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NO ONE LOOKS GOOD IN THE METROHEALTH DEBACLE

THE LONG AND HAPPY

marriage between Akram Boutros and MetroHealth is clearly over, and might not have been so happy in recent years, it turns out. What’s already played out, and what will continue to play out through various legal proceedings, threatens to equally stain the publicly funded hospital system that had for years enjoyed nothing but praise for its work in the region and the ousted CEO who steered MetroHealth through a billion-dollar transformation project.

Metro’s board of trustees on Monday, Nov 21 fired Boutros after it discovered the CEO had awarded himself $1.9 million in bonuses not disclosed or approved by the board. The payments were in violation of his contract, the board said.

Less than a week later, on the day after Thanksgiving, Metro released the investigation that led to the ouster.

“We recognize that the public and media organizations want more details regarding the basis for the Board’s decision to terminate Dr. Boutros’s employment,” the hospital system said in a statement Friday. “MetroHealth has determined that the investigation report prepared by Tucker Ellis LLP at the Board’s request is not covered by attorneyclient privilege,

The report, the product of an investigation by the law firm of Tucker Ellis, centers on Supplemental Performance Based Variable Compensation — bonuses available to top-level executives if the hospital system met certain financial goals as a whole and awarded, as a percentage of their base compensation, if they individually met certain benchmarks.

Boutros was in charge of evaluating and approving bonuses for those top-level employees but was not approved to evaluate his own performance or approve his own bonuses. Tucker Ellis found he not only did just that but given two clear opportunities to disclose the payments — once in response to a public records request from the Plain Dealer and once during negotiations with the board for his most recent contract — he instead reported only his base compensation and Base PBVC.

The findings were not only cause for the publicly funded hospital system to fire Boutros but also show that he has exposure to possible criminal charges including felony theft in office, wrote John McCaffrey, the former FBI agent and Tucker Ellis partner, in the report.

“The facts here suggest that Boutros may have engaged in conduct involving the offense of theft in office, in violation of R.C. 2921.41, and perhaps the offense of falsification, in violation of R.C. 2921.13,” it reads.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley told Scene last week that his office was in touch with the Ohio Ethics Commission to review the facts to determine if a criminal investigation should be opened.

Boutros, who has denied any wrongdoing, self-reported to the OEC on Nov. 1, the day after he repaid the $1.9 million plus interest to Metro.

Jason Bristol, his lawyer, told Signal Cleveland over the holiday weekend that Boutros first read the Tucker Ellis report along with the rest of Cleveland when it was publicly shared by the board.

“Releasing the report to the public without providing it to Dr. Boutros in advance is a continuation of the Board’s attempts to damage Dr. Boutros’ reputation,” Bristol said.

Boutros claims that the investigation and firing were retaliatory actions by the board after he discovered “that the Board members were participating in serial deliberation outside of public meetings and that Vanessa Whiting, the Board Chair, signed agreements and authorized payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars without Board approval.”

“She targeted him for receiving bonuses that were received by all eligible employees,” Bristol said in a statement after the firing. “The Board of Trustees took this action to divert attention from their own gross negligence. Dr. Boutros will take legal action.”

The first of those legal actions came on Monday, Nov. 28, when Boutros sued Metro in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, alleging that the board of trustees violated Ohio’s Open Meetings Act and MetroHealth bylaws in the hiring of incoming CEO Dr. Airica Steed and its termination of Boutros.

It only briefly addresses the reasons Metro cited for firing him besides claiming they were authorized and instead largely contends the methods by which Metro’s board conducted the CEO search and launched the Boutros investigation during executive sessions violated state law.

The investigation and firing, it claims, were in response to Boutros alerting Metro to the board’s violations of the Open Meetings Act.

“The cause-and-effect connection between the two incidents is inescapable: [Metro Board of Trustees Chair Vanessa] Whiting attempted to whip up a controversy from contemporaneously created MetroHealth business records which at all times had been available to the Board of Trustees concerning bonus payments which the Board had, in fact, approved by resolution,” the complaint reads.

The suit seeks to “nullify the unlawful investigation of Dr. Boutros and to nullify Dr. Boutros’ termination for cause as The MetroHealth System’s President and Chief Executive Officer.”

Whiting, in a statement issued by MetroHealth this week, said: “We’re disappointed, though not surprised, that Dr. Boutros has filed a lawsuit. His allegations are little more than a distraction from these fundamental facts: That he awarded himself nearly $2 million in bonuses without

PHOTO COURTESY METROHEALTH

proper review or authorization and that he concealed those payments from MetroHealth’s trustees and the public. We are confident the board acted in accord with Ohio law, but no one should lose sight of the irony that someone who for five years actively cloaked his actions is trying now to recast himself as a champion of sunshine.”

Lingering questions abound – Why did Boutros voluntarily repay the bonuses if he maintains they were appropriate? Why didn’t he alert authorities to the Open Meeting Act violations earlier and, apparently, only after he was fired? Did the board actually violate the law by conducting public business in executive sessions?

With a threat of yet another lawsuit from Boutros, depositions and discovery waiting around the corner in the existing one, and a possible criminal investigation on the horizon, answers may still yet come. And everyone might look even worse by the time it’s all over.

– Vince Grzegorek

Cleveland Man Declared “Wrongfully Imprisoned” for 2003 Murder

On a white T-shirt sold by Comma Club Clothing’s founder Ru-El Sailor, a 42-year-old Cleveland man wrongfully accused and convicted of murder in 2003, is the phrase: “My Story Ain’t Over.”

On Tuesday, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Sherrie Miday added another plot point in Sailor’s 15-year fight, nearly five years after his conviction was overturned.

The judge declared Sailor a “wrongfully imprisoned person,” a decision which permits Sailor to seek compensation – nearly $53,000 for every year he was behind bars – from the State of Ohio.

For Sailor, who was surrounded today by his wife, mother, grandchildren and attorneys, Miday’s decision signifies something concrete and symbolic.

“I’m finally out,” Sailor told Scene. “My name is finally cleared.”

A year before Sailor was sentenced in 2003 to 28 years-tolife for the murder of Omar Clark, he was walking out of an East Side bar with friends. Ru-El says that around 12:30 in the morning Clark pulled out a gun in front of Sailor’s friend Cordell Hubbard. Defending his sister, Sailor recounts, Hubbard shot in self-defense. But, Sailor was charged along with Hubbard.

With no physical or DNA evidence, the court gave Sailor a quartercentury sentence, even when multiple witnesses confirmed that Sailor wasn’t present for Clark’s death.

“It was like I was literally framed,” Sailor said. “Like, witnesses were forced to identify me. [Even when] they never saw me a day in their life.”

In 2017, with assistance from the Ohio Innocence Project, Sailor sought to have the office of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley review his case through the Conviction Integrity Unit.

The investigation found that Sailor was innocent.

The payoff was exuberance and freedom for Sailor, yet problematic, in legal terms, for his attorneys.

Though his 2003 convictions for murder, kidnapping and assault were overturned, Sailor was forced, lawyers involved in the case said, to accept a guilty plea for perjury and obstruction of justice — offenses that carried a 10-year prison sentence. He copped to the charges for time served and was released.

Sarah Gelsomino, an attorney with Friedman, Gilbert + Gerhardstein who’s been involved in Sailor’s case since 2018, believes that O’Malley’s office felt pressured to assign a punishment.

“Really, what it comes down to is it’s to prevent them from getting money,” she said. “What is the purpose of having Ru-El have a tenyear sentence? He already did the time. It’s time served. It’s because the prosecutor’s office refused to let him get out scot-free.”

Since his exoneration, Sailor has adopted both the attitude of a happily free man and one of a head-down activist. In 2018, he started Comma Club Clothing, with its life-affirming slogans and autobiographical declarations, as a coda for his prison epoch. In March of the following year, he married his wife at the same courthouse where he was convicted 16 years before.

Sailor’s attorney, Kimberly Kendall Corral, was the officiant. “The power of their love bent the bars between them,” Corral said at the 10-minute ceremony. “The persistence of their love changed and opened closed minds.”

Since 2018, Gelsomino said, Sailor’s exoneration has acted as a strong signifier for the wrongfully convicted serving time in Ohio and Cuyahoga for cimes they haven’t committed.

Nearly 60 percent—225 persons— of the Innocence Project’s exonerees have been Black, and nearly 70 percent of such cases involved eyewitness misidentification of some type.

“And most of them are here in Cuyahoga County,” Gelsomino said.

Sailor himself sees his story only deepening from here on out. Though given the gifts of normal citizenry, he still maintains an ear to the ground, from afar, at the Justice Center. His phone rings constantly with calls from inmates across Ohio that have likewise been dealt wrongful convictions. “I talk to at least five guys a day,” Sailor said.

For those outside the legal world, Sailor thinks Comma Club Clothing acts as a springboard—for awareness of the Innocence Project, for men like him that were innocent.

It’s a message that cries: My life is not a period, full-stop.

“Just like the actual comma, a short pause and a continuation,” Sailor said. “Look at me. My life, they thought [it] was over. My story was over. And now it’s not.”

– Mark Oprea

DIGIT WIDGET

16

People killed in car crashes in Ohio over Thanksgiving weekend.

10

Victims who weren’t wearing seat belts.

2

Cleveland city council seats that must be eliminated by the 2025 elections according to a 2008 charter amendment that says council shrinks as the city’s population falls.

2,376

The number Cleveland fell below 375,000 in population according to the 2020 Census, the benchmark for keeping council at 17 members.

It’s Safer to Hit Those Horny Deer Than Swerve to Avoid Them, Ohio State Highway Patrol Says

roadways right now, that’s because it’s the height of mating season. And the deer are getting frisky.

Deer especially like to flirt and date at dawn and dusk. Due to our blessed return to standard time, those hours are now also times when people are more likely to be moving around. Today, dawn was at 7 a.m. and dusk will be at 5:29 p.m., right during rush hour.

More traffic and more deer? It’s a deadly combination for humans and deer alike.

Most people react as you should expect and when they see deer on the roadway — they swerve, brake or take other action to avoid hitting the animal. This instinct, the Ohio State Highway Patrol says, is a mistake.

“You have the potential to lose control or hit another vehicle,” Lt. Leo Shirkey told the Independent. “I know you don’t want to hit it but it’s the best thing to do.”

This may seem like a nonviable option as well. There have been 101,912 deer-related crashes in Ohio since 2017 and 31 fatalities amongst those crashes. But officials caution, most of those involve drivers getting into accidents while avoiding the deer, or trying to.

Ohio is not an outlier, if you were curious. The same advice is being given across the country.

“If you’re driving and you’re in a situation where you’re at fairly low speeds without much traffic or anything around, and you can avoid the deer, then, yes, if you can do it safely, then try to do so,” Dan Zarlenga, St. Louis Regional Media Specialist with the Missouri Department of Conservation, told KSDK. “But if you’re at high speeds, there’s oncoming traffic, you’ve got a narrow roadway, whatever, where you might fall off into a ditch or hit a tree, then, unfortunately, the best thing you can do is just go ahead and hit the deer.”

So the answer may be to just be cautious by wooded areas, and if you see deer anywhere (even on the side of the road) just know that there are probably others (maybe on the road) and exercise caution.

Plus, the deer population is out of control because there are no natural predators in the area to keep them in check. So perhaps automobiles have to take the place of timberwolves.

Deer mating season will end in November, but increased deer activity (and therefore driver caution) could continue through December.

–Rosalind Early