When temperatures rise in the summer, the morning sun cooks his corner of the 29th floor of the Rhodes Tower, overpowering the air conditioning. It’s a quirk of the space, which he moved into last year, and Charles has learned to live with it. A visitor suggests the heat might toughen him up. “I don’t need that,” he says with a chuckle.

The comment comes a little over a month since the Ohio inspector general rocked Capitol Square with a bombshell investigation into an aborted sting at the governor’s mansion. The probe was messy, high-profile and politically charged—in other words, familiar territory for Charles.

Charles, 67, is Ohio’s go-to guy for uncovering fraud, waste and corruption in state government. It’s a challenging and sensitive job, to say the least. His investigations can involve prominent and powerful people—including the governor—and have deep political repercussions. His greatest hits include an attorney general (Marc Dann), a prominent Republican fundraiser (Tom Noe), the now ex-wife of the mayor of Columbus (Frankie Coleman) and the two most powerful legislators of the past three decades (Vern Riffe and Stan Aronoff). The Noe probe even resulted in the 2005 conviction of Gov. Bob Taft, who appointed Charles, on four misdemeanor ethics charges. “I think of him as the dean of inspectors general,” says David Thomas, Indiana’s inspector general and a friend of Charles.

Perhaps Charles’s greatest achievement is weathering the storm. For 16 years, he’s been on the public corruption beat—four years investigating the General Assembly as its first legislative inspector general, then the last 12 probing the executive branch. He’s served nearly twice as long as any other Ohio inspector general, a position created in 1988. Most impressively, perhaps, two Republican governors (Taft and George Voinovich) and one Democratic one (Ted Strickland) have appointed him. “That truly is amazing,” Thomas says.

Thomas attributes Charles’s longevity to his unique mix of diplomacy and aggressiveness. The former Ohio State Highway patrolman is no Joe Friday. He’s friendly and engaging—the kind of personality that excels in the political world—and he knows the players around town from his days as the legislative inspector general and Statehouse liaison for the Highway Patrol, where he retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1994. Longtime lobbyist Paul Tipps says Charles recognizes the difference between sour grapes and legitimate complaints and goes after both Republican and Democrats equally. “There never was a feeling he was a vengeful guy,” says Tipps, a former chairman of the Democratic Party.

But as his agency has evolved in recent years—becoming larger and more aggressive—his character and tactics have come under question: first quietly, then in a nasty political spectacle that riveted the Statehouse in May. “It is a powerful position,” says Columbus lawyer Rocky Saxbe. “He has the ability to initiate investigations of individuals and agencies that can lead to serious criminal charges, put people in jail, end careers and destroy lives.”

Saxbe has emerged as Charles’s biggest critic in recent months. A prominent Republican supporter of Strickland, Saxbe represents Cathy Collins-Taylor, the former Ohio Public Safety director who was one of the key figures in the governor’s mansion probe. Charles’s explosive report on the matter—which accused Collins-Taylor and others of engaging in a cover-up—spawned a full-blown political circus, complete with partisan potshots, screaming headlines and raucous legislative hearings. Saxbe was one of the stars of the show during its month-long run. In a series of scathing media interviews, Saxbe tried to turn the tables on Charles. The attorney called the IG’s report “scurrilous,” accused him of being “off the reservation” and “consumed with his own power” and suggested that Charles (instead of Collins-Taylor) should be investigated.

He and others also hinted that a personal vendetta against higher-ups in the patrol and Public Safety may have driven his report. Cincinnati-area attorney and blogger Brian Hester, who writes under the pseudonym Modern Esquire for the progressive political website Plunderbund, likened Charles to a “small-town version of J. Edgar Hoover.”

On a bookshelf in Charles’s office sits a framed photograph of Strickland swearing in the inspector general. The governor inscribed the picture “Thanks Tom.” During the mansion tumult, Strickland backed Collins-Taylor. Though he didn’t attack Charles personally, the governor did question his report’s conclusions (as well as the vigorous and aggressive manner the IG probed the case) and didn’t defend Charles as other Democrats slung mud.

A visitor asks if Charles has considered taking down the photo. “No,” he says with a laugh. “He’s the governor and I respect that. Do people have disagreements? Yeah. We respectfully disagree, and we go on.”

Charles got his big break in 1989 when Col. Tom Rice, the then superintendent of the patrol, assigned him to serve as the agency’s Statehouse lobbyist. Rice, later Columbus’s Public Safety director, wanted to increase the patrol’s visibility in the legislature, and he says Charles excelled at the assignment. He helped the patrol secure funding for new equipment (additional aircraft, semi-automatic pistols, better handcuffs), as well as more money for a significant boost in staffing—from 1,200 to 1,500, Rice says. He also earned the trust of legislators, including then House speaker Vern Riffe and Senate president Stan Aronoff.

In 1994, Charles retired from the patrol and accepted the job as Ohio’s first legislative inspector general, a position created in the wake of the so-called “pancaking” fundraising scandal. Within months, Charles was investigating both Riffe and Aronoff, the two people most responsible for his appointment. “I thought I was going to get fired the first year,” Charles recalls. That didn’t happen. Both Riffe and Aronoff were convicted of misdemeanor ethics violations, and Charles lived on. In fact, that early investigation helped secure his reputation as a tough but fair watchdog. Despite the probe, he stayed on good terms with Riffe and Aronoff. Charles says he used to eat lunch regularly with Riffe, who died in 1997, and Aronoff says he was treated fairly by Charles. “I think he is dedicated to pursuing whatever comes to his desk,” says Aronoff, now a Statehouse lobbyist.

In 2005, another investigation changed the course of Charles’s career. Following up on stories published in the Toledo Blade, Charles, by then overseeing the state’s massive executive branch as the Ohio inspector general, began to look at the investment practices of the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. In particular, he zeroed in on two rare coin funds managed by a Republican-connected Maumee coin dealer named Tom Noe.

Charles formed a task force that included the Highway Patrol, the Ohio Ethics Commission, the FBI and prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department, Lucas and Franklin counties and the city of Columbus. Investigators obtained more than 1.5 million documents, dug through thousands of e-mails, interviewed more than 500 people and issued some 700 subpoenas. Twenty-one people were indicted and 19 convicted, including Noe, who’s serving an 18-year-prison sentence in Hocking Correctional Facility for stealing some $13 million from the state. “The BWC case, from everything I can find, is probably the largest public corruption case in state history,” Charles says.

John Weglian, an assistant prosecutor in Lucas County, praises Charles for his coordination of the task force. “There were no turf wars,” he says. “It truly was a task force in the best sense of the word.” Charles, who’s used that task force as a template since for other complicated cases, says BWC “made this office, to some extent.”

Indeed, the BWC triumph is a big reason he still has his job. Strickland reappointed Charles, a Republican appointee, after people from both parties urged the governor to let him finish his work on BWC. “Thomas understands that integrity and accountability play critical roles in our state government,” Strickland said in a Jan. 23, 2007, press release announcing Charles’s reappointment. “He has played an absolutely essential role in beginning the process of restoring Ohioans trust and faith in their government. I’m proud to ask him to continue his work.”

Saxbe and Charles go way back. One of the city’s top attorneys and the son of former U.S. Attorney General Will-iam Saxbe, the lawyer has represented several clients (mostly Republican) under IG scrutiny, including Aronoff and Noe (briefly). Though on opposite sides, Char-les and Saxbe used to get along. “I’ve always felt that I had pretty good rapport with Tom and his staff,” Saxbe says.

That changed during a tense five-hour March 24 interrogation of Collins-Taylor. Saxbe sat beside the then Public Safety director as investigators questioned her about her role in the aborted sting at the governor’s mansion. “It was pretty apparent to me during the interview that the investigators had already reached certain conclusions,” Saxbe says. “As the thing unfolded, the real issue developed wasn’t that she had done anything wrong or inappropriate as director of Public Safety. It was that these investigators didn’t believe her rendition of what happened.”

On Jan. 10, the Highway Patrol planned to nab a Pickaway Correctional Institution inmate, participating in the prison work program at the governor’s mansion, as he attempted to smuggle a “six pack” (either drugs or tobacco) into the prison. The operation was canceled at the last minute after top officials in the patrol and Public Safety, the patrol’s parent agency, found out about the operation.

Saxbe traded barbs with deputy inspector general Ted Wendling as he and two colleagues, Craig Mayton and Mark Bentley, tried to find out whether Collins-Taylor was responsible for killing the sting. She continually claimed her subordinate, Col. David Dicken, the superintendent of the patrol, made the call, but investigators kept fingering her, pointing to e-mails she had sent.

“She’s telling you the truth,” Saxbe said, according to a transcript. “And obviously you guys have already concluded what you think the truth is.”

“That’s baloney,” Wendling responded.

“A lot of people believe this is baloney,” Saxbe said.

Patrol Lt. Joe Mannion, the head of the governor’s security detail, also faced tough questioning over the course of two interviews lasting nearly six hours. Like Saxbe, Mannion’s attorney, Ritchey Hollenbaugh, has a long track record of representing clients before the inspector general. He, too, was struck by the combativeness of his client’s interview. “It seemed less objective and more accusatory,” he says.

Unquestionably, the IG is a different animal these days. Despite a budget crisis that has paralyzed other state agencies, the IG’s office has grown impressively over the past four years. Charles now boasts a staff of 23, more than three times bigger than it was when he started in 1998, and moved into larger office space (about twice the size of his previous home) in January 2009. With the additional resources—and a higher profile thanks to the attention-grabbing Noe probe—the IG’s office has gotten more aggressive since Strickland reappointed him. Last year, the agency received 431 complaints (a record) and opened 83 investigations. That followed 77 new investigations launched in 2008 and 98 the year before. During the last year of the Taft administration, in comparison, Charles opened 66 cases. “He has thrived on the presence of sin that exists in any organization, and the state of Ohio is no exception,” Saxbe says.

In 2007, the legislature gave Charles money to create two subdivisions specializing in BWC/Industrial Commission and the Department of Transportation. Then last year, a third subdivision was established to oversee stimulus money the state receives from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Also, there is a partisan element to Charles’s rise. His biggest allies are the Republicans in the Ohio Senate. They benefit politically if an empowered IG is causing trouble for a Democratic governor.

And that he’s done. Saxbe says Charles appears to have expanded the scope of his investigations. Before, the office focused on obvious wrongdoing—theft, bribery, people abusing their authority. Now, Saxbe says, the IG is beginning to put state officials through an “investigative meat grinder” over operational policy choices. “I think that becomes a very dangerous situation,” Saxbe says.

The more aggressive IG office has raised eyebrows in recent years even before the governor’s mansion case. When he launched his Marc Dann investigation in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal in 2008, Charles and a dozen investigators arrived unannounced at the attorney general’s office, seizing computers, phones and paper records. State Sen. Bill Seitz describes the move as “Eliot Ness-like.” An attorney who specializes in white-collar crime cases, Seitz says U.S. Department of Justice officials typically rely on grand jury subpoenas instead of splashy raids. “I’m wondering if there wouldn’t have been a more cordial way to get those documents,” Seitz says. “I don’t really believe that Marc Dann, though he was a failed public servant, is on the same level as Al Capone.”

And in March, the IG issued a report that concluded a Division of Wildlife officer, Allan Wright, allowed an out-of-state friend to use his home address to obtain a cheaper Ohio hunting license. The report also knocked Wright’s superiors for blowing off the matter. (Wright received a verbal reprimand.) The IG forwarded his findings to Brown County Prosecutor Jessica Little, and in early April a grand jury indicted Wright and five top wildlife officials—including division chief David Graham and assistant chief Randy Miller—on felony charges (the ones against Wright were dropped). The five administrators each could face up to two years in prison despite the relatively small dollar figures involved: Wright’s friend saved $106.

Charles didn’t pull any punches in his report on the governor’s mansion sting, either. The April 29 document hammered top patrol and Public Safety officials. It paints a picture of a behind-the-scenes plot to scuttle a safe and routine police operation to avoid embarrassing the governor. Hit hard were Collins-Taylor, accused of pulling the plug on the sting and then lying about it to investigators, and Mannion, accused of dishonesty as well. The report also concluded that sloppy oversight of the honor inmate program has allowed the governor’s mansion to become a “mule station” for smuggling contraband into the prison system. Franklin County and city of Columbus prosecutors were considering in mid July whether to file charges in connection to the report’s findings.

At the heart of the mansion case is a bitter feud between the patrol and Public Safety. The two sides have been at war in recent years over perceived political meddling in law-enforcement affairs. Charles, of course, has deep ties to the patrol; not only did he work there for more than three decades, but his wife, Brigette, a captain, and his son, Brian, a lieutenant, still do. As inspector general, Charles also continued to collaborate with patrol investigators, some of whom claimed political interference killed the mansion sting.

What’s more, Charles has a history with Dicken, the superintendent of the patrol and a key figure in the mansion probe. Dicken was a major player in two other inspector general investigations in addition to the governor’s mansion probe. Last August, an IG report criticized him for shredding records related to a loosely managed patrol spending account. That same month, patrol superintendent Richard Collins and public safety chief Henry Guzman were forced to resign because a feud between them had poisoned their ability to work together.

Despite the IG report, new Public Safety chief Collins-Taylor appointed Dicken to the top patrol job in December over several other candidates, including Brigette Charles. Tom Charles didn’t lobby for his wife, but he did suggest Capt. John Born, his wife’s boss, might make a good top cop during a meeting with Strickland’s chief of staff, John Haseley. A month later, Dicken got knocked again in another IG report that concluded top patrol and Public Safety officials improperly refused to open a criminal investigation into possible fraud committed by a state contractor.

Before launching those probes, Charles clashed with Dicken, then a captain in the patrol’s office of finance and logistic services, over a computer server in May 2008. At the time, patrol investigators put in a request to purchase the $4,700 piece of hardware to assist in the IG’s Dann investigation. The request, however, died after Dicken ran it by top officials in Public Safety—assistant director George Maier and then director Guzman.

A furious Charles unloaded on Dicken. “I’m walking down the hall and Col. Charles calls me and starts off with, ‘Fuck you,’ ” Dicken recalled in an interview with IG investigators. “Calls me on my cellphone and says, ‘Fuck you and fuck George Maier and fuck Henry Guzman.’ And he said, ‘George Maier can stick that server up his fucking ass.’ And he said, ‘I’ll take care of him and Public Safety.’ ”

In June and early July, Charles sat down with Columbus Monthly for two interviews in his office. He was folksy and talkative as usual (“this office is supposed to shine light on things, so let the light shine in”) and expressed relief that the mansion case had dropped from the headlines. Collins-Taylor, due to a paperwork snafu, became the focus of confirmation hearings in the Republican-controlled Senate even though Strickland appointed her seven months earlier. She and her allies struck back hard at Charles, accusing him of ignoring evidence and misrepresenting facts. The counterattack didn’t persuade the Senate, and her confirmation was rejected at the end of May.

As he has from the beginning, Charles stands by the mansion report. He denies having a grudge against anyone at the patrol or Public Safety, but declines to get into the mud with some of his opponents. He says the personal attacks “disappointed” him and leaves it at that. The only time he seems peeved is when asked about the confrontation with Dicken over the computer server. “The statements in the interview are lies,” he says, leaning forward and raising his voice. Well, not all of them. About a minute later, Charles acknowledges suggesting Maier, the Public Safety official, should put the computer hardware in a place the sun doesn’t shine. “I didn’t use the other language,” he says. Still, he scoffs at the idea that a dispute over a computer drove him to seek revenge against Dicken. “Give me a break,” he says.

These days, Charles faces an uncertain future. At the end of the year, his four-year term will expire. And this time, bipartisan support for his reappointment is unlikely. It all comes down to the November election. If Strickland wins, the speculation is Charles is done. If the Republican challenger, John Kasich, prevails, then Charles might survive. Charles says he doesn’t know Kasich, and he hasn’t spoken with anyone from the governor’s office about reappointment, “nor do I think I need to at this point.” (Spokespeople for both Strickland and Kasich say it’s premature to discuss the topic.)

Charles says he’s yet to decide about returning, but his supporters in the Senate want him to stay. “I feel very comfortable with Tom Charles as inspector general,” says Senate president Bill Harris. “I just hope and pray that he is able to continue.” Adds Tim Grendell, the senator who conducted the Collins-Taylor confirmation hearings: “If we want to have a sense of confidence in the Office of Inspector General, Tom Charles needs to be reappointed, because, one, he’s done the job honorably and, two, if you didn’t reappoint him, the message to the future inspector generals is: ‘Don’t cross the governor. You’ll be out of a job.’ ”

Meanwhile, the battle wages on. Charles soon might face another public trial. Dan Dodd, a Democratic state representative from Hebron and the chairman of the House Insurance Committee, says he may conduct hearings into Charles’s handling of the BWC investigation. Earlier this year, Dodd interviewed Noe in Hocking Correctional Facility. Dodd says Noe told him that the IG never tried to interview him during the course of the BWC investigation. “It was always my impression that law enforcement would attempt to speak with the suspect in the course of developing a case,” Dodd says. (Noe declined a request to be interviewed for this story through his attorney.)

In the summer of 2005, Chris Redfern, the minority leader of the state House of Representatives (who’s now the state Democratic Party chief), called for a bipartisan legislative investigation with subpoena power to look into Noe and the “Coingate” affair. Redfern dropped the idea so Charles could finish his BWC probe. Five years later, Charles still hasn’t closed the case. “That’s a long investigation,” Redfern says. “With term limits, my fear then is my fear now. As memories fade—and the relevance of the issue goes with the memories—those who also should be held accountable will go unnoticed.”

Charles dismisses critics of his BWC investigation. “Anybody that has a complaint about what we did or what they think we should have done doesn’t know what they are talking about,” he says. He declines to answer directly whether his office tried to interview Noe because the probe remains open. “We got all the information from the Noes [Tom and his ex-wife, Bernadette] that was necessary,” he says.

Despite the criticism, Charles isn’t changing. “I don’t expect people to like me,” he says. “I just hope they respect what we do.” In late June, Charles made the front page of the Dispatch again. The paper broke the news that his office is investigating the Ohio School Facilities Commission. The probe, according to the article, revolves around another dicey, politically sensitive issue—the use of union labor in school building projects. “People think we leak, but you don’t work in a vacuum,” Charles says. He estimates he’s got about 50 investigations underway, including a half-dozen high-profile ones. “Eventually, when you ask for records and interview people, the word gets out.” Still, Charles isn’t afraid to drop hints about upcoming work. He mentions a sprawling Department of Transportation case that has netted $437,000 in restitution so far, then adds a tantalizing tidbit: “We are going to put out a case here before too long that is going to be much higher.”

Charles appreciates the media. A self-described “redneck,” he comes across as more Andy Griffith than Ken Starr. He doesn’t have a college degree, and his favorite word might be “daggone,” employing it multiple times in the same sentence on occasion. “I’m not the smartest guy on the block,” he says. Don’t be fooled. Charles is a savvy operator. He knows his public image is a big part of his success. He’s effectively branded himself as the state’s good government watchdog—his website is watchdog.ohio.gov—which makes it rough for legislators or the governor to reject him during budget hearings. This year, he was given an additional $250,000 to oversee Ohio’s recently approved casinos.

“We don’t want to work for the media,” Charles says. “But to have the support of the media is so critical for an office like this.” He’s even hired a couple of journalists as deputy inspectors general—Wendling, a former Plain Dealer statehouse bureau chief, and Geoff Dutton, an ex-Dispatch investigative reporter.

Charles grabs a folder filled with newspaper editorials praising his office and reads aloud some of the headlines—“Clean it up,” “Detailing a disaster,” “A good watchdog.” Another one, “Mystery at the mansion,” from the Akron Beacon Journal, is on a wall in his office. Charles’s wife framed the March 26 editorial for him. “Better let Thomas Charles finish his investigation,” concludes the article about Grendell’s confirmation hearings. “Neither Grendell nor the governor’s office can match his credibility.”

Dave Ghose is an associate editor for Columbus Monthly.