BY WALT SCHAEFER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS -- Councilman Roland M. Heyne Jr., who has been criticized by the mayor here for his refusal to take a voluntary drug test, announced Wednesday his record of a past drug-related arrest has been expunged. Mr. Heyne provided documentation that Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Deidra Hair granted dismissal of the drug charges and expungement of the record on April 9. Mr. Heyne said he decided to make public the expungement to clear his name.
The court found that Mr. Heyne "has successfully completed the period of rehabilitation as ordered (and) is no longer drug dependent, or in danger of being drug dependent."
Mr. Heyne, a first-year councilman, had been under court-ordered treatment in lieu of possible conviction on felony drug charges. "I feel this (ruling by Judge Hair) has vindicated me as the good person and outstanding citizen I have always been," Mr. Heyne said.
After Mr. Heyne refused to take a drug test along with other village officials here earlier this year, Mayor Glenn Allen read Mr. Heyne's court record at an open council session.
Mr. Heyne said he hopes "that this hatchet (job) they have been giving me is buried."
Mr. Heyne was charged in January 1996 by Cincinnati police with three felony counts of using deception to obtain dangerous drugs -- acetaminophen with codeine.
At the council session, Mr. Heyne read a document stating he underwent a drug screening performed last month by a court-appointed doctor as part of his probation, and that he passed it.
Mayor Allen said Wednesday: "I'm not planning to bring (the record) up any more. I just hope that we can get on with village business, and I hope he thinks about what is good for the village."
In March, Mr. Heyne sued the village of about 1,200 residents, the mayor, police chief and clerk over access to public records. An agreement was reached in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court to make three years of public records available to him.
