Former council member pleads guilty, fined $250
Former Columbus City Councilwoman Michelle M. Mills was fined $250 Friday for not properly disclosing the value of a trip she took with other elected officials and a lobbyist to a 2014 Ohio State football game in Indianapolis.
Mills pleaded guilty Friday to a first-degree misdemeanor ethics violation in Franklin County Municipal Court.
Mills resigned from the council in August 2015 as details emerged about a trip that she and three other Democratic City Council members took with lobbyist John Raphael to watch the Ohio State football team play in the 2014 Big Ten Championship from a luxury box.
She was the only one among those on the trip who did not either immediately pay $250 for the trip, or disclose it on her ethics forms as a gift. The Ohio Ethics Commission later determined that the face value of the trip was $696.53.
In addition to the $250 fine, Mills paid the city treasurer's office $2,089.59 this week to cover the cost of the trip for her and two guests.
Mills appeared in front of Judge Jodi Thomas and stood next to her attorney, Phil Templeton, as she entered her plea. Mills did not offer additional comments to the judge.
“I’m glad the restitution was paid,” Thomas told Mills.
Templeton told the judge that the guilty plea was a “global resolution” that resolves any investigations against her. Mills previously was under investigation by the FBI.
She handed records over to federal investigators days after resigning her council seat.
The trip Mills did not properly report was in December 2014, when a group of elected officials took a bus to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis to watch Ohio State play in the Big Ten football championship. Officials sat in a luxury box that belonged to Centerplate, which had been awarded the food-vendor contract at the Greater Columbus Convention Center days earlier.
Raphael, who organized the trip, was Centerplate’s lobbyist and a board member at the Franklin County Convention Facilities Authority. The authority board later ended the contract after learning that Raphael and others had helped Centerplate win it.
Mayor Andrew J. Ginther, then-City Council president, was on the trip with Mills, but he immediately paid $250 and reported the expense as “travel” on his campaign finance report. Council members Shannon G. Hardin and Eileen Y. Paley, now a Municipal Court judge, reported the trip as gifts on ethics disclosures and later paid $250.
Raphael is serving a 15-month federal prison sentence for extorting campaign contributions for Columbus city officials from Redflex, the city’s former red-light camera vendor. Two Redflex executives also pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe officials.
No city officials have been charged in that investigation.