VIEWPOINT / Kim Laurie / Court Administrator / Geauga County Probate Juvenile Court

July 26, 2020

I find myself once again correcting false information published in two Geauga Maple Leaf articles regarding legitimate court-approved, court-ordered Geauga Probate/Juvenile Court invoices that Geauga Auditor Chuck Walder, improperly refuses to pay.

In “Grendell: No Hope for Mediation with Walder,” Walder claims “his office first initiated mediation through the GCRS [Ohio Supreme Court’s Government Conflict Resolution Services] last year [April 3, 2019],” and he “renewed” the request in May 2020.

This simply is not true with respect to Judge Grendell and the Geauga County Probate/Juvenile Court.

The Court was never involved in mediation with Walder in April 2019. The mediation Walder is referring to was between himself and the multiple vendors who filed suit against him for nonpayment of their invoices – one which the Court was not a party and was not involved in its mediation.

It is simply not possible to “renew” a closed mediation between different parties to mediate a new issue between different parties. If Walder sincerely desired a resolution regarding these invoices, he would have notified the Court of his desire to seek mediation, and then applied properly for such mediation through the Supreme Court’s resolution services.

The article also failed to inform readers that Judge Grendell initiated mediation with Walder in July 2019 and spent thousands of his own personal dollars, ending in failed mediation through no fault of Judge Grendell.

In “Auditor Again Refuses Juvenile/Probate Court Expenses,” the author chose to cite only statements made by Judge Grendell in a client-lawyer confidentiality qualified letter to Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz that I believe was unethically shared with outside parties, and ignored statements made in Judge Grendell’s letters to Auditor Walder – letters which I provided directly to the Editor of the Geauga Maple Leaf, showing the Judge’s efforts to obtain payment of a Maple Leaf invoice which Walder is refusing to pay.

While the article claims “Grendell did not address Walder’s accusations of misrepresentation in his advertisements,” Judge Grendell did address these accusations at length in both of his letters to Auditor Walder which I personally sent to Maple Leaf Editor John Karlovec on June 29, 2020 – more than two weeks before the publication of this article. In these letters to Auditor Walder, Judge Grendell said:

• “… regarding… your erroneous apparent belief that all public dollars in the public treasury are sourced by tax dollars[,] As the County Auditor you should know that this is simply untrue, and the Court has made numerous attempts over the past two (2) years to educate you and your office on the various non-tax … sources of ten (10) of the Court’s twelve (12) different funds, which are each governed by separate and specific statutes in the Ohio Revised Code…”
• “As you must know by now, the Court’s Special Projects Funds are governed by O.R.C. 2303.201(e)(1), which clearly states that the fund is sourced by fees collected by the Court, not tax dollars… Therefore, the statement made on the advertisement is 100% accurate, and not at all false or misrepresentative…”
• “The advertisement in the Geauga Maple Leaf… was a copy of the Court’s Good Deeds Checklist which included an invitation to one of numerous online Good Deeds Programs, which teach the public how they can set up their assets now to avoid probate later, and for which the Probate Court received the Geauga County Outstanding Senior Citizen Supporter of the Year award from the Geauga County Department on Aging…”
• “the programs are being provided to residents during the COVID-19 stay at home period to encourage residents to use this time to plan for their future…”
• “you are erroneously claiming that tax-funded administrative costs, which are incurred regardless of the existence of this advertisement, can somehow be attributed to individual expenditures from the Court’s non-tax sourced funds…”
• “you do not get to be judge and jury over the Court’s communications with the public, nor is it lawful to misuse your limited authority as the county’s bookkeeper to refuse to pay an expenditure based on administrative costs not attributable directly to the expenditure itself.”

As usual, the Maple Leaf, its reporters, and Editor, pick and choose what information to publish. The only “misrepresentations” made in this matter are by Walder and the Maple Leaf.