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Ohio Supreme Court Orders Release Of Keycard Data For Former Cuyahoga County Executive

Ed FitzGerald speaks at a press conference in 2014. (Nick Castele / ideastream)

The Ohio Supreme Court has ordered Cuyahoga County to release the data on the comings and goings of Democratic former candidate for governor Ed FitzGerald, the former county executive.  

Current county executive Armond Budish said in a statement he was pleased to see the Ohio Supreme Court agreed with the position that the records were protected at the time FitzGerald was in office, but not once he left. Budish said that confirmed the decision to release the records in January to The Plain Dealer. 

Our Statehouse correspondent Karen Kasler has more on the court ruling..

FitzGerald ran for governor rather than for re-election in Cuyahoga County. The court ruled that since FitzGerald is no longer in office, the data that was requested in an Ohio Republican Party lawsuit in July 2014 should be released.

ORP chair Matt Borges said he’s interested in looking at the data FitzGerald wanted to hold back.

“Of course it ended up not mattering one way or the other to him, but the bottom line is, he doesn’t have the right to decide these things weren’t public records and the court made that clear.”

FitzGerald had cited security concerns in declining to release the data.

Three justices disagreed with the ruling – the court’s lone Democrat, William O’Neill, wrote that the records were properly withheld then and shouldn’t be released now.