Former councilman Jack Petsche sues Brecksville over corruption charges—Cleveland.com
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio — Jack Petsche, who was thrown off City Council in 2020 and indicted in 2021 on corruption charges that were eventually dismissed, has sued several current and former city officials for providing what he says was “false and misleading information” to investigators. …
The lawsuit was filed March 16 in U.S. District Court in Cleveland. Named as defendants were Mayor Jerry Hruby, Law Director David Matty, council President Laura Redinger and former council members Gerald Broski, Louis Carouse Jr. and Kim Veras. The City of Brecksville was also named as a defendant.
The lawsuit claims that Hruby, Matty and Petsche’s former council colleagues — including Redinger, Broski, Carouse and Veras — “conspired to engineer a baseless felony prosecution against him to snuff out his dissenting voice and political career, in retaliation for his exercise of his First Amendment rights (to free speech).”
“To ensure that Petsche would be prosecuted, defendants provided false and misleading information to investigators and otherwise withheld material information that they knew would confirm a lack of probable cause for any criminal charges against Petsche,” the lawsuit says. “Petsche was thus forced to vacate his elected office and spend two years of his life and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defend against these bogus felony charges,” the lawsuit says. . . .
City officials and Cuyahoga County prosecutors said Petsche as a councilman voted to award city money to a construction firm, Panzica Construction Co., that had subcontracted with Petsche-owned USA Roofing. The project was the construction of a new Brecksville police station.
However, the charges against Petsche in Cuyahoga County Commons Pleas Court were thrown out by Judge John J. Russo in March 2022. Russo said prosecutors didn’t present enough information to show that Petsche could be convicted of a crime. . . .
In [his] decision to dismiss the charges against Petsche, Russo held that Petsche’s council votes on the police station project did not fall under the state law barring officials from using the power of their office to secure public contracts. Russo determined that the law did not bar public officials from all dealings in which they may have some interest, only those where “there is a risk that private considerations may detract from serving the public interests.” In a journal entry released later, Russo wrote that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that Petsche had any criminal intent in voting for the contracts. …
Peter Pattakos, Petsche’s attorney, said he filed the lawsuit in federal court, as opposed to Common Pleas Court, because it involves Petsche’s federally protected First Amendment rights. …