Harry Williamson sues county officials, attorneys over 2021 firing (UPDATED)

This story has been updated. Lorain County's former 911 director filed a lawsuit in Common Pleas Court Friday, making wide-ranging accusations of not just public corruption but also salacious sexual affairs taking place among elected and appointed county officials. Harry Williamson filed the lawsuit against the county as a whole; individually against county commissioners David Moore, a Republican, and Matt Lundy, a Democrat; former county administrators Tom Williams and Jim Cordes; attorney Amanda Martinsek and the law firm she works for, Ulmer & Berne, which has provided legal counsel to the county. In the suit, Williamson also admits an ongoing romantic relationship with Commissioner Michelle Hung that he claims began while he was serving on the Moore and Hung transition team after they were elected to the Board of Commissioners in November 2020. Williamson claims the defendants committed whistleblower retaliation; interference with civil rights; wrongful termination; tampering with evidence; "spoliation," or destruction of evidence; falsification; intimidation; and destruction of public records. The suit seeks to bar any alleged further retaliation against Williamson, as well as monetary damages for pain and suffering, mental anguish and emotional distress, interest, attorney fees and violations of state law. The suit was initially assigned to Judge James Miraldi's courtroom, according to court records. The Chronicle-Telegram reached out to those named as defendants in the lawsuit for comment on the matter on Friday. Reactions to the lawsuit were mixed. "This suit would be a hilarious joke if it weren't such a waste of taxpayer resources and money," Moore told The Chronicle-Telegram on Friday. "This is Hung's way of getting her adulterous lover some sugar from the county." Williams took a more even tone. "After reading the lawsuit, there's a lot that I want to say," said Williams, who himself sued the Hung and Lundy in federal court in September, alleging wrongful termination after being fired by the duo in August. He referred all questions to Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Dan Petticord, the board's legal counsel. It is likely the county will defend both Cordes and Williams from Williamson's lawsuit as the allegations are that the wrongdoing occurred while they were employed as county administrators. Petticord told The Chronicle there would be no official comment from the county on pending litigation. Hung said the same in a text message to a Chronicle reporter after she was sent a copy of the lawsuit for comment. Lunday said Friday he hadn't yet had a chance to see the lawsuit and couldn't comment on it. "These legal matters will have to play out through the process. We can't let it be a distraction to all the work we have to do," he said. Read the complaint Allegations In the 24-page lawsuit, Williamson said he had more than 40 years experience working for CenturyLink, and that his last job with that company was working on Lorain County's 911 system between 2017 and October 2020. At the same time, Williamson was the elected president of the Lorain County AFL-CIO and its 7,000 union members. In that role, he oversaw the union's political endorsements — including its endorsement of Hung over the Democratic incumbent, Lori Kokoski, in the 2020 election. After the union endorsed Hung, Cordes allegedly told Williamson he should "stay neutral." When Williamson refused to do so, and "continued to advocate for his members' preferred candidates," Cordes had him banned from the Lorain County 911 center, Williamson alleged. Restrictions put on Williamson "had nothing to do with" his union's endorsements, Cordes said Friday. Cordes said Friday that Williamson was never banned from county property or 911, but that he was on county-owned in places he wasn't allowed to be in without prior approval or an escort. Williamson was in equipment rooms at the Gateway complex in Elyria "without authorization," Cordes said. "He wasn't banned, but if he had to work on equipment, he had to go through procedures" — including informing county 911 officials what he was doing, the former county administrator said. Soon after that, Williamson said he consulted with Moore and Hung as they attempted to defeat Kokoski and fellow incumbent Democrat Sharon Sweda in the 2020 general election. Hung and Moore won, and asked Williamson to serve on their transition team and recommend a new 911 director. When they offered him the job, he accepted. "While he was serving on the transition team, Mr. Williamson and Ms. Hung began a romantic relationship," Williamson alleged in his lawsuit, but Williamson "expressed doubts about whether he could both accept the offer and continue in his relationship" with Hung. Both Hung and Williamson were married at the time. Williamson further alleged that Hung "assured him the arrangement would be neither inappropriate nor illegal" and that she had already notified newly hired Human Resources Director Jen Sinatra of the relationship. Williamson claimed that Hung told him "Sinatra said that the relationship would not violate any county policies and that she herself was likewise in involved in a romantic relationship with one of the County's elected officials," according to his lawsuit. Sinatra denied Williamson's allegations when reached for comment on Friday. "Since this is pending litigation I will only address the personal attack against me as that is an attempt by Williamson to divert from his own indiscretions," she wrote in a statement provided to The Chronicle. "For the record, I have not dated anyone who resides in, or works in, or for, Lorain County, elected or not, in more than a decade." Williamson accepted the job offer, and Hung and Moore voted to hire him at an annual salary of $77,000 on Jan. 4, 2021. That same day, commissioners hired Williams as the new county administrator and Ulmer & Berne to provide legal counsel on labor and employment matters. Lundy voted against hiring Williamson. Only days later, the lawsuit alleges, Hung disclosed her affair with Williamson to Martinsek and asked if it could affect his job. Martinsek allegedly told them it would not because Williamson did not report directly to Hung, according to the lawsuit. Hung and Martinsek later develop what Williamson's lawsuit described as "a close, personal relationship," with the women discussing county business, personal affairs and "romantic exploits" at dinners out on the town and at Martinsek's home, as well as "exchanging lurid photographs of their sexual partners." Their socializing included dinners and discussions of matters that Hung and Williamson believed fell under attorney-client privilege. While 911 director, Williamson alleged he learned that county officials "had long been treating the 911 center's budget as a 'catch-all' fund for expenses with no connection to its mission to dispatch life-saving assistance to county residents," according to his lawsuit. Williamson alleged he reported financial mismanagement at 911 to Williams, who "blew him off." Williamson said he and then-Lorain County Job & Family Services Director Tim Carrion began their own investigation into the alleged misappropriation of funds at 911 and "were able to put an end" to the mismanagement. That included allegations that officials at Lorain County Emergency Management & Homeland Security were "dipping into funds from the 911 levy to pay its water bill." Again, Williamson alleged, Williams did nothing. Williamson further alleged that Williams pressured him to use his relationship with Hung "to sway her votes on county business. "When defendants Moore and Hung were at odds on policy matters, defendant Williams regularly pressured Mr. Williamson to persuade Commissioner Hung to change her position," the lawsuit alleged. This included Williams using the Hung-Williamson affair to get her support for a plan to replace the three-member Board of Commissioners with a seven-member board — the so-called "seven district" plan backed byLorain County Republican party officials and donors in league with Moore. Moore "had promised donors that he would bring the proposal to the ballot" and the plan, Williamson alleged, needed Hung's support. Williams, who was Moore's campaign manager in the 2020 election, knew about the Hung-Williamson affair "and intimated that Mr. Williamson could exploit it for political advantage," according to the lawsuit. Had Williamson refused, "it was clear his job was in jeopardy," according to the lawsuit. Williamson also alleged that Williams tried to get him to influence Hung to restructure the Lorain County Veterans' Committee "in retaliation against its new Democratic executive director," according to the lawsuit. In June, while talks were ongoing about new radios for county police and fire departments, Williams and Moore allegedly pushed for a vendor "with connections to Republicans in Columbus" while Hung wanted to choose a vendor preferred by county fire departments. In August 2021, Moore and Lundy voted to fire Williamson and Carrion — which Williamson said was an effort by the defendants to "agree to fabricate a pretext for terminating" him. Hung abstained from the vote to fire Williamson and Carrion. She later told The Chronicle she didn't want to have her hands in a "bloodbath," though she also refused to comment whether it was because she and Williamson were engaged in an extramarital affair. Williams, Moore, Martinsek and her law firm plotted to fire Williamson and Carrion, the lawsuit alleges. That included Martinsek telling Hung to delete more than 3,000 text messages between the two of them, as they would prove that the county had known about the Hung-Williamson affair "for months," according to the lawsuit. Contact Dave O'Brien at (440) 329-7129 or dobrien@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @daveobrienCT. To read the full complaint, visit tinyurl.com/yth5u4kp.