Former Columbus councilwoman to repay $44K to nonprofit agency
Michelle M. COLUMBUS — Mills, a former Columbus city councilwoman who pleaded guilty this year to an ethics charge, has agreed to repay up to $44,000 worth of questionable expenses incurred by the nonprofit agency she led for a decade.
Mills was placed on leave from her job as CEO at St. Stephen’s Community House this past spring, and then resigned in June in the midst of a review of credit card transactions that lacked documentation or couldn’t be verified as legitimate expenses for the agency, board member James Ervin Jr. said Thursday.
He declined to provide specifics about Mills’ spending but said the board will not ask law enforcement to investigate.
“We do not feel we have found anything warranting a criminal referral,” Ervin said.
“I would say that some of this involves non-business-related transactions and transactions that we could not, through our review, confirm were related to our mission.”
St. Stephen’s has served the poor in the Greater Linden area since 1965.
It receives funding from the city, county and private donors, and reported revenue of about $4.9 million for the fiscal year ending in June 2016.
Mills’ attorney, Larry James, said many of the problem expenditures over the past few years that Mills is to repay were related to travel. “Should it be firstclass, business class, or do you fly coach?” he said. “Do you stay at Motel 6 or do you stay at the Ritz? There were situations where they were upgraded.”
There also were expenses for fellow employees, James said. “If you are going to reward your employees at the end of the year with meals, things of that sort because you think they worked hard — she thought this was the proper thing to do,” he said. “There wasn’t any attempt to hide anything from anyone.”
Mills “felt that she had the authority and that she was transparent,” James said, while the issue for a nonprofit — especially one that exists to aid impoverished communities — is extravagance.
“It’s extremely painful for her,” he said. “We get seduced sometimes in certain surroundings, and we do need these hard checkups.”
James said he did not have a copy of the audit St. Stephen’s commissioned to examine the spending, and Ervin declined to provide one to The Dispatch. Mills, who had a salary of about $135,000 a year, is not fighting the findings but has “a continuing agreement” to review the charges in case she is able to produce records that justify them, James said.
Mills resigned from the Columbus City Council in August 2015. The Democrat was facing ethics allegations and questions about a trip she and other elected officials took to the 2014 Big Ten championship football game with lobbyist John Raphael, who is completing a federal prison sentence of 15 months for extortion in another case.
Mills pleaded guilty to a first-degree misdemeanor ethics violation in Franklin County Municipal Court in February for not properly disclosing the value of the trip, which the Ohio Ethics Commission later put at $696.53. Mills was fined $250 and paid the city $2,089.59 to cover the cost of the trip for her and two guests.
“This is really just a sad and unfortunate experience we’ve gone through,” Ervin said, adding that the board believes Mills worked hard to serve the community. “It wasn’t easy for her, it wasn’t easy for us.”
Marilyn Mehaffie, who has been at St. Stephen’s for nearly 30 years, is serving as interim president and CEO.
“We have been critical of ourselves as an organization to make sure that whatever may have taken place for this to occur has been addressed and resolved,” Ervin said. “This will not happen in the future.”