Charges are expected to be filed today in Cleveland against nine former Ohio Department of Transportation workers and vendors who did business with the state agency’s Garfield Heights office.

Among those possibly facing charges is Mark O’Donnell, owner of Elyria-based North Shore Door Co., whose name was featured prominently in a report released last year by Tom Charles, the state’s inspector general.

The report accused O’Donnell of being at the heart of a conspiracy that ranged from inflated bills to drunken fishing trips with strippers for ODOT officials and contract steering to discounts on garage doors.

Ryan Miday, spokesman for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, said seven of the nine people being charged will be arraigned today on bills of information, a common way of charging people who are cooperating with investigators. The other two will be arraigned next week.

Miday said there will be additional charges against others being investigated.

“This is the first wave of charges against these 31 individuals,” he said.

Charles’ investigation, which generated a 69-page report, began after a former North Shore Door worker sent an
e-mail to state officials in April 2007 accusing ODOT officials of accepting gratuities from his former employers.

The whistleblower detailed O’Donnell’s efforts to win contracts from ODOT, including an annual “ODOT Boat Day” during which O’Donnell is accused of taking Dennis Kratochvil, the district’s facilities’ manager, fishing and drinking with the strippers.

Accompanying the two men on the trip, according to Charles’ report, was the district’s equipment superintendent, Terrence Kosmata, other ODOT vendors and three to five strippers.

Kratochvil also held annual Christmas parties for preferred vendors at Cleveland strip clubs he frequented, where they left behind hundreds of dollars in cash to cover drinks, food and lap dances, the report said.

O’Donnell allegedly received more than $660,000 in business that Kratochvil steered toward him during the 10-year period covered by Charles during the investigation. Kratochvil also allegedly let O’Donnell overcharge for labor, assess ODOT a fuel surcharge and purchase off-contract products.

In exchange, O’Donnell was accused in the report of giving Kratochvil $800 in cash for furniture his son purchased for a stripper and gave Kratochvil, who owns his own construction company, and Kosmata deals on garage doors.

Also named in the report was West Shore New Holland Inc. of North Ridgeville, which sold ODOT tractors and other heavy equipment.

Kratochvil’s construction company allegedly made improvements at West Shore’s offices and the Berea home of its president, Craig Gorsuch.

Kratochvil allegedly issued one invoice to Gorsuch charging the company $1,078 for a roofing job in 1999, but the report concluded the money was actually a payment to Kratochvil for a 12-gauge shotgun.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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