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Home > Blogs > Butler County News and Issues > Archives > 2009 > November > 03 > Entry
Fox fights for his legacy
Longtime Butler County politician Michael Fox is set to appear in federal court Nov. 12 for arraignment on charges the U.S. Attorney’s Office is calling public corruption.
Fox and Columbus-area attorney Robert C. Schuler are set to appear before Magistrate Judge Timothy Hogan and enter a plea on an eight-county indictment unsealed Thursday, Oct. 29.
Here’s more on the charges against Fox and Schuler:
- In this story, we introduce the charges, and how a horse named “Fabiano” is involved.
- A more detailed explanation of the charges can be found here.
- Who is Robert C. Schuler and why did county officials view him as a “White knight”? Find out here.
- The owners of other local companies mentioned in the indictment were interviewed for this story.
- Here is a bulleted timeline of Fox’s career.
- Here are photos from Fox’s initial appearance in Cincinnati.
- Here is an overview of the mysterious NORMAP deal.
- In this story, county officials stand by UTS’s existing $9 million contract with the county that Fox voted on, though the company was mentioned in the indictment.
- Finally, here is the story that ran Sunday in which Fox talks about the charges against him, and how he was asked to wear a wire.
This last piece is based on an interview that actually took place in the first week of October:
Soft-spoken and ambling with a cane, Michael A. Fox is a less imposing figure these days.
He spends his hours tinkering with a children’s book he’s authoring, sitting in the Fairfield Twp. home he is in the process of losing to foreclosure and where his personal belongings are packed in boxes.
Not long ago, “Megaphone Mike Fox” was considered one of the most powerful men in Butler County.
Today, he fights for this legacy, which is about all he says he has left after medical ailments and legal bills have ruined his health and finances.
In an eight-count indictment unsealed Thursday, Oct. 29, Fox is charged in federal court with mail fraud and tax charges that amount to “public corruption,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
If convicted, the 60-year-old could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Fox — former county commissioner, state lawmaker and Children Services director — is alleged to have solicited and received money from several companies doing business with the county when he sat on the commission.
This includes more than $460,000 allegedly funneled to Fox by Robert C. Schuler, who Fox brought in to take over a fiber optics project worth roughly $1.8 million. Schuler faces similar charges.
Fox has said in statements that he won’t comment on the government’s allegations. But he defended himself and his long service in Butler County in a recent interview with the JournalNews and the Middletown Journal.
‘I won’t repudiate who I am’
For years now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has combed through multiple aspects of Michael A. Fox’s life. His mortgage paperwork. His bank statements. His voting record.
Before the investigation culminated in an eight-count indictment unsealed Thursday, Oct. 29, — including charges he solicited money from companies doing business with Butler County when he was commissioner — Fox talked about the stress the investigation put him underhe had experienced.
“They’ve already broken me financially. They have put untold pain and hurt on my family and my wife; the techniques they’ve used, they are just unbelievable,” said the former commissioner, state lawmaker and children services director.
Fox said the FBI tricked his daughter into meeting with agents at Miami University, and he said they showed up at his wife’s work, threatening to indict her. In the process, authorities have dangled over his head a way to make it end, he said : Plead guilty.
“It’s an investigation where the conclusion was made at the beginning,” he said. “There’s a principle here, and that is, for me, I won’t repudiate who I am, what I’ve been and what I’ve done in order to help them keep their dockets clean.
“I had hoped to have a retirement where I could write, where I could continue to do things in a different way, and I have the entire resources of the federal government devoted to making sure they destroy me and my legacy,” he said.
“There is nobody that would withstand the level of scrutiny and hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources they spent reviewing every aspect of my life into the ’90s, in an attempt to ‘find the dirt.’”
Fox: Investigation was political
Why would they do all this?
“I had a failed liberal Democratic congressional candidate applying for a promotion, having an opportunity to drive a stake in the Republican party of Butler County; and I had an FBI agent that bought hook, line and sinker a story that Butler County was corrupt, and the story came to him from people who were trying to save themselves,” Fox said.
That congressional candidate is Richard Chema, a candidate in 2006 for Ohio’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District, is the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted cases against former Butler County Auditor Kay Rogers, former county GOP finance chairman Joe Ruscigno and the executives from the fiber optics firm Dynus Corp.
Chema was also a candidate in 2006 for Ohio’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District. A Democrat, Chema tried to unseat Republican Mike Turner and failed, getting just over 44 percent of the vote.
The Dynus investigation is what brought the FBI’s attention in the first placescrutiny to the county. The company took out millions of dollars in loans in the county’s name without county approval. It ended with Eventually, Rogers and two Dynus executives pleaded guilty — and the former company owner was found guilty — of bank fraud. Their cases revealed that the fiber optics company took out millions of dollars in loans in the county’s name without county approval.
FBI agent Kevin Gormley led the Dynus investigations.
“When that FBI agent asked me to become a Kay and wear the wires and do all the (things) to say or induce people to say they did something illegal, I refused,” Fox said.
U.S. Attorney’s Office Spokesman Fred Alverson said the investigation — which began under a Republican administration — was apolitical.
“Prosecutorial decisions are based on facts and evidence gathered by federal, state and local law enforcement agents, and that’s the only thing on which they’re based,” Alverson said.
Chema is no longer prosecutor in the case, having taken a position in Washington, D.C., after successfully convicting former Dynus owner Orlando Carter on 11 charges.
Fox altered county landscape
The longest serving state lawmaker in county history — 23 years — Fox was the driving force behind some of the area’s largest local transportation projects.
He created the Transportation Improvement District and secured more than $160 million to connect Hamilton to Interstate 75 via the 11.5 mile Ohio 129 extension — briefly named the Michael A. Fox Highway — and providing for the construction of the Union Center Boulevard Interchange.
“That set the infrastructure up that grew our economy that made Butler County the number one job producer in the state for several years,” he said, calling it “a vision I had to claw my way and fight my way through.”
Fox steered more than $100 million to Miami University, and allocated money to help build the Government Services Center in Hamilton. He found $11 million for the Jack Kirsch underpass in Hamilton as a lawmaker, and $3 million for the removal of the Middletown mall as a county commissioner.
Fox toughened laws on crimes committed with firearms, put a victim’s advocate on parole boards, created the Ohio School Facilities Commission, moved a developmental disabilities center to Fairfield, established a missing children’s registry, created the Butler County Juvenile Court and enacted numerous bills dealing with children services.
“It’s very difficult to go through a day in Butler County, and not be touched directly or indirectly by something that I did as a legislator or commissioner in my career,” he said.
A vocal advocate for children
He also was known for frequent and colorful press conferences and tireless advocacy of whatever his cause was at the time.
One program provided computers to classrooms across the state. The half-billion-dollar-plus annual program supplied computers and Internet to every elementary school in Ohio until Gov. Bob Taft ended it.
“That’s impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of children,” he said.
Fox stepped down from the county commission in 2007 to take over Butler County Children Services. The agency was in a tailspin — its board had been disbanded and the director fired — since 3-year-old Marcus Fiesel was killed by his foster parents.
Some criticized the move, since he was taking a commission-appointed job making $118,000 a year. But he ultimately won praise from commissioners and the public for extensive reforms at the agency, including increased background checks for foster parents. He resigned in March of this year.
Scandal followed Fox
Fox ended his long state legislative career in 1997 with a teary goodbye after the public learned that he had accepted airline tickets and lodging from a lobbyist.
A veteran lawmaker described the private meeting where Republicans voted to penalize Fox as “the most emotional caucus meeting I’ve ever attended.”
“Mike cried. I cried. There were a lot of tears,” state Rep. Bob Corbin, R-Washington Twp., told reporters at the time.
Fox was also the subject of scrutiny as the champion of a fiber optics project by Dynus Corp., which went bankrupt after the county auditor and several company employees took out an illicit multimillion dollar loan in the county’s name.
Fox repeatedly denied any knowledge of the loan, though a company president said he helped lobby for it — an accusation also listed in the federal indictment.
‘I went into it wanting to be governor’
Fox said he has two regrets: “I guess my biggest regret is I didn’t finish law school.
“My second biggest regret is I got into politics to begin with. I regret the price my family paid for my decision to go into public service. I regret the things they endured in order for me to work so hard through the years to improve the lives of others. My wife and children made enormous sacrifices because of my work to serve others. …
“The price they paid was just too high. Unfortunately, it took me until late in my career to fully understand that. When I finally figured it out, it was too late,” he said.
“I went into it wanting to be governor, and believed I could be,” he said. “If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have done that.”
Fox believes he simply accumulated too many enemies in his long career. He said then Gov. James Rhodes warned warned him in 1974 that if you put forward an idea with 98 percent of the people behind you, 2 percent are against you.
“Do that 50 times and you have 100 percent of the people against you for 50 different reasons,” Fox said.
“Behind each and every one of (my) accomplishments, was a trail of enemies that never forget and never lose an opportunity to destroy you,” Fox said.
“It’s been extraordinarily painful to see a handful of people with the power and the resources far beyond mine to attempt to take all the good that I’ve done in my career and try to define me as someone I’m not,” he said.
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