Investigator Exclusive: Corruption figure arranged for business with commissioner's law firm

CUYAHOGA COUNTY -- Channel 3 News Investigator Tom Meyer has learned the law firm that employs county commissioner Peter Lawson Jones has averaged about $65,000 a year in legal work for the Parma City Schools where J. Kevin Kelley had served as school board president.

Kelley has been charged with public corruption and bribery for trading contracts for personal favors and kickbacks. 

Lawson Jones confirmed that Kelley approached him in 2006 about whether his law firm, Roetzel and Andress, was interested in doing business with the board.  "That's when I knew the good Kevin Kelley," Jones said.  Since 2006, the parma school administration says the law firm was paid $206,366.

The feds have been examining dozens of contracts that Parma City Schools issued while Kelley was board president.  Under Kelley, the business manager reported directly to Kelley.  In most school districts around the state, the business manager normally reports to the superintendent.  Kelley's hand-picked choice for business manager was Mark Daniels, who helped run commissioner Jones' re-election campaign in 2008.  

"You're telling me something I did not know," Jones said when told of the business arrangement in Parma.  Daniels and Kelley are no longer with the school district.  The district has since changed the way it does business, giving the sueprintendent and the district more checks and balances over contracts. 

Jones defended his company's  work and said it's one of several law firms doing business with Parma schools.  When asked if he would consider discontinue doing business with the school district in the wake of public corruption charges, the commissioner said that decision would be left up to the law firm.