Former Geauga County auditor sentenced on dereliction of duty charges

Former Geauga County Auditor Frank Gliha avoided jail time, but must pay a fine and refrain from running for public office in the near future after he was sentenced in Geauga County Common Pleas Court on five counts of dereliction of duty.

Gliha entered pleas and received his sentence on June 20. Four of the five charges arose from a case in which a former county employee is accused of embezzling more than $1.8 million in public funds over a nearly eight-year period. Gliha pleaded guilty to those four counts, and entered a no-contest plea and was found guilty on the fifth charge.

Visiting Judge Robert Brown fined Gliha $1,250 and ordered him to pay court costs. The judge also forbid Gliha from running for public office for four years. A 90-day jail term was suspended.

On the first two charges, Gliha admitted to failing to secure competitive bids for products or services over $50,000. These incidents occurred in 2013 and 2014, said Special Prosecutor Bryan Kostura.

The two other dereliction of duty charges dealt with Gliha approving the purchase of equipment without approval from the Automatic Data Processing Board, and his failure to create a system of internal controls to prevent the abuse of public funds from 2011 to 2018.

These four counts stemmed from former Geauga County Chief Technology Officer Steven Decatur and his daughter, Stephanie Stewart, being charged in February with embezzling more than $1.8 million from the county and laundering it through a company owned and operated by Stewart.

Kostura said there is no evidence showing Gliha benefited from any of Decatur’s and Stewart’s alleged wrongdoing.

Gliha also pleaded no contest and was found guilty on June 20 of a fifth charge of dereliction of duty. This charge stemmed from his failure to distribute annual payments from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to communities in Geauga County in which Section 8 housing was located.

Those funds have since been distributed by new Geauga County Auditor Charles Walder, Kostura said.

All five counts that Gliha faced were second-degree misdemeanors, each carrying a maximum sentence of 90 days in jail and a $750 fine. Brown said Gliha is not eligible for probation and must pay his fines in 90 days.

In wake of the charges against Decatur and Stewart, Gliha announced on March 12 that he was resigning as auditor effective April 3. He had served as Geauga County auditor for nine years.

Kostura expressed satisfaction with the sentence issued to Gliha.

“I believe what we have is a fair resolution for the taxpayers of Geauga County,” he said.

Attorney Todd Petersen, who represented Gliha, said in a voicemail message to The News-Herald that he had no comment on his client’s pleas or sentence.

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