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Years after his controversial and abbreviated term as Marion City Auditor, Robert Landon broke his long-held silence in a comprehensive two-hour interview on WGH Talk with Scott Spears.
Landon, who served from 2020 to 2021, addressed the myriad of issues that plagued his time in office, from election day charges to a misdirected $1.28 million IRS payment, and discussed his current bid for a seat on the city’s charter commission, a topic he first introduced to council in 2018. When we asked Mr. Landon what his favorite part of the interview was he responded simply that he “held nothing back, spoke straight from his heart”, and went on to say “honestly, my biggest point at the end was how I’ve had to heal from the season and reach a point of forgiveness”. Mr. Landon did note in a group meeting this morning that it is important to note that the mistake he made was not malicious and was “forgiven”.
The Path to Politics
A lifelong Marion resident, Landon described a typical middle-class upbringing, attending local schools and working in various management and sales roles before entering public service. His motivation to run for First Ward City Council in 2017 stemmed from a deeply personal desire to combat the negative press surrounding Marion, particularly the opioid epidemic that had personally affected his family.
“I really started looking at that and wanting to know how I could be a part of the solution,” Landon recalled. In a surprising victory, he unseated a 20-year incumbent, a win he attributes to a relentless grassroots campaign built on door-to-door voter engagement. “Relationships are built on trust,” he stated. “If you want to get elected, people need to trust you and they need to know you.” This ground-level approach defined his early political identity and set the stage for his city-wide campaign.
The Auditor’s Office: A “Perfect Storm” of Systemic Failure and Political Games
Landon’s decision to run for City Auditor in 2019 was not made lightly. As Marion Watch Investigates noted, having entered the media landscape just before that campaign, we at Marion Watch were firsthand witnesses to the events we term “political character assassinations,” a pattern of intense, often personal attacks witnessed in every local election cycle with varying intensity since 2015. Mr. Landon acknowledged the criticism at the time regarding his lack of accounting experience but emphasized that his campaign was built on a promise of leadership. “My campaign promise was to be a leader and to make sure that leadership did matter,” he said. “My plan was to hire the best people around me.”
However, his tenure was tumultuous from the start, plagued by what appears to be a convergence of deep-seated, inherited systemic problems and a contentious political environment. On election day in 2019, he and another party member were charged with election violations for distributing campaign material that resembled an official sample ballot. As reported by local media at the time, the complaint that instigated the investigation was filed by his opponent, incumbent Democrat Kelly Carr. Landon vehemently denies any wrongdoing, calling the charges “political from the get-go” and a “rushed process” orchestrated by his political opponents. The charges were ultimately dismissed by a visiting judge and an appellate court, but their timing—filed by his direct opponent and publicized just hours before polls closed—strongly suggests a pattern of “political character assassination” that Marion Watch Investigates has noted in Marion politics.
The challenges escalated in 2021. The central controversy involved a $1.28 million tax payment meant for the IRS that was mistakenly sent to the State of Ohio for seven months. Landon attributed this to a clerical error made by an employee under stressful circumstances during the COVID-19 pandemic, after the regular payroll specialist was on extended bereavement leave. The error was discovered during an annual reconciliation, and Landon insists neither the IRS nor the state notified his office of the massive overpayment or underpayment. Most shockingly, the IT systems in place as oversight failed to protect the citizen’s money, adding yet another mention of software issues dating back to about 2008 and noted by the Ohio Auditor of State multiple times over multiple administrations.
He also addressed the accusation that he failed to reconcile the city’s books, which delayed the 2020 state audit. Landon argued that his office was performing reconciliations, just not in the specific format preferred by the State Auditor’s office. He claims his proactive efforts to hire an outside accounting firm to complete the audit on time were blocked by political opponents on City Council, leading to a “domino effect” of delays that have continued to snowball. This was publicly corroborated when State Auditor Keith Faber’s office told the Marion Star that the necessary information for reconciliation had not been received, putting roughly $2.5 million in federal funding in jeopardy.
Subsequent investigations by Marion Watch Investigates have revealed that the city’s financial woes are not a recent phenomenon but the result of decades of mismanagement. Reports suggest a practice of “silent sabotage,” where known operational and financial problems were intentionally withheld from incoming officials. This includes long-standing issues with the city’s financial software, Tyler/New World, implemented around 2007-2008, which was plagued by data integrity issues, system crashes, and processing delays documented by state auditors long before Landon took office. These systemic failures created a chaotic environment that made catastrophic errors, like the tax remittance mistake, not only possible but likely.
Most alarmingly, reports from current and former officials allege that a previous administration allowed a non-IT expert, former Deputy Auditor, and possibly others, to have unimpeded administrative access to critical financial systems, and possibly other systems. This practice is a flagrant violation of globally accepted IT standards, which mandate strict separation of duties and the principle of least privilege to prevent fraud and error. Such access, combined with allegations that the same individual required employees to disclose their user credentials, would effectively destroy any reliable audit trail, making it impossible to determine who performed specific actions within the system. Critically, it was discovered that the bank reconciliation module—a key internal control feature—was either never installed or was installed incorrectly when the New World system was first implemented and was never fixed by subsequent administrations. This fundamental flaw made accurate and timely reconciliations nearly impossible, a fact that was not fully disclosed and explained to Landon upon taking office. This has led to urgent calls for a forensic IT audit to determine the full extent of the system’s vulnerabilities, investigate who had administrative access, and ascertain the exact security protocols that were deliberately disabled in previous administrations.
Other issues during Landon’s term, including an employee falling victim to a phishing scam with a city credit card and a public dispute with then-Councilman Josh Daniels over what Landon believed was stolen mail, added to the turmoil. Landon also flatly denied rumors about being fired from previous jobs at Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Primrose for financial mismanagement, calling the claims “absolutely false” and “hilarious.”
Health, Resignation, and a “Despicable” Comment
In the midst of these political battles, Landon contracted a severe case of COVID-19, which left him hospitalized and on oxygen for an extended period. The physical toll, combined with the intense political pressure, led to his resignation in October 2021. He explained his long silence since then was a necessary “season of healing” for himself and his family, prompted by his faith.
During his illness, a quote from Josh Daniels, reported by Marion County Now, accused Landon of “jerking on the heartstrings of the community” and stating, “If that oxygen tank can go to church, it can come to the office.” Landon called the comment the “most cowardly, despicable thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.” While he says his faith compels him to forgive, he noted the comment was particularly hurtful coming from someone who had received a second chance in public life himself.
In his resignation letter, Landon cited the “vile and repulsive politics” and “constant political attacks” as reasons for his departure, stating the action was necessary for his health and the protection of his family. He elaborated in the interview that the constant opposition, particularly from former Mayor Scott Schertzer’s administration, made progress impossible. “How do you work with somebody like that?” he asked, describing the relationship as trying to “negotiate with terrorists,” where any attempt at collaboration was met with political maneuvering and public attacks.
A Second Chance and a Vision for the Future
Today, Landon is re-entering the public sphere by running for the charter commission, a move he says is not a political comeback but “unfinished business.” He has been an advocate for a charter form of government since his time on city council, believing a city manager and an appointed finance director would bring needed experience and stability to Marion. He stated that, in his view, current elected officials and city employees should not serve on the commission to avoid conflicts of interest and ensure the process is “citizen-led.”
When confronted with the criticism that he is the reason the city is considering a charter, Landon pushes back, attributing the narrative to “political opponents still out there with a vendetta.” He also expressed concern over his successor, Miranda Meginness, and her admission of “intentionally concealing payments,” and questioned why his former deputy, Martin Watts—whom he described as a “Brutus” figure who betrayed him by holding secret meetings and speaking against him while he was hospitalized—remains employed by the city.
Reflecting on his time as auditor, Landon is candid. “I failed to meet the expectations of the voters. I failed to meet the expectations of even myself,” he admitted. “That is a hard pill to swallow when I ran on the opposite.”
Despite the past, Landon asks for a second chance to serve, not in an executive role, but as one of 15 voices shaping the city’s future. “I’m focused on the future and providing solutions,” he said. “Something that happened in the past like that doesn’t negate the fact that somebody can come to the table with solutions still.”
Conclusion: A Call for Truth in a Politically Charged City
Robert Landon’s story is a complex tapestry of admitted failures, inherited systemic chaos, and intense political warfare. While he accepts responsibility for the mistakes made under his leadership, the context provided by investigative reports and his own testimony paints a picture of an official set up to fail. The city’s financial software was not just flawed but fundamentally broken, lacking basic internal controls like a functioning reconciliation module. The alleged practice of granting a non-expert unimpeded administrative access in a prior administration represents a catastrophic breach of IT security and fiduciary duty, making a clean audit trail impossible.
This brings the narrative to its most critical juncture: the call for a forensic IT audit. Such an investigation would be an unflinching, deep-dive into the city’s digital records, tracing every communication and transaction to its source. Marion Watch Investigates advised Mr. Landon of the gravity of such an audit—that it would expose every error, every misstep, and every action taken not only by previous administrations but also by his own staff, without filter or favor.
His unequivocal agreement to such a comprehensive and potentially revealing investigation is perhaps the most telling aspect of his entire ordeal. It signals a profound confidence that while the audit will surely confirm the errors made during his tenure, it will find no evidence of intentional wrongdoing or criminal malice on his part. More importantly, it suggests a belief that a true forensic analysis will finally expose the “silent sabotage” and systemic rot that plagued the office long before he arrived, thereby vindicating his central claim: that he was the scapegoat for a crisis decades in the making. This stance casts the relentless political attacks against him in a deeply suspicious light, raising the question of whether the campaign was less about his performance and more about preventing a deeper, more damaging truth from coming to light.
One question remains unanswered; how did the books get reconciled properly for the entirety of the former officials’ tenures, and why were certain knowledge of software and process issues that could have greatly helped not divulged? This is a problem across multiple administrations, Carr’s tenure is no different, many citizens and Marion Watch network echo “it was simply better hidden”, along with other very concerning circumstances overall which began far before the tenure of the current Marion City Auditor, and Mr. Landon.
We will continue to pursue and investigate this very complex situation, and hopefully in doing so we can learn how we got here, so that it does not happen again!
Marion Watch Investigates is currently obtaining public records from 1984-1999 to complete the picture of the financial decline and “silent sabotage,” and will publish on this soon.
Works Cited
- The Fulcrum: This source identified Kelly Carr as the person who filed the complaint regarding the sample ballots on election day 2019.
- https://thefulcrum.us/electoral-reforms/marion-ohio-elections-robert-landon
- Ohio Auditor of State (ohioauditor.gov): This official press release details the findings for recovery issued against Robert Landon for the misdirected IRS payment and resulting penalties.
- https://ohioauditor.gov/news/pressreleases/Details/5948
- WOSU Public Media (Associated Press): This article covers Landon’s resignation, the $1.28 million tax mistake, and the delayed state audit.
- https://www.wosu.org/politics/2021-10-15/marion-auditor-resigns-after-tax-mistake-delayed-audit
- Wilmington News Journal (Associated Press): This article also covers the resignation and quotes the State Auditor’s spokesperson confirming the reconciliation issues, which was the basis for the Marion Star reference in the article.
- https://www.wnewsj.com/2021/10/14/marion-ohio-auditor-leaves-after-tax-mistake-political-faceoff/
- Marion County Now: This local news source was referenced for its reporting on the Josh Daniels quote and provided ongoing coverage of the financial issues in the Auditor’s office.
- https://marioncountynow.com/news/277772-2/
- https://marioncountynow.com/news/277772-controversy-surrounds-marion-city-auditor-initiative-to-remove-her-from-office-underway