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LORAIN COUNTY
AMHERST NEWS-TIMES • OBERLIN NEWS-TRIBUNE • WELLINGTON ENTERPRISE Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022
Requests for 1M election records bury county office JASON HAWK EDITOR
SHEFFIELD TWP. — An onslaught of requests seeking the release of an estimated 1 million documents are burying Lorain County Board of Elections workers, with more coming in every day. Director Paul Adams, a Democrat, said his office is receiving three to five requests each day for documents related to 2020 elections, financial paperwork going back to 2016 “and basically looking at everything in-between.” They seek access to ballots, poll book data, provisional ballot envelopes, contracts and even obscure voting machine reports that Adams said his office has never even run. The requests seem to be aimed at preventing those documents from behind destroyed. Some records, such as detailed Marilyn precinct-by-precinct voting breakJacobcik downs, must be kept forever. Most, though, can be destroyed after 22 months under federal law.Those documents are handed over to the Lorain County Records Retention Center for disposal on a regular schedule, said Marilyn Jacobcik, a Republican who chairs the Lorain County Board of Elections. Elections officials have a lot of Paul experience providing records under Adams Ohio law. “In this case, it has been overwhelming for us, and likely across the country as people have been bombarded with this mass number,” Adams said. The requests are being received at crunch time, as county workers focus on preparing for the Nov. 8 election. Ballots must be sent by the end of next week to overseas and military voters. The situation here fits a trend reported across the nation in recent weeks, especially in states that were battlegrounds in the 2020 presidential election. Mike West, spokesman for the Cuyahoga County RECORDS PAGE A3
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Volume 9, Issue 37
College initiates $36M in payments to bakery KEVIN MARTIN THE CHRONICLE-TELEGRAM
OBERLIN — Oberlin College has initiated payment of a $36.59 million settlement to Gibson’s Bakery, bringing a nearly five-year legal battle to a close. On Aug. 30, the Ohio Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the judgment. Oberlin College’s Board of Trustees announced Friday it had elected not to pursue the matter further. The college is awaiting payment
information from Gibson’s to complete the transaction, which is the total amount owed including interest. It said. In a statement, Oberlin College spokesman Scott Wargo said while the matter had been painful for everyone, the college hopes the end of the litigation will begin the healing of the entire community. “We value our relationship with the city of Oberlin, and we look forward to continuing our support of and partnership with local businesses as we work together to help our city thrive,” Wargo said.
In a letter to Oberlin College alumni obtained by The ChronicleTelegram, Oberlin College President Carmen Twillie Ambar reiterated the college's ability to deliver on academics and student services despite the payment. “While this outcome is a disappointment, our financial plans for this possibility, which included insurance coverage, mean that this payment will not impact or diminish our academic or student life experience, or require us to draw down Oberlin’s PAYMENTS PAGE A3
‘Not a protest’
Bruce Bishop | Oberlin News-Tribune
Members of the Lunch Bunch gather Wednesday, Sept. 7 outside Gibson's in Oberlin. The group goes to eat meals in local restaurants around the county. Classifieds, legals, display advertising, and subscriptions Deadline: 1 p.m. each Monday Phone: 440-329-7000 Hours: 6:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday
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Lunch Bunch backs struggling Gibson’s JASON HAWK EDITOR
OBERLIN — The crowd milling around outside Gibson’s Bakery mid-day last Wednesday wasn’t there to protest. It was there to spend, spend, spend in hopes of keeping the 137-year-old business alive. “We didn’t want people to think we were demonstrating or rallying or anything like that,” said Mike
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but tries to keep midweek gatherings non-political, he said. That was the unspoken rule Wednesday in Oberlin, where politics tend to lean far to the left. Bokulich, a staunch Republican, said he tried not to even think of the words “college” or “lawsuit,” or talk about politics while at Gibson’s. A five-year battle between the bakery and neighboring Oberlin College ended in August when the Ohio Supreme Court
declined to hear appeals from both parties. That leaves the college responsible for paying more than $36 million in damages. They spring from a civil suit. At the end of a lengthy 2019 trial in the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas, a jury concluded Oberlin College had defamed Gibson’s in late 2016. That’s when students protested for days in front of LUNCH PAGE A3
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Bokulich, a Navy veteran and founding member of the Lunch Bunch. In the past two years, the group has traveled to more than 90 restaurants around Lorain County and just outside its borders. The core group, comprised mostly of military veterans, started at Ziggy’s Pub & Restaurant in downtown Amherst, said founding member John Sekletar. It’s a “pretty much conservative group” that bonds over common interests,
Amherst
Oberlin
Wellington
Route 58 traffic is rough — a study will give options • A5
Land conservancy to build boardwalk on Hamilton • B1
Bakker indicted on felonious assault counts • B1
CLASSIFIEDS A4 • EVENTS A6 • CROSSWORD B2 • SUDOKU B2• KID SCOOP B6