BY KATHLEEN HILLENMEYER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON -- The Ohio Inspector General's Office is investigating allegations that Warren Correctional Institution inmates cleaned private horse owners' stalls at Lebanon Raceway and were fed meals at the track in exchange.
The inquiry followed complaints by Warren Correctional payroll clerk Doug Hunter. He accuses Warden Anthony Brigano, a horse owner, of allowing work that benefited private citizens, not just the public. Warden Brigano denies the allegation.
Inspector General Richard Ward confirmed the investigation. "We'll look at both versions of what did or did not happen here." Sending community service inmates to public fairgrounds -- on which Lebanon Raceway is located -- is common, said Andrea Dean, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. She said that each year inmates clean the grounds in Columbus before the Ohio State Fair, for example. Inmates also help maintain the Warren County Fairgrounds. Inmates' work throughout the state at parks, schools, churches and other nonprofit sites accounts for nearly 5 million hours of service since 1991.
Though owned by Warren County, the Lebanon fairgrounds are leased to two private groups, the Lebanon Trotters Club and the Miami Valley Trotters Club, for harness racing.
Mr. Brigano -- a familiar face at the fairgrounds because he is a 4-H volunteer, the fair board's treasurer and a horse owner -- sometimes keeps his horses at the stables there. He denied ordering inmates to perform work other than regular maintenance and horse barn cleaning for the annual Warren County Fair.
During the 10-month period in question, from May 1996 to March 1997, "I never gave anybody instructions to clean personal stalls. That is the responsibility of the individual horsemen," Mr. Brigano told The Cincinnati Enquirer. "The inmates have never done anybody's private stall, including mine."
The inspector general customarily refers such complaints to the agency involved (in this case, the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction) for a preliminary review. Based on the results, the inspector general evaluates whether the matter falls under his jurisdiction and whether the allegations, if true, constitute wrongdoing.
A May 22 report to the inspector general obtained by The Enquirer supports Mr. Brigano's statements: "There is no evidence to indicate the inmates or the correction officer used at the Warren County Fairgrounds personally benefited Mr. Brigano or any other individuals other than the citizens of Warren County," wrote John K. Arbogast, an assistant chief inspector with the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
Mr. Hunter questions why Mr. Arbogast, a former employee of Warden Brigano's, failed to interview any of the inmates who worked at the fairgrounds or the corrections officers who escorted them. The prison's community service log shows entries, sometimes several per week, in which five or more inmates were released to the fairgrounds for work. But Mr. Arbogast interviewed neither them nor their guards.
Mr. Arbogast did not return calls from The Enquirer but referred questions to Ms. Dean. Having questioned the warden, the track's stall manager, and five others, "he felt there was no need to interview" the inmates and guards, Ms. Dean said.
The Enquirer could not reach corrections officers who witnessed the inmates' work nor any who saw them eat at the Track Kitchen, a diner adjacent to the track. But officials at the fairgrounds said Mr. Hunter is manipulating the facts to discredit his boss.
"The inmates come in and mow grass, they paint, and any type of odd jobs they're allowed to do," said Ed Wade, president of the Warren County Agriculture Society, commonly known as the county fair board. "There has been no impropriety at all. It's just a witch hunt by somebody who doesn't like Tony (Brigano)."
Mr. Hunter has worked in the prisons here since 1992, first as a corrections officer at Lebanon Correctional Institution. He transfered to neighboring Warren Correctional two years later, and, according to records, was a model employee. But Mr. Hunter recently clashed with the warden over personnel issues, including a promotion he was denied last summer.
Nevertheless, the 31-year-old payroll clerk said his objections to inmate labor at the track predated summer 1997: "The reason I'm doing this is because it's an abuse on taxpayers," Mr. Hunter said. "It's a public official misusing his position."
Whatever labor the inmates devoted to horse barns at Lebanon Raceway was confined to four barns on the south side of the track that are converted each July for poultry and livestock competitions for the fair, Mr. Wade said.
"If inmates were cleaning out stables for private individuals, I would certainly say that was inappropriate," Mr. Wade added. "To the best of my knowledge, that has never happened."
Because of his personal connections to the track, Mr. Brigano said, he carefully avoided any conflict of interest.
"The only work I ever sanctioned was in the lower barn area. But cleaning stalls was absolutely forbidden."
In April 1997, the community service detail switched from Warren Correctional's oversight to Lebanon Correctional. Mr. Wade said the Lebanon Correctional inmates now assigned to the fairgrounds are given beverages only.
"We don't buy their lunches anymore," the fair board president said. "But we still have pop and water available for them. We try to treat them nice. The fairgrounds are owned by the public, and they save us money."
