ATHENS, Ohio — A week after easily winning a fourth consecutive term, Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins held a press conference in response to his former political opponent’s own press conference, as well as subsequent media coverage.
At the Nov. 12 conference, held outside the Athens Count Courthouse, Adkins shared a list of talking points and materials primarily centered on Jon Rose, his opponent in the Nov. 5 general election.
Unofficial election results show Adkins defeating Rose with 64% of votes cast.
Adkins said his primary motivation for holding the press conference was what he described as unfair media coverage that followed Rose’s Oct. 24 press conference, which was about the commissioners’ handling of Athens County Emergency Medical Services. Adkins also discussed issues Rose raised about the Athens County Democratic Party’s investigation of Rose’s nominating petitions.
“I hope the media does a better job looking into these issues,” he told the members of the media who gathered at the conference. “I just think a little bit more investigation, that’s what I hope this gets you.”
Adkins said he held the press conference after, rather than before, the election — or before certification of Rose’s petitions — because, “If I had done this earlier, I believe that it would have got turned around, that Charlie was trying to get his opponent from running.”
“I didn’t want to be accused of trying to make sure that he wasn’t on the ballot,” Adkins said.
Issues raised at Rose’s press conference
Adkins accused Rose of making a “false statement,” saying he did not deliver evidence of the “corruption or scandal” Rose claimed would be the focus of his Oct. 24 press conference.
Additionally, Adkins dinged Rose for recently applying to return to work at ACEMS.
“He just recently submitted an application to come back to work for the terrible commissioners,” Adkins said. “I find that ironic, that it was so bad that he submitted an application to come work for us.”
Rose told the Independent he “was actually asked to come back” in July “because they are so desperately hurting for paramedics. … I said yes because I care about the county. I don’t want to see ACEMS collapse.”
Rose said that when his application came to the commissioners for approval, he was informed that the commissioners wanted to speak with him about a letter he wrote to the Athens Messenger about COVID bonuses for ACEMS employees.
“I was told … that I might not be able to come back because I might be in violation of the Hatch Act.” Rose wrote. “I then received a letter from the Athens County Prosecutor stating, if I accepted employment with ACEMS then I might be in violation of the Hatch Act but they couldn’t tell me until after I accepted the position. So I didn’t accept it.”
The Hatch Act is a federal law that restricts partisan political activity by federal employees or employees of state or local agencies that receive federal funding. Ohio has its own version, known as the “Little Hatch Act.” ACEMS employee Rick Trask, was briefly suspended for an investigation into whether his participation in Rose’s Oct. 24 press conference violated the act.
The letter Rose shared with the Independent was dated July 16, 2024, and written by Assistant Athens County Prosecutor Timothy L. Warren to the Athens County Commissioners. In the letter, Warren states that he is giving a legal opinion on a question “posed at the Commissioners Meeting held July 9, 2024 in regards to a potential employee violation of the ‘Hatch Act.’”
Minutes from the July 9 meeting show that the commissioners went into executive session at 11:09 a.m. to “discuss employment” with ACEMS Chief Amber Pyle, Assistant Chief Randy L. Crossen Jr., and Warren. The meeting resumed six minutes later and voted to “table the hiring until we hear back from the prosecutor’s office.”
Minutes from the next meeting, on July 18, show that the commissioners went into executive session at 10:26 a.m. to discuss employment with Pyle, Crossen and Athens County Prosecutor Keller Blackburn. The meeting returned to regular session 10 minutes later with no action taken.
EMS loan
In his press conference, Rose stated that the county commissioners “made ACEMS take out a bank loan” to pay for two ambulances ordered in 2021. Adkins said that Rose’s assertion was false because the loan came from the county, not a bank.
ACEMS Chief Amber Pyle previously told the Independent that ACEMS took out the loan in February and it was paid off — early — in October. In a Nov. 12 email, Pyle told the Independent, “Commissioners handled the loan. It was from a bank,” which she identified as Hocking Valley Bank.
Adkins acknowledged that his press conference statements related to the loan were mistaken in an interview on Nov. 14.
Records obtained by the Independent on Nov. 18 show the county paid off the loan’s $519,619.17 balance on Oct. 15.
Fair wages and turnover
Rose and part-time ACEMS employee Rick Trask said on Oct. 24 that ACEMS’s low wages contributed to high turnover at the agency.
ACEMS currently has 67 employees. In a Nov. 1 email, Pyle told the Independent that the agency has lost 58 employees since 2019, two-thirds of whom were part-time staff.
At his press conference, Adkins implied that allegations about low pay were false because Trask’s 2023 wage and benefit package was valued at $115,959. His handouts included a table of wages and benefits for 2020 through 2024, with “Rick Trask” hand-written at the top.
In an interview, Adkins said he obtained the information through the Athens County auditor’s office. A document with Trask’s pay history obtained from the auditor’s office through a public records request matches Adkins’ document.
Trask previously told the Independent he served as union president at ACEMS until July of this year, when he dropped from full time to part time. His gross wages in 2023 were $69,196; the remainder of the pay package included the county’s contributions to retirement, Medicare and health, dental, vision and life insurance.
Rose told the Independent in a Nov.14 email that Trask’s 2023 wages included a large amount of overtime pay due to understaffing. The Independent could not verify this claim before publication.
Rose’s email included copies of two 2024 pay stubs for an unnamed ACEMS employee, one showing 9.33 hours of overtime and another 24 hours of overtime, each over a two-week period.
Adkins also challenged Trask’s statement that his electricity was shut off for nonpayment while he was working at ACEMS.
“My research showed it was before my time,” Adkins said.
“If you get your electric shut off and you’re making that kind of money, you got that kind of benefits — it’s not the county’s fault,” Adkins said.
Trask told the Independent on Wednesday, “Benefits don’t pay bills, and I’m curious how he [Adkins] found out exactly when my electric was shut off.”
Asked how he acquired that information, Adkins said, “I just done some asking from some staff members that he worked with, and that had said it was years ago.”
According to the Ohio Attorney General, “public utility usage information,” including “names and addresses of specific residential and commercial customers of a municipally owned or operated public utility” is not subject to public records laws.
The Independent previously reported that the lowest paid employee at ACEMS is an emergency medical technician who makes $14.55/hour. ACEMS Assistant Chief Randy Crossen Jr. said that pay starts at $15.55/hour for an EMT, $16.32 for an advanced EMT, and $17.62 for a paramedic.
Trask’s suspension
“I wasn’t there endorsing Jon, I wasn’t endorsing Charlie, or not endorsing either one of them,” Trask told the Independent in October.
Following his participation in Rose’s press conference, Trask was briefly suspended while he was investigated for possible violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits partisan political campaigning by public employees.
At his press conference, Adkins said that Trask’s claim that he wasn’t endorsing anyone is “like going out on a date, coming home and telling your spouse it really wasn’t a date.”
Trask dismissed Adkins’ assessment as “ridiculous.”
“That’s really friggin’ laughable, because I can tell you, when I stepped up to the microphone at that press conference, at that point, I really hadn’t made up my mind who I was voting for in that election,” Trask said.
Adkins said he did not have any involvement in Trask’s suspension or the investigation.
“As matter of fact, I didn’t want that to even occur, because I sure didn’t need another bunch of bullshit to come out,” he told the Independent.
The Independent’s request for emails between the commissioners and ACEMS about Trask yielded no such communications.
Meeting minutes from the commissioners’ Oct. 29 meeting indicate the commissioners met briefly in executive session to discuss “hiring and discipline of a public employee,” with no action taken afterwards. Trask’s suspension lasted slightly under 48 hours, Pyle previously told the Independent. His suspension began on Oct. 29.
Rose’s candidacy
Adkins claimed that he could have had Rose removed from the ballot, but he chose not to. He said that Rose violated state regulations governing candidate petitions, although he denied any involvement in the county Democratic Party’s apparent investigation of Rose’s petitions.
Adkins also said Rose’s yard signs violated state law, although he did not cite any particular law or regulation.
“I just know when I went to get mine, they said, ‘Hey, you have to have certain things,’” Adkins said. “‘You have to have, you know, who paid for and who your committee is.” Adkins also said that yard signs “can’t indicate that you’re holding the office” when a candidate is not an office-holder.
Photographs of a Rose campaign sign that Adkins included in his press conference materials show that the sign stated, “Paid for by Jon Rose for Commissioner.”
Adkins may have been referring to the absence of the words “elect” or “vote for” on Rose’s signs. State law prohibits campaign materials from using the title of the office sought “in a manner that implies the candidate does currently hold that office.”
Petition problems?
Adkins’ press conference materials included a copy of Rose’s nominating petitions as dated and received by the Athens County Board of Elections on March 15. An email obtained through a public records request shows that Adkins requested copies of Rose’s petitions on March 18.
He also included a photograph of a petition he said he took when he “marked” the petition at around 7 p.m. on Feb. 22 in Donkey Coffee. He said Rose was not present at the time.
Ohio Secretary of State regulations require petition circulators to witness each signature and attest to having done so. Failure to witness signatures is a fifth-degree felony of election falsification.
Adkins said he took the photograph “to show that if I had any intention to knock him off the ballot, I had the evidence, but I didn’t want that press … I just didn’t want my name drug into that.”
The board of elections did not verify Adkins’ signature and labeled it “NR,” or “not registered,” according to a copy of the petitions obtained by the Independent.
Adkins said he was not more forthcoming with his experience signing Rose’s petition because “If I would have brought this out early, I couldn’t afford it.”
Adkins said that Athens Mayor Steve Patterson had informed him that “his [Rose’s] petitions were sitting on the counter … I went up to look. Sure enough, he wasn’t there. His petitions there with a sign just says, ‘Sign the petition.’”
Patterson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Adkins also said that fellow commissioner Chris Chmiel mentioned Rose’s petitions being circulated at Donkey.
Chmiel confirmed that he was “just getting a cup of coffee” and mentioned to Adkins that he saw the petition there; “I can’t say … if it was supervised or not. I wasn’t making a comment on that,” Chmiel said.
Adkins said he did not recall if he told the Athens County Democratic Party that he had signed Rose’s petition without Rose being present. Adkins said he did not want to be perceived as “trying to knock him [Rose] off the ballot,” though added, “I could have.”
As the Independent previously reported, some of the signatories contacted by representatives of the county Democratic Party were disturbed by what they perceived as harassment.
Adkins said that those who “complained about … people asking about these signatures, well, I would say in the future, if they don’t want to be questioned about signatures on a petition, they shouldn’t be having [it] lay on their counter,” Adkins said.
The Athens County Board of Elections verified Rose’s petitions in May, allowing him to run for commissioner. At the meeting when the petitions were approved, a board employee noted that it had received a call from a “law firm” seeking to protest Rose’s candidacy.
The Independent could not verify whether the call occurred or who made it because the board of elections does not log calls, according to Deputy Director Tony Brooks.
Individuals may protest candidate petitions if they believe the candidate may have violated state law or regulations. If a protest were filed, the board of elections would have held a hearing to determine the petitions’ validity.
Adkins told the Independent he did not want a hearing on Rose’s petitions during the race because the signatories were “innocent” and would have had to “testify.”
“He turned these in, saying he witnessed all signatures,” Adkins said. “When, in fact, he didn’t. Now, I could have made a complaint with the secretary of state and election board. I did not, because I felt that I would win this election based upon what I’ve done for this county over my 12 years. And apparently that happened.”
Asked for a response, Rose said, “Charlie and his buddies hounded practically everyone who signed my petitions and they couldn’t find a soul who signed it when I wasn’t present. They could have filed a protest with the board of elections … but they didn’t, because I didn’t do anything wrong.
“Can someone let Charlie know he won the election and he can relax now?” Rose wrote.
Update: This story was updated at 3:58 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 15, to include a link to a letter dated July 16 from Assistant Athens County Prosecutor Timothy L. Warren to the Athens County Commissioners regarding the Hatch Act, as well as additional information about county commissioner meetings on July 9 and July 18.
Additionally, this story was updated at 12:42 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 18 to include a records request and information regarding the Hocking Valley Bank loan. This story has also been updated to include a link and paragraph about Oct. 29 commissioner meeting minutes.
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