08/26/03

Columbus - Shortly after Dick Schafrath retired last year as the state's "fitness czar," officials at the Ohio Department of Health asked the former Cleveland Browns tackle how they could keep him on as the public voice of the "Healthy Ohioans" program.

Schafrath had a proposal: Hire Starr Mule Inc., a start-up Mansfield company operated by his sons Gerrit and Isaac.

So on June 9, less than two months after Gerrit Schafrath incorporated Starr Mule, Health Director Nick Baird handed company President Isaac Schafrath a $24,990 contract to provide "inspirational speakers" for Healthy Ohioans, the program their father had headed. Gerrit lives in Connecticut; Isaac is a communications major at Ohio State University.

State law prohibits a public official from using his authority "to secure authorization of any public contract in which he, a member of his family or any of his business associates has an interest."

But since Dick Schafrath didn't propose hiring Starr Mule until after he resigned, no impropriety occurred, said Jodi Govern, the Health Department's chief lawyer.

"This idea was not hatched, so to speak, while Dick was still an employee of the Department of Health," she said.

Records show that Baird skirted agency rules that require three written price quotes or a formal request for proposals for contracts under $29,000. Asked why that protocol wasn't followed, Baird's spokesman, Jay Carey, said: "It was a director-initiated contract. He has that prerogative."

Schafrath would not discuss the contract, saying, "I don't even know what we're talking about." He referred questions to his lawyer, Larry Goldin, who also said there was nothing improper about the contract.

"The idea is they [Gerrit and Isaac] . . . know how to present the program, and it'll give them some money to help pay their way through OSU and stuff," Goldin said.

"They have to provide a service. If they don't provide it, they don't get compensated. It's very logical to carry it on this way."

Not according to Catherine Turcer of Ohio Citizen Action. She says the contract reeks of political self-dealing.

"I think the only thing that looks 'healthy' about this is that it's payola," she said.

Schafrath, a former state senator, landed the $67,600-a-year Healthy Ohioans job in August 2000 because Gov. Bob Taft needed to resolve a divisive political dispute among state Republicans.

With then-State Reps. Larry Householder and Bill Harris locked in a power struggle over which man would succeed Ohio House Speaker JoAnn Davidson, Taft created the Healthy Ohioans post for Schafrath, freeing Schafrath's Senate seat for Harris and handing the speakership to Householder.

The deal appeased all three men: Schafrath got a $20,000 raise; Harris, facing term limits in the House in 2002, got up to 10 more years in the Ohio Senate; and Householder got the job he coveted.

In light of that history, the Starr Mule contract continues a pattern of political back-scratching, Turcer said.

"If you look at the story of how the senator [Schafrath] was appointed so that Harris could have his spot, and then he leaves, it becomes a story about how you just connect the dots," she said. "Not to mention that $25,000 in this time of budgetary crisis is a lot of money."

The Starr Mule contract represents about 9 percent of Healthy Ohioans' $288,000 budget.

News researcher Cheryl Diamond contributed to this report.

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