Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley declined an invitation from the Greater Cleveland Congregations to appear at a candidates’ forum Tuesday night in Cleveland because of what he described as an attempt at “extortion.”
O’Malley is running for a third term against Democrat Matthew Ahn in the March 19 primary. At the party’s executive committee meeting in January, O’Malley came up just short of the needed votes for the party endorsement, a significant victory for Ahn.
According to O’Malley, during a Feb. 8 call with the GCC to go over a draft list of questions, he learned candidates would be asked to commit to sending $500,000 from the office’s budget to an outside organization.
“There are many, many good people who are involved in that organization,” O’Malley said, referring to the GCC. “But what they do is they try to get you into a room, fill that room with a lot of people and then use that influence to get you to take a position.”
O'Malley said he was not told who the money should go to during that call. In a statement, the GCC said it was asking for a commitment to send the money to the Brenda Glass Multipurpose Trauma Center.
"We did not think this would be controversial," said GCC Executive Director Keisha Krumm. "He claims to be concerned about the victims. And this is a good program. And we thought that it would be a good opportunity for the prosecutor to put his money where his mouth is when he talks about victims."
Based on a transcript and audio of the February 8, meeting provided by GCC, the center's founder and CEO Brenda Glass made the request directly to O'Malley.
"So we're asking for $500,000 to be put toward helping people with safe shelter, helping people to receive the [mental] health services, the case management services, the relocation assistance that these people need to move forward with their lives," Glass said.
The organizers of the call told O'Malley they did not want a response to any of their questions. He did not refer to the request as "extortion" during the call.
O'Malley did bring up the county's budgeting process, and GCC clarified that their request would be for funding directly from the prosecutor's office.
"Because we do know that the prosecutor's office invests in programming that is preventative," Krumm said. "And so this is a negotiation point that we want to put on the table and ask both of the candidates."
On Feb. 14, O’Malley sent a letter to Krumm declining the invitation to the forum and criticizing the organization for the question from Glass.
“In discussing your request with people in county government and within the criminal justice system, all are in agreement that it has both the look and feel of extortion. I do not say that lightly,” O’Malley wrote.
After receiving that letter, the GCC asked O'Malley for a correction, saying it was a draft list of questions, not a demand for money to go to the GCC, said Krumm.
“If he doesn’t want to come, he shouldn’t come,” Krumm said. “But he shouldn’t make false accusations about an organization that has a strong track record of pushing for real change.”
O’Malley and the GCC have worked together in the past, including to open the county's diversion center where people experiencing a mental health crisis can receive inpatient treatment, and discussed reforms to the criminal justice system during and after his 2016 campaign to unseat incumbent Prosecutor Tim McGinty.
In the last couple of years, the GCC has led a campaign to end the practice of sending juveniles to adult prison and has been critical of O’Malley for sending far more juveniles to adult court than anywhere else in Ohio.
In the most serious cases, if the defendant is close to 18 years old, transfer to adult court is mandatory. In certain cases, the prosecutor’s office can file a motion to ask a judge to send a juvenile to adult court – what are known as discretionary bindovers.
The juvenile bindover issue has been at the forefront of forums and debates during this year’s campaign for prosecutor.
O'Malley has said that more than half of those bindovers are mandatory and that the decision is ultimately up to a judge. In 2023, he said only 9 of the 61 juvenile bindovers in the County were discretionary.
Ahn has promised to place a moratorium on discretionary bindovers if he’s elected. In his Feb. 14 letter, O’Malley refused to make that pledge, arguing it would violate a victims’ rights provision in Ohio’s constitution known as Marsy’s Law.
“These laws require the County Prosecutor to meet with victims and their families at critical stages of the criminal justice process and to provide them with an opportunity to be heard,” O’Malley wrote. “Any request for a commitment by the GCC that would demand that I ignore a victim’s input in a case is something that I will not do.”
The GCC disputes that interpretation of Marsy’s Law, saying it requires the prosecutor listen to victims or their representatives, but the office still makes the final decision.
“Even if a victim or victim's representative requests a discretionary bindover, the prosecutor's office is not required to accede to that request,” Krumm said.
She added that the invitation remains open for O’Malley to attend the GCC forum.
“We will have a chair for him,” said Krumm.
