By: Jesse Davis
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
jesse@thevillagereporter.com
Former Swanton fiscal officer Jason Vasko has been found liable for $2,977.94 due to “interest and penalties that resulted from late tax, retirement system, and credit card payments,” according to the Auditor of State’s Office.
A release issued last month by the auditor’s office states that during Vasko’s tenure from March 20, 2022 through Feb. 4, 2023, he failed to make a variety of payments in a timely manner, which then incurred late fees and finance charges.
“The total included $2,042.43 in penalties to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services for the village’s failure to remit quarterly employment reports, $468.18 to the Internal Revenue Service, $395.99 to the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, and $71.34 to PNC Bank,” it states.
The finding for recovery stems from an audit of the village’s financial statements from Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2023.
The final audit report called Vasko’s failure to make the payments negligence, violating requirements in both the U.S. Code and the Ohio Revised Code as well as general terms of the village’s credit account at PNC Bank.
According to current Swanton Fiscal Officer Holden Benfield, Vasko completely failed to submit filings to the Department of Job and Family Services in the third and fourth quarters of 2022.
“I ended up doing those in August of 2023 when I found out that they were not submitted,” Benfield said.
Benfield said there has been a lot of work done to retroactively clean up similar errors and that it has resulted in no major problems for the village.
He pointed out that, while filings were submitted late which resulted in the fines, everything did eventually get reported and there were no other issues with the filings themselves, or the work done by Vasko.
That was not the case, he said, with former Swanton utility clerk Kari Rowe. In 2023, Rowe was convicted of theft in office – a third-degree felony – after a state auditor’s investigation discovered that she had stolen nearly $65,000 in utility payments. That investigation triggered when an audit of the village’s 2016-2017 finances identified several red flags.
Rowe was eventually sentenced to 18 months in prison with a discretionary post-release control period of up to two years along with $128,684 in restitution payments to cover the theft and the cost of the special audit. She applied for and was given a judicial release after serving roughly four months of her sentence.
According to Benfield, neither Rowe’s nor Vasko’s situation ended up costing the village any money. “With Kari Rowe and Jason Vasko and anyone in the current office that handles money, everyone is bonded up to $200,000,” Benfield said.
“So, when something like this happens, if the village can’t directly collect from the individual, then we will go to the bonding company, and they will pay us what needs to be paid.”
The bonding company then pursues the liable individual to recoup the money. Benfield said that even if the error or theft by the individual were higher than $200,000, the village also carries insurance that would provide coverage.
“In all likelihood, it would have to be ridiculously extreme to actually injure the village in any permanent way,” he said.
Mayor Neil Toeppe has a positive outlook both on Benfield’s work as well as the practices of the village when it comes to financial issues.
“I’m very pleased with the status of our accounting system right now,” Toeppe said. “At every council meeting, the fiscal officer reports on any changes that need to be made, any funding that needs to be moved or reallocated. So that’s all a matter of public record every two weeks.”
In addition to the payment Vasko must make over his duties as fiscal officer, he is currently serving a total sentence of three years and 10 months in prison after pleading guilty last March to three counts of disseminating harmful material to juveniles and three counts of importuning across two cases in Wood and Defiance Counties.
In both cases, the charges stemmed from interactions with law enforcement posing as minors between 13 and 16 years old, with Vasko providing obscene material to and soliciting sexual activity from them.