Small town led by comedian tries to recover from ‘lost year’

HILLSBORO, Ohio (AP) — A local newspaper called it this little Ohio city’s “lost year.”

It was a year of subpoenas, search warrants, depositions and whispers. Hillsboro’s mayor, a standup comedian long before he became a politician, was the focus of it all.

Drew Hastings, who has appeared on Comedy Central and “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno, dubbed it “The Year of Living Strangerously,” playing off the 1982 Mel Gibson-Sigourney Weaver movie “The Year of Living Dangerously.”

The police chief who thought Hastings should have been ousted quit soon after the mayor’s acquittal last November on four felony charges alleging official misconduct. The safety and services director, who was a prosecution witness against Hastings, was fired.

People in the city of some 6,600, nearly 60 miles east of Cincinnati, use words such as “divided” and “fractured” to describe the impact of the probes that began in December 2015.

“It was hell ... very stressful,” said Debbie Sansone, the mayor’s executive assistant, whose home was visited last year by investigators who seized her and her husband’s personal computers and related items after search warrants were carried out around the city building.

“I’m sure there are hard feelings across the board,” said Justin Harsha, a councilman and owner of a monument business his family started in Hillsboro in 1854. “Basically, everything was kind of put on hold, everything was just up in the air. Now we’re just trying to move forward and put the past in the past.”

Hastings, served with search warrants both at his farm outside the city and apartment in town, had everything from the contents of his refrigerator to those of his and his wife’s underwear drawers examined, photographed and recorded.

Investigators from the sheriff’s department and Ohio auditor’s office were trying to prove he falsified his residence, illegally obtained a $500 vacant building fee refund, and improperly used the city’s trash bins.