Ohio treasurer short 34 resumes

Dems requested employee documents from Mandel over year ago

Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel

A spokesman for Republican Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel on Wednesday said his office doesn't have resumes for 34 of its employees, a little over a year after the Democratic Party said it asked for the employee resumes.

The Ohio Democratic Party said it asked more than a year ago for the resumes to determine whether Mr. Mandel had lived up to his promise to hire only qualified professionals.

Mr. Mandel, who was elected in 2010, is running for the U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in the Nov. 6 general election.

Seth Unger, press secretary for Mr. Mandel, told The Blade Wednesday that the treasurer's office doesn't possess the documents that had been requested.

"We have given the Ohio Democratic Party every resume that they have requested which the Treasurer's office has in its records. The resumes of individuals who applied, interviewed, and were hired prior to the Treasurer taking office were never brought into office. The Treasurer's office is unable to produce records that it does not have in its possession," Mr. Unger said in an email to The Blade.

READ MORE from Tom Troy at the Blade Slices politics blog.

Mr. Unger was not able to say whether the documents exist in some private office or were never collected in the first place.

Andrew Zucker, a spokesman for the party, said the Mandel office has released to them thousands of documents that were not requested, but only 28 of the 62 resumes it had asked for.

Missing among the final group of resumes are several Mandel campaign workers who were hired into high-paying appointed positions and then left to work on Mr. Mandel's Senate campaign.

"Until Josh finally discloses the resumes and qualifications for the staffers he's hired at taxpayer expense, or explains why he cannot produce them, Ohioans are left wondering just how deep cronyism runs in the Treasurer's office under Mandel, who continues proving he's just another politician that can't be trusted," Mr. Zucker said.

In a similar contest over public records law, Gov. John Kasich, a fellow Republican, refused media requests to release employment records that were collected during his transition but released them once he became governor, in January, 2011.

At the time, Mr. Kasich said he would bring the resumes of the people he hired into his official governor's office, where they became public records.