9/26/03

Delmont was put on unpaid leave last week.

By STEPHEN SIFF

and PEGGY SINKOVICH

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

WARREN -- The man who until last year was in charge of buying janitorial supplies for Trumbull County was expected to surrender to authorities this morning.

Tony Delmont of Warren was to appear before Judge John Stuard in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to answer charges contained in a secret indictment.

A county grand jury has been examining since February the purchasing practices in the county maintenance department, of which Delmont was in charge.

Last week, the first person to be named in the probe, Barry Jacobson, co-owner of Envirochemical Inc., pleaded guilty in the case.

In an affidavit, Jacobson said he bribed Delmont so the maintenance director would buy janitorial products from his company, which he was selling to Trumbull County at greatly inflated prices.

As an example, the county was paying as much as $73 for a single can of bug spray because of the scheme.

Included in court filings were photocopies of two checks totaling $17,000 that Jacobson wrote to Delmont's wife, Karen.

On unpaid leave: Last week, county Commissioners Joseph J. Angelo Jr. and James Tsagaris voted to put Delmont on unpaid leave.

Delmont has not been at work since an accident in a county snowplow in February, a few days after the grand jury began looking into his department.

Although he is no longer receiving money from the county, he is still getting 72 percent of his $71,081 a year salary through the Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

That money would keep on coming even if Delmont, a county employee for more than two decades, were fired, officials say.

If he were to be incarcerated, the checks would stop coming during the period of incarceration, then resume.

County workers are not subject to routine job performance reviews, and Delmont has never been reprimanded.

1998 DUI charge: He was ordered to seek counseling by commissioners in 1998 after he was arrested on a charge of driving under the influence in a county truck.

A test found his blood-alcohol level in excess of legal limits, according to records, but a judge eventually found Delmont guilty of reckless operation and suspended his license for one month, allowing him to continue to drive in the scope of his employment.

Commissioners relieved Delmont of responsibility for buying supplies last September, at the recommendation of county Prosecutor Dennis Watkins.

Since then, the county's bill for cleaning supplies has dropped from about $400,000 a year to $45,000 in the nine months of this year.

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Delmont pleaded innocent  to theft in office, money laundering and five counts of bribery.