Two new members of the Fredericktown Local Schools board, Nate Bellman and Paul Napier, also employed at the Knox County Career Center, have signed agreements promising to recuse themselves from voting on any issue involving the career center, Knox County Prosecutor Chip McConville told the Mount Vernon News.
Bellman and Napier were elected to the school board last fall, McConville said.
"There was a request made for me to get a formal opinion letter from the Ohio Attorney General's Office about whether their positions at the career center were compatible with serving as school board members in Fredericktown," the prosecutor said.
The Attorney General's office "came up with some potential perceived conflicts there," McConville said. "They seemed to think it was incompatible." However, he said the potential conflicts cited by the Attorney General's office were "highly speculative" conflicts.
"When the rubber meets the road, the chances of any of those becoming an actual conflict in real life is pretty small," he said.
The two board members signed an agreement with McConville "that they are going to recuse themselves from anything that involves the career center," the prosecutor said. "They sent me something that I believe shields them from conflicts of interest coming up."
The agreement was presented to McConville in January, when the prosecutor was dealing with ill parents out of state, he said.
"Both of my parents were in the hospital and I spent a lot of time flying back and forth between here and Arizona," he said.
After his mother died, McConville began reviewing the potential conflicts mentioned by the Attorney General's Office.
He then concluded that the conflict of interest agreement proposed by the two school board members would make it possible for them to serve on the board.
"So I signed off on it on March 23," he said. "I sent it back to their attorney. Those guys signed off on it."
There are some people in the community who think the potential conflicts should lead to the removal of the school board members, McConville said.
The prosecutor made it clear that if the board members don't follow the agreement, they could be subject to removal proceedings. There are two people who can bring a removal proceeding – the county prosecutor and the Attorney General, he said.
"But if everybody plays by the rules, we should be OK," McConville said.
Preemptively removing the board members because of a potential conflict of interest would be going against the wishes of the voters, he said.
"That's something you should be very reticent about doing," he said.
