ATHENS, Ohio — At a brief special meeting Monday, April 20, the Athens County Commissioners met with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services about the agency’s report on misspending by the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services.
According to emails between the state agency and the county, the state identified a total of over $4.6 million in local spending for which the agency wrongfully sought state or federal reimbursements. Of that amount, $1.6 million was in the form of inappropriately reimbursed direct expenses. The other $3 million stemmed from staffing costs inappropriately documented for reimbursement.
The state has asked the county to enter a $2.5 million repayment agreement to address the misspending.
Athens County Commissioner Lenny Eliason asked the Ohio Department of Job and Family two questions at Monday’s meeting about issues they identified.
The first pertained to about $100,000 in claims to the state-run Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program for direct costs associated with the agency’s work with Hocking Athens Perry Community Action, or HAPCAP.
TANF has specific eligibility requirements for its clients, which the government describes as “families with children experiencing low income,” aimed to help them “achieve economic security and stability.”
A monitoring review the state conducted and shared with the agency in July 2025 states that the agency contracted with HAPCAP “for the operation of a bed bug elimination program.” For the program, “the provider determined TANF eligibility for clients.” However, “The agency indicated applications were not received and no monitoring of eligibility could be located. … Without this documentation, the agency is unable to support the costs were for TANF eligible clients. Therefore, the costs are unallowable to TANF.”
Eliason told the state representatives at the meeting, “If I read it correctly, it seems to me that we would have a claim with HAPCAP for that amount of money. Is that a correct interpretation I would have, and can you assist us in that documentation to resolve that claim with them?”
Sabrina Jamison from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services replied, “I can’t say whether there’s a claim with HAPCAP to be honest with you. … All I can say is that it was unallowable for the funding that we have at JFS.”
Jamison added that the commissioners could speak with HAPCAP about the issue to see if they could recoup funding from HAPCAP.
Interim Job and Family Services Director Keith Wiens told media on Monday that he did not have more information on the contract with HAPCAP, noting it was his first day in the interim director role. He confirmed that state money had flowed through the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services to HAPCAP for the program.
Eliason told the Independent that JFS staff would evaluate the contract with HAPCAP to determine if it had followed the contract terms. He said if the agency had followed its contract with JFS, there would be no recourse.
HAPCAP director Kelly Hatas did not respond to a request for comment by press time, and the Independent’s request for the JFS contract with HAPCAP was not fulfilled by press time.
Eliason’s second question also pertained to TANF reimbursement requests directly related to charges against former JFS Director Jean Demosky.
At Demosky’s arraignment on April 3, Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn said that approximately $1.5 million in funds the agency misused were for the Back to School Bash, Winterfest and Operation Full Belly. These programs served both families eligible for TANF and those ineligible for TANF, so associated costs and staff time should not have been eligible for reimbursements from TANF. The agency charged TANF for those costs anyway, Blackburn said.
Eliason asked the state for more information about the problems associated with such programs.
“If it is a program with mixed funding, then you have to have a way — you need to figure out a way to allocate those costs,” Jamison said. “So you would need to [determine] how many of those people were actually TANF-eligible, and how many were non-TANF-elligible else and you could allocate those costs that way, and we didn’t get the opportunity to do that.”
According to an email previously obtained by the Independent, the state determined issues with TANF were the “result of commingling the activity of JFS and the Not-for-profit,” the Athens County Community Cares Fund.
Demosky’s alleged inappropriate use of the nonprofit is at the center of the criminal case against her, which has also enveloped Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins.
How the state determined how much Athens County owes
Jamison told the commissioners on Monday that among the first issues the state flagged with the local agency was misspending in reference to costs associated with agency buildings.
In a state monitoring report from December 2025, the state said that the agency began claiming reimbursement for costs associated with its Nelsonville building before the building was operational. Therefore, the expenses were not allowable for reimbursement.
The state then found numerous other such issues with direct costs, Jamison said on Monday. Many of those issues were communicated December 2024, with other issues identified in a follow-up monitoring review communicated to the agency in July 2025.
Because of the issues with direct costs, the state “did decide to do further looking,” Jamison said. Its review of staff time revealed another $3 million in costs inappropriately documented for reimbursement through random moment sampling.
Random moment sampling is the method the state uses to determine how much money, and to which cost pools, it allocates federal funds to local agencies. Random moment sampling is based on the random review and coding of staff activities at an individual agency.
The vast majority of inappropriately documented staff time was associated with TANF, according to the state.
Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated that the county had already entered into an agreement with the state for repayment. We apologize for the error. Additionally, a previous version of this article incorrectly spelled Jamison’s last name based on an announcement from the county.
