Former Geauga County Department of Water Resources Network Administrator Mike Kurzinger accepted a plea deal Oct. 9 in the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas.
Former Geauga County Department of Water Resources Network Administrator Mike Kurzinger accepted a plea deal Oct. 9 in the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas.
Under the deal, Kurzinger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of conflict of interest in a public contract.
Last August, Kurzinger pleaded not guilty to three counts of having an unlawful interest in a public contract, a fourth-degree felony, and three first-degree misdemeanor counts of conflict of interest.
Last Wednesday, Judge David Ondrey sentenced Kurzinger to a year of monitored time and to pay court costs. He also ordered 183 days of jail time suspended, meaning Kurzinger would not be taken into custody unless he violated the terms of the agreement.
The case against Kurzinger arose after the FBI and local law enforcement executed a search warrant in May 2023 in Kurzinger’s office in the county administrative building on Ravenwood Drive, as well as in the home and office of Joe Camino, an outside information technology vendor for GCDWR.
In an indictment filed in July 2023, a grand jury found Kurzinger, on multiple occasions, “did solicit or accept anything of value that is of such a character as to manifest a substantial and improper influence upon the public official or employee with respect to that person’s duties” — a violation of state law.
The range of time during which Kurzinger allegedly received gifts ranges from May 1, 2008, to April 12, 2022, “in a continuing course of criminal conduct,” the indictment said.
Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz said at the time an outside company, CSJ Technologies Inc., owned by Camino, was paid $423,771 for IT services between 2008 and 2022. According to Cleveland.com, Camino has not been charged with a crime.
