As the city of Columbus attempts to potentially shutter a new inter-city bus terminal on the West Side, an attorney for one of the bus companies stood up in court Friday morning and accused Mayor Andrew J. Ginther of improperly communicating with the presiding judge.
“This Greyhound station is a problem for the community,” Ginther told Franklin County Environmental Judge Stephanie Mingo, according to the transcript of a hearing she held after the call he made to her cellphone. “We really need you to do the right thing for the community and shut it down.”
The call showed that the city of Columbus, in its attempts to shutter the new bus terminal that opened last summer, has “unclean hands” by Ginther improperly contacting the judge to get the outcome he wanted to help his re-election campaign, according to Joseph Miller, attorney for Barons Bus, one of two companies operating the terminal.
Assistant City Attorney Steve Dunbar, representing Ginther’s zoning department, had no comment when asked about the call during a break in the hearing, in which the city seeks an injunction trying to shutter the terminal, a formerly vacant gas station on North Wilson Road near I-70.
In the transcript of the hearing Mingo held in October to report the call to the parties, she said she told Ginther that she appreciated his concern for the community, but that it was an open case and “any discussion would be an ethics violation.”
And the transcript shows that Mingo said she didn’t believe any ethical violation had occurred because she quickly ended the call and informed the parties, the city and two bus companies, Greyhound and Barons. However, it also shows that at first she would reveal only that “an elected official” had contacted her in “an ex parte communication,” which is one where one side of a legal matter communicates with a judge without the other side’s knowledge.
Mingo promptly notified the parties to the lawsuit, but she wouldn’t at first name the official – who was later revealed to be Ginther, who was up for re-election just weeks later, on Nov. 7.
The bus companies filed a motion for reconsideration that Mingo identify the official, and on Nov. 21 – exactly two weeks after the election – she ultimately did, saying in a filing that she “hereby discloses to all parties that city of Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther is the source of the ex parte communication.”
The hearing on the city’s effort to shutter the bus terminal is expected to last until early next week.
wbush@gannett.com
