Finally, Someone With Subpoena Power Is Asking the Questions I’ve Been Asking

On April 6, I wrote a letter to Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber. I was asking about something small in the grand scheme of things — three years of missing city audits for Garfield Heights, fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024.

The Auditor’s office had already told me in April 2025 that those audits were delayed and that the 2021 audit had just been released, more than three years late. A full year later, in April 2026, I was back asking the same question: where are the audits?

Fourteen days after my letter, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley wrote to the same Auditor about a much bigger question: where did the jail money go?

That’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern. And it tells you everything you need to know about who has been minding the store in Cuyahoga County, and who hasn’t.

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Two Letters to One Auditor

I don’t hold subpoena power. I don’t run an investigations unit. I’m a former city councilman who keeps writing letters and filing public records requests because that’s what’s available to me. My April 6 letter asked five plain questions about Garfield Heights audits — has the city filed the 2023 and 2024 financials, what is the status of the 2022 audit that was “nearing completion” a year ago, when will they be released, and has the Auditor’s office identified any additional findings beyond the $38,450 already issued against the city’s fiscal officer for late retirement-system payments.

The Prosecutor’s April 20 letter is a different weight class. Per reporting by Kaitlin Durbin at cleveland.com and Ken Prendergast at NEOtrans, O’Malley has asked the Auditor’s Public Integrity Unit to conduct a special audit of the county’s spending on the new jail in Garfield Heights. He alleges the county has spent money on the project without the four-member committee review that Ohio law requires for any jail project over $75,000. That committee — the sheriff, the clerk of courts, the probate judge, and a representative from the common pleas court — has never been formed.

Both letters ended up on Keith Faber’s desk within two weeks of each other. Both ask the same underlying question in different forms: are the people spending public money following the rules?

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The Part That Should Catch Everyone’s Attention

The Prosecutor’s letter documents, per the reporting, that the county has already committed roughly $94 million to the jail project — $39 million for the 72 acres of Garfield Heights land, and design-builder contracts with Gilbane that have grown from $30 million to $55 million, plus another $25 million in “Early Release Work” that has been authorized. That’s $94 million committed before the statutory four-person review has even been convened.

To put that number in context for the residents of my city: the county’s entire purchase of the 72 acres cost less than half of what it has since committed to contractors for a facility that produces zero property tax revenue for Garfield Heights. That’s the story I was trying to tell in my April 6 article series on the jail site. Now the County Prosecutor is telling a more serious version of that story: maybe none of this was supposed to happen yet.

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The County Disputes It

County Communications Director Kelly Woodard, quoted in the cleveland.com reporting, says no public funds have been spent since the Prosecutor’s March 26 cease-and-desist letter and that the required four-member committee meeting is being scheduled for this week. County Executive Chris Ronayne, quoted in the NEOtrans reporting, says the Prosecutor is “once again seeking to prevent the jail project from moving forward by requesting a state audit.” Ronayne and Presiding Common Pleas Judge Michael Shaughnessy announced on April 14 a tentative agreement that includes $150 million over six years for courthouse repairs in parallel with the jail project.

I want to be clear: I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not taking a position on which side of this dispute wins. The county may be right that no money has moved since March. The Prosecutor may be right that the spending that was already done violated the law. That’s exactly what an audit is for — it answers the question instead of leaving it to press releases.

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What Garfield Heights Residents Should Be Asking

I live in this city. The jail is being built here. So the question I keep coming back to is: what does Garfield Heights get?

• Seventy-two acres are permanently off our property-tax rolls.
• Our share of the estimated annual tax loss on that parcel, if it were taxable, approaches $5.6 million per year for the city alone — with more for the schools and other levies.
• Our city has not released an audit for 2022, 2023, or 2024.
• Our school district is running a $2.9 million deficit.
• Now it turns out our county may have been spending on the facility without the review Ohio law requires.

No mayor of Garfield Heights, and no city council of Garfield Heights, can credibly argue that their financial house is in order while looking the other way at those five facts stacked on top of each other. And no county official — not the Executive, not the Council, not the Prosecutor, not the Sheriff — should object to letting the state Auditor answer the question the Prosecutor has formally asked.

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What I’m Asking

I’ll be writing another letter to Auditor Faber’s office. It will be brief. It will say two things: (1) I welcome the Public Integrity Unit’s review of the jail spending, and (2) I respectfully request that the review give appropriate weight to Garfield Heights as the host municipality — the city whose property tax base is being affected, whose schools rely on the levies, and whose own audits are still overdue.

I’ll also be asking the City of Garfield Heights, on the public record, to state its position on the Prosecutor’s audit request. The city has been silent about the jail coming in while it has been loud about a lot of less consequential matters. If the mayor and council have a view on whether the county’s spending was lawful, the residents of this city deserve to hear it.

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How Residents Can Act

• Attend County Council meetings. The scheduled four-person committee meeting is a public moment that matters. Show up.
• Call your representatives. Ask where the city of Garfield Heights stands on the Prosecutor’s audit request, and ask why our own audits for 2022, 2023, and 2024 are still outstanding.
• File a public records request. Ask the county for the 2024 judges’ correspondence that the Prosecutor refers to, and ask for a complete list of jail-project invoices by date.
• Watch April 28. Per the reporting, that’s the day Gilbane is expected to obtain bids to set a guaranteed maximum price. If the committee review hasn’t happened first, the Prosecutor’s concerns only get sharper.

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Sources: Kaitlin Durbin, cleveland.com, “Prosecutor seeks state review as Cuyahoga jail site work continues,” April 20, 2026. Ken Prendergast, NEOtrans, “O’Malley wants state audit of county jail contracting,” April 20, 2026. Author’s own correspondence with the Office of the Ohio Auditor of State.