Is Winters the right choice?
Is Winter’s a good choice after all or will things continue as they were?
What did Winters know, and when?
Acting attorney general had some knowledge of wrongdoing, sources say
Thomas R. Winters took charge as Ohio’s acting attorney general today, still dogged by — and refusing to answer questions about — his possible knowledge of the sexual-harassment allegations that brought down his former boss, Marc Dann.
Winters, 58, is not accused of any misconduct. However, sources and transcripts of sworn interviews with office employees suggest that Winters had at least some knowledge of wrongdoing by fired Dann aide Anthony Gutierrez last year and took no action.
Shortly after taking office in 2007, Dann hired Winters as his top legal aide and paid him nearly $150,000 a year.
Winters fired Gutierrez and Dann’s communication director, Leo Jennings III, and forced the resignation of top nonlegal aide Edgar C. Simpson in the aftermath of a scathing internal report on the sexual-harassment charges.
Dann gave Winters power to discipline and fire those employees because the harassment charges cut close to Dann, who had lived with Gutierrez and Jennings in a Dublin-area condominium where some of the misconduct occurred.
As the neutral arbiter, Winters minimized his own role in the affair. But sworn interviews conducted as part of the investigation show that Winters was not completely out of the loop:
Charlie Rosol, Gutierrez’s deputy, said he believed that Winters had been aware of Gutierrez’s misuse of state vehicles. Gutierrez crashed a state-owned SUV last October. Rosol did not say that Winters took any action in response.
Human-resources chief Stephanie Bostos Demers said the two employees who accused Gutierrez of sexual harassment, Vanessa Stout and Cindy Stankoski, came to her in early March to make verbal complaints. Under the office’s policy since January, accusers do not need to put allegations in writing in order to trigger an investigation. But Winters said there was “no, quote, formal complaint” until the women put something in writing, Demers said.
In addition, Winters has acknowledged other knowledge of the situation last year:
During the May 2 news conference in which the office’s report on the sexual-harassment complaints was made public, Winters confirmed that he had nixed Dann scheduler Jessica Utovich’s participation in an overseas trip with Dann last June. Dann later admitted an affair with Utovich and acknowledged that it may have contributed to an atmosphere of tolerance for sexual misconduct.
Winters said he heard other unspecified rumors but could not take action because he was in charge of the office’s legal operations, not its human-resources functions.
“Any office anywhere has a lot of rumors,” Winters said.
On May 4, The Dispatch requested correspondence between Winters and the human-resources office in the last four months of 2007. The attorney general’s office has not yet released any correspondence sought under that public-records request.
Winters, for his part, isn’t talking.
Spokesman Jim Gravelle released a statement today in which he said Winters is prohibited from commenting because the questions “go directly to issues probably being investigated and which could be the subject of litigation.”
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