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True civic accountability requires two things: a relentless pursuit of the truth and a functional forum where that truth can be heard.
When the public square breaks down into chaos—whether sparked by the procedural errors of dismissive elected officials or the explosive frustrations of citizens—the people of Marion are the ones who pay the price.
In late September that breakdown was on full display inside Marion City Council chambers, overshadowing critical debates on everything from forensic financial audits to police spending.
Following the explosive September 28 council meeting, Marion Watch reached out to several city officials and some citizens to gain perspective.
We also spoke with resident and activist Kim Mayer at length during a multi-hour phone call.
We advised Mayer that the currently seated city council had no prior knowledge of, or involvement in, the historical failures of the New World software system and the resulting financial fallout.
We gave her a quick play book of Marion City officials dating back to our beginnings in 2009.
To maximize her effectiveness moving forward, we encouraged her to rely on pre-prepared talking points rather than directing historical frustrations at current officials.
We also detailed our nearly 20 years of operational involvement in the local political scene, and disclosed that it took us a while to figure out how to address the council.
Marion Watch recognizes Mayer as a passionate “new” activist with true potential to drive civic engagement and hold local government accountable.
Her appearance at the next meeting in early October after speaking to us was also passionate but showed more restraint.
However, our position on the events that unfolded in the council chambers is unwavering: when civic discourse degrades into shouting matches and explosive confrontations, it actively hinders progress.
The breakdown in decorum distracted from the critical financial and other issues facing Marion and stalled the collaborative work desperately needed to move the city forward.
The September 28 Clashes
The friction began midway through the September 28 regular council meeting during a discussion on an ordinance to request a forensic IT audit of the city’s past finances.
After the council agreed to postpone the vote to a future meeting, Mayer attempted to speak from the audience.
Council President Mary Stoneburner refused to recognize Kim after being made aware of Mayer expressing she wanted to talk, claiming the agenda item had already been moved past and that Mayer would have to wait until the public comment period at the end of the meeting.
Mayer pushed back, asking why she was being ignored when her hand had been raised, prompting Stoneburner to warn Mayer that she would be removed if she continued to argue.
Through discussion over the past couple of weeks we learned a lot.
Behind the scenes, council members recognized this may have been a procedural error by the president.
According to messages from members of council, Stoneburner breached customary procedure.
It was also stated, “Mary was wrong when she didn’t let her talk,” adding that “Mary screwed up when she forgot to ask for public comments” before moving on to the next item.
The tension boiled over at the very end of the September 28 meeting during the public comment section.
Mayer returned to the podium and delivered a blistering critique of the Ohio Auditor of State.
Holding up printed documents, she accused state auditors of issuing “clean” financial audits to the city for years despite allegedly knowing about massive software ledger failures, budget overrides, and long-term diversions of restricted tax funds, of which there is supporting evidence for.
To the casual observer, the confrontation may have seemed like an erratic outburst.
But a closer review reveals that Mayer was directly citing findings from Marion Watch’s Silent Sabotage and its smaller Silent Sabotage Overview Series to back up her claims.
Let’s look at how Mayer scores on the subject, looking only at the series which is largely sourced from official city and state documentation.
The evidence she presented to the council is heavily documented:
Kim’s assessment is in alignment with the documented Silent Sabotage series. Grade: 100% Accurate (A+).
- The Low-Risk Audit Illusion: Mayer accurately pointed out that the Auditor of State (AOS) repeatedly certified Marion as a “low-risk auditee” from 2016 through 2020. She noted this occurred despite disqualifying federal programs and unlawfully reducing the federally mandated testing threshold from 40% to 20%.
- Forensic Context: Under federal Uniform Guidance (2 CFR § 200.520), a municipality is legally disqualified from “Low-Risk” status if it carries a Material Weakness on a major federal program in the preceding two years. Marion received a Material Weakness on its federal SAFER grant in 2015, which legally barred them from this status in 2016 and 2017. By illegally checking “Yes” to the Low-Risk designation, the state and city artificially cut the federal testing workload in half, actively shielding 20% of Marion’s federal grant money from deep forensic scrutiny.
- “Backdoors” and Failing Ledgers: Drawing from public records, she highlighted a November 8, 2021 council meeting where AOS GAAP team leadership admitted that software ledgers had been failing for 10 to 12 years. She noted that a “back door” was actively used to override the process.
- Forensic Context: At this meeting, AOS representative Belinda Miller openly confessed that auditors identified the system’s massive inconsistencies over a decade prior. Instead of demanding a fix to the New World ERP’s disastrous “hybrid” cash/accrual configuration—which was falsely inflating cash balances by recording uncollected utility bills as cash-in-hand—a select few insiders were permitted to use manual “backdoor” overrides to force the numbers to balance before the system rolled forward each year.
- Disabled Audit Trails and Ledger Plugs: Mayer asserted that the AOS issued clean opinions while failing to audit flags pointing to disabled software audit trails. These trails were bypassed by general ledger budget hard stops, resulting in reoccurring negative balances, some in the millions of dollars, and activity being used for ledger plugs.
- Forensic Context: By intentionally disabling the New World system’s “Hard Stop” (GL Override) setting, the city bypassed the controls designed to enforce Ohio Revised Code § 5705.41(B), allowing departments to execute massive illegal expenditures. This resulted in an $11 million over-appropriation in the Sewer Fund in 2020 and over $2.4 million in unappropriated overspending across general operations in 2021. To force the math to work at year-end, the city resorted to blind “unrecorded activity” ledger plugs, moving hundreds of thousands of dollars entirely off the digital books, which appears to have began around the New World system going live in 2009.
- The 2014 Embezzlement Cover: She criticized the completely clean, unmodified audit issued in 2014. She stated this occurred while an active felony embezzlement scheme operated through disabled ERP approval workflows, and auditors ignored the sudden cessation of multi-million dollar utility bad debt purges.
- Forensic Context: Between 2011 and August 2014, a utility supervisor exploited deactivated or misconfigured Approval Workflow engines and unused Bank Reconciliation modules to skim cash and wipe out customer debts without triggering executive alarms. The thief’s actions were perfectly camouflaged by the administration’s massive, undocumented utility ledger purges—including $1.19 million in 2012 and $305,600 in 2013. Demonstrating the “Hawthorne Effect,” the moment criminal investigators started pulling data in 2014, the administration panicked and slammed the brakes on the purges, causing the write-offs to plummet to just $7,071. The AOS completely missed the theft and the anomaly, issuing a clean audit.
- Diverted Voter-Approved Funds: Mayer pointed out that the AOS documented long-term diversions of restricted, voter-approved tax revenue from the street construction fund. Specifically, $1.025 million in 2015 and $334,487 in 2016 were held inside general funds as interfund payables. She emphasized this happened without formal findings for recovery, despite the city confessing in audit footnotes that the money could not be repaid within the year.
- Forensic Context: Under Ohio law, revenue derived from a specific tax levy must be used exclusively for its intended purpose. To artificially prop up a failing General Fund, the administration deliberately misallocated these restricted street repair funds. To avoid an immediate audit citation for illegal transfers, they used an accounting trick to record the diversion as a temporary “Interfund Payable”. However, by explicitly confessing in the footnotes that the money would not be repaid within a year, the city admitted to forcing the restricted Street Fund to act as a zero-interest, unregulated bank for general operations.
Mayer then turned her anger directly toward President Stoneburner, accusing the council president of deliberately silencing her earlier so that her financial allegations wouldn’t be attached to the official agenda item on the public record.
Stoneburner interrupted, telling Mayer her time was up and instructing her to stick to non-personal comments.
When Mayer loudly protested that the council had failed to stand up for her right to speak, Stoneburner ordered Police Chief Jay McDonald to escort her out of the chambers.
The October 5 Continuation
The friction carried over into the October 5 committee meetings, but this time Kim did exercise more restraint.
Mayer once again took to the podium, expressing deep frustration at being blocked from speaking during specific agenda items.
She doubled down on her claims regarding the city’s old New World ERP system, insisting that criminal activity had indeed taken place and that the public was being silenced.
Committee Chair Ralph Smith interrupted her, clarifying that the council had never claimed no laws were broken. Instead, he noted that criminal acts must be proven with evidence first, which is exactly why the council is actively trying to pass the forensic IT audit escalation ordinance.
Later that evening, during the Finance Committee meeting, Mayer and the committee clashed yet again over the rules governing when the public is allowed to question agenda items.
Council Business: September 28 Meeting
Beyond the arguments, several critical pieces of city business were debated on September 28.
- Forensic Audit Legislation: The forensic audit ordinance at the center of the initial argument officially requires the city to seek assistance from the state to perform a deep-dive forensic examination of Marion’s financial accounts, software, and transactions dating back to October 2008. Councilman Smith attempted to amend the legislation so that the city administration, rather than the council itself, would make the formal request to the state. The amendment failed to get a second, and the ordinance was held for another reading.
- $72,000 Police Cruiser Debate: A proposal to purchase a new police SUV for $72,000 faced steep public resistance. Residents Damian Greenwell and Dina Jesse pleaded with the council to reject the purchase, pointing out that the city is facing an estimated $2.3 million financial gap and that the police department is currently down roughly eight officers. Chief McDonald strongly defended the purchase, explaining that the money comes from a restricted capital fund and cannot be legally spent on operational expenses or streets. He noted that older patrol cars are costing the city thousands of dollars in transmission and engine repairs. Despite his arguments, the council voted 7-2 against fast-tracking the ordinance, effectively postponing the cruiser purchase.
- DORA Passed: The council unanimously approved the creation of a Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area (DORA) in downtown Marion.
- Fire Department Grants: The city appropriated funds for an $82,200 State Homeland Security grant and a separate grant to purchase new protective turnout gear.
- Arbitration Payment: The council approved the transfer of $53,389 from the general fund to satisfy a union arbitration award regarding firefighter health savings accounts dating back several years.
Council Business: October 5 Committees
The October 5 committee meetings tackled future infrastructure and surveillance rules:
- Data Center Moratorium: Seeking to get ahead of the tech industry’s rapid expansion, the council discussed a temporary freeze on data center construction to give the regional planning commission time to write strict regulations. Future data centers may be required to generate 100% of their own power and avoid using local water resources for cooling.
- Flock Camera Oversight: The council reviewed an ordinance to expand oversight of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs). The new rules would create an official audit board—consisting of a council member, a mayoral appointee, and the police administrative major—to ensure the cameras are not misused and strictly enforce criminal penalties for anyone who inappropriately accesses the data.
- Silver Street Speed Limit: The Traffic Commission approved a recommendation to lower the speed limit on Silver Street from 35 mph to 25 mph.
- City Fuel Costs: The Finance Committee approved moving $51,000 in unappropriated general funds into the fuel accounts for the police, fire, and parks departments to cover rising gas prices.
Marion stands at a critical crossroads.
Faced with multi-million-dollar financial gaps, aging infrastructure, and the haunting legacy of past preventable software and accounting disasters, the city has absolutely no margin for error.
Navigating these crises requires a city council that adheres to transparent, consistent procedures without arbitrarily silencing the public.
Equally, it requires citizens who are willing to hold the government accountable through focused, irrefutable facts and avoid explosive arguments.
The stakes are simply too high for city business to be derailed by procedural issues or public spectacles.
If Marion is to untangle its past and secure its future, progress will demand professionalism, respect, and unyielding discipline from both sides of the podium.