Feb 4, 2015 3 min read

Slightly more than half of the candidates for funding from the Washington County Local Share Account made the first cut.

The local share review committee evaluated requests for funding for 67 projects across the county and recommended 38 of them. It released the list of recipients and the amount it recommended for each Wednesday.

The 67 requesting entities each got two minutes to plead their cases to the board Jan. 20 and 21. Applicants must raise from other sources at least as much money as they are seeking from the LSA, and those chosen usually do not get the LSA amount they sought. Those 67 requested a total of $18.7 million.

Committee Chairman Jeff Kotula asked the county commissioners to give preliminary approval today to projects totaling $6.5 million from gambling revenues generated by The Meadows Casino.

If they approve the projects today, the commissioners will send them to the state Department of Community and Economic Development. That final step usually takes six months before the funds are distributed.

The list includes $1.5 million in community improvements. Carroll and Morris municipal buildings and a Franklin Farms Road bridge replacement in North Franklin Township each were earmarked for $250,000.

Earth work for another phase of Starpointe business park in Hanover and Smith townships received the single-largest recommended allocation, $1 million.

In the area of job training, Western Area Career and Technology Center received the sole recommended allocation, $280,000, for an educational manufacturing complex.

The Washington-Greene County Job Training Agency, which had received six-figure funding every year since the local share program began in 2008, was noticeably absent from Wednesday’s list. David Suski, who had been a member of the commissioner-appointed local share committee since its inception, is no longer a member of the vetting panel.

Suski abruptly left his president’s position in June, and Linda Bell, formerly the organization’s vice president, succeeded him in that capacity.

Last month, Bell requested $399,363 in local share funds for the agency’s Work Certified Academy, which was to be paired with $50,000 from another source. A few days later, the agency was front-page news because the state Department of Labor and Industry is questioning nearly $1 million in cost allocations, including the methods by which former and current WGCJTA executives and some staffers allocated their salaries and time across various funding streams; personal use of an agency-leased vehicle by Suski; failure to provide timely disclosure of a conflict of interest because of some printing costs charged to a third-party company owned by Suski and Bell; and additional leasing costs incurred from duplication of some services.

Asked if the agency’s workforce preparation program was not funded because Washington-Greene’s practices had been questioned, county commission Chairman Larry Maggi said Wednesday, “It’s a review of the process. We did get a letter of determination as part of that audit from (the Department of) Labor and Industry, and that’s part of what I’m sure the board members took into consideration. They had information about what was going on there, and I’m sure that was part of the decision-making process about why it wasn’t funded.”

Public interest projects are recommended to receive a total of $3.3 million. The largest single amount recommended for funding in this category is $500,000 for the Donaldsons Crossroads water pollution control plant and interceptor replacement.

Cross Creek and Independence villages are earmarked for pressure sewer extensions to the tune of $400,000, while the Countywide Home Rehabilitation and Washington Access projects could receive as much as $378,000.