Legal News

Ohio Democrats Move to Impeach AG Marc Dann

By Dan Slater

Update: The Plain Dealer’s politics blog is reporting that AG Marc Dann is expected to announce his resignation later today. According to the report, Dann planned to break the news to his senior staff this afternoon.

Update II: The Plain Dealer appears to have edited its blog to remove the report of an imminent resignation. We are trying to find out more.

When Ohio’s democratic leaders said they were none-too-happy with AG Marc Dann, they weren’t kiddin.

Just in, from the Business Courier of Cincinnati: After being stripped of his membership in the Democratic Party, Democrats in the Ohio House of Representatives have filed nine articles of impeachment against Dann, many of which reportedly point to alleged instances of neglect that legislators identified in Dann’s sworn testimony during an investigation into sexual harassment allegations involving former Dann staffers. (Find past LB coverage of the Dann scandal here and here.)

Anthony Gutierrez, Dann’s general services director and the subject of the harassment probe, was fired along with spokesman Leo Jennings. Ed Simpson, the office’s chief of policy and administration, resigned rather than being fired after the report found he didn’t properly investigate the harassment allegations.

“We have identified a pattern of misconduct that we believe rises to the level of impeachable offenses,” Represenatives Dan Dodd, Jennifer Garrison and Mark Okey said in a joint statement. “We promised the people of Ohio to end a culture of corruption that existed in the past, and we are fulfilling that promise by cleaning our own house when events and circumstances warrant.”

Photo: State of Ohio Attorney General’s Web site

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 13, 2008 (boomark / email).