AG office romance, promotion at issue
By James Nash
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Edgar C. Simpson, then the top non-legal administrator for Attorney General Marc Dann, recommended Dorris to the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission on July 2. That day, the commission overrode its earlier decision to choose someone else and unanimously named Dorris executive director of the academy.
As Simpson endorsed Dorris for the $105,000-a-year job, neither he nor she shared one detail with the commission: The two had been dating for about three months.
Although the Simpson-Dorris romance differs from the other office relationships that cost Dann, Simpson and other staffers their jobs last month, it, too, has attracted the attention of investigators combing through the rubble of Dann’s administration.
Simpson met Dorris when the two worked in adjoining offices in the state office building that housed Dann’s senior staff. By all accounts, the two, who were both divorced, did not attempt to hide their relationship from co-workers but were not inclined to socialize at the alcohol-fueled gatherings that became a hallmark of Dann’s tenure.
Dorris is running as the Democratic candidate for Franklin County prosecutor in the November election.
Simpson, now 44, and Dorris, now 50, insist that they never let their personal relationship interfere in their official duties.
Dorris, however, owes her position as director of the training academy to high-level maneuvering by Dann and Simpson, close friends since Simpson and Dann’s wife worked together at a Warren newspaper in the 1990s.
In May 2007, the commission unanimously voted to hire a former suburban Cincinnati police chief, Ken Hughes, as executive director of the training academy.
Dorris, interim executive director at the time, was not a candidate for the job.
After talking to Simpson and Dorris about his candidacy, Hughes sat down later in May for an interview with Dann, who as attorney general could veto commission picks, though it was a rarely used power.
Hughes said he expected the interview to be a formality. Instead, he said, Dann ranged from indifferent to dismissive during a session that lasted only a few minutes.
“I felt that whatever was in his mind, whatever was his agenda, I wasn’t part of it,” Hughes recalled this week.
Hughes said Simpson relayed the bad news: “The attorney general felt they needed to move in another direction.”
That direction was Dorris.
Sometime after Hughes and others applied for the opening, Dorris decided that she wanted the job. A former police officer, veteran lawyer and employee of the attorney general’s office since 1996, Dorris had the right credentials, said Vernon Stanforth, the Fayette County sheriff and chairman of the academy’s commission.
Simpson, Dann and Dorris said they didn’t sabotage Hughes’ candidacy to make room for Dorris.
In separate e-mail interviews this week, Simpson and Dann said it was Dann who overruled the commission’s choice of Hughes and Simpson was merely the messenger.
Once Dorris was elevated to permanent executive director, the attorney general’s office was careful to separate her role from Simpson’s, documents show. An office reorganization moved the Peace Officer Training Academy from Simpson’s chain of command to the legal side of the office. Dann said the change had nothing to do with Simpson and Dorris’ relationship.
An office organizational chart from April 2007, the month Dorris said she and Simpson began their relationship, shows that she reported to both Simpson and Thomas R. Winters, Dann’s top legal aide. Simpson signed Dorris’ time sheets that March but not after that.
Simpson said he never viewed Dorris as one of “my reports.”
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, whom Dorris is challenging in the Nov. 4 election, said he doesn’t know whether he’ll make an issue of the relationship during the campaign.
Dorris said she has nothing to hide or be ashamed of.
“It is what it is,” she said. “We’ve been dating for over a year. We love each other very much.”