BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON -- A contrite Mark Baden pleaded guilty Wednesday to two misdemeanor crimes for hiring someone to do a job that he paid someone else to do while he was director of the Butler County Emergency Management Agency (EMA).
In the courthouse where he once worked as county clerk of courts, Mr. Baden pleaded guilty to two counts of falsification on county payroll adjustment forms. Pam Shollenbarger, who performed work for Mr. Baden that her daughter was hired to do, pleaded guilty to the same charges.
Common Pleas Judge John Moser sentenced each to $250 fines and ordered them to jointly pay back the $369 Mrs. Shollenbarger received through her daughter, Jamie Shollenbarger, from the county. The judge could have sentenced them to six months in jail.
"I'm very sorry," Mr. Baden told the judge. "It's caused a lot of grief and embarrassment for my family. I was only trying to help. I wasn't trying to hurt anybody."
Judge Moser and special prosecutor Steve Tolbert acknowledged that no money had been stolen from the county. The judge said both defendants had already been punished.
"You both lost jobs and personal esteem over a situation that is a technicality," he said.
Mr. Tolbert did not recommend a jail sentence and said he would not have prosecuted the case if it had involved a private company. But because it involved taxpayers' money and a public official, he felt obliged to prosecute.
Mr. Baden, a Democrat, was elected county clerk of courts in November 1992, but lost his bid for re-election in 1996. Soon after that, he was appointed director of the EMA. He was paid an annual salary of $42,500.
The pleas came seven months after Mr. Tolbert began his investigation. Last year, Mr. Baden asked the EMA board of directors to allow him to hire Pam Shollenbarger, a friend who then worked for the Butler County Department of Human Services, to catalog data showing the location of hazardous material in the county.
But the board denied the request because as a full-time county employee, Mrs. Shollenbarger would have been entitled to overtime pay.
Mr. Baden hired Jamie Shollenbarger instead, but allowed Mrs. Shollenbarger to perform the work from mid-October to the end of December. Mr. Baden paid straight time to Jamie, and Mrs. Shollenbarger endorsed the checks he issued to her daughter.
But just before last Christmas, the checks were brought to the board's attention. After investigating, the board suspended Mr. Baden on Jan. 2 and turned the case over to the sheriff's department. The board fired him Jan. 13 after receiving his letter of resignation. Mrs. Shollenbarger also resigned from her job.
