Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski is facing new allegations of using labor from the county jail to do work for his reelection campaign.
The allegations come after Zuchowski came under national attention for comments he made in a Facebook post in September. The post on his public page called on residents to write down the addresses of people supporting Vice President Kamala Harris, so they can send immigrants to their homes. The post has been called voter intimidation by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and has since been taken down.
Ravenna resident Chris McCullough served 90 days at the Portage County Jail last year for felonious assault. He joined the Trustee Work Program at the jail, where inmates participate in maintenance work for the county and area nonprofits.
“Maybe a month into it, we got told we were going to do a job at the fairgrounds, and whenever I got there, we built a building like with primitive tools, no power tools," he said. "We did 13 tons of asphalt to make a ramp wheelchair accessible with two rakes and a tamper.”
At first, McCullough didn’t think anything of it, he said – the work was similar to other work he had done in the program, like helping give out food to community members or doing yard work on county land. But then, McCullough learned what the structure was for.
“I found out what we were doing towards the end of it whenever we got told we had to go back to the jail after we built it and pick up all of his merch," he said, "so I had to go pick up all his hoodies and shirts and hats.”
Pictures from this year’s fair posted to Bruce Zuchowski’s Facebook page, which have since been taken down, show him and other deputies posing outside and inside the structure, with reelect Zuchowski signs in the back.
McCullough didn’t like what he was doing, he said. He also didn’t want to get kicked out of the program, he said.
“If I would have told them, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ then I would have been sent back into the jail and kicked out of the trustee pod," McCullough said. "I would have been thrown in max facility until they get me in general population and God knows where they throw me or how long I sit in there. So I didn’t want to get on his bad side while I’m in his house.”
McCullough was released from jail after serving his 90 days. He got a job and got back on his feet, he said. That’s when he really started to think of the implications of the work he was doing, he said. That work had also included an incident where he and other inmates in the program set up a campaign fundraising dinner for Zuchowski, he said.
“Eventually, I seen a picture of me on Facebook in an orange jumpsuit," McCullough said, "and I was like that is embarrassing.”
The picture taken by an anonymous passerby shows McCullough and another person in an orange jumpsuit standing by a Portage County Sheriff truck filled with orange cones and giant reelect Zuchowski signs.
“We set up Bruce Zuchowski signs along the one side of the highway, along the trail. We set up their grills, their propane," McCullough said. "We cleaned the grills. We set up their ice chests and put drinks and ice in it. We set up chairs and tables. We set up the event.”
The sheriff’s office has not responded to Ideastream Public Media’s request for comment, but in a prior statement on the allegations of inmate’s working at the fundraiser, Zuchowski said it was done without his knowledge or permission and that he is moving forward with discipline for the employees involved. But McCullough said in both instances, Zuchowski knew what was going on.
“He came up to the fair and sat with us and was just watching us work at the fair building the shed," he said.
A spokesperson for the Portage County Randolph Fair confirmed the fair uses the inmate work program for projects at the fairgrounds. The spokesperson said they are not involved in regulating the labor used for such projects. They said the structure was not expressly for political use and that the building is for the sheriff, now, and whomever is elected in November.
Zuchowski, a Republican, is up for reelection in November against Democrat Jon Barber. Of the county's 108,250 registered voters, only 9,016 are registered Democrats and 14,778 are registered Republicans, according to the Portage County Board of Elections.
The sheriff's budget has increased by 44% from 2020, before Zuchowski took office, to 2023, according to reporting by The Portager. This year's request of an additional $4 million brought pushback from county commissioners on the grounds of fiscal responsibility.
Although Zuchowski’s alleged use of inmate labor for political purposes may raise ethical questions, that doesn’t mean it violated any laws. Inmate work programs at county jails are unregulated by the state, which could lead to abuses of power, Gary Daniels with the ACLU of Ohio said.
“The people in charge of basically incarcerating you are essentially in charge of, ‘Are you doing an adequate job?’, ‘What exactly tasks are you doing?,'" he said. "There’s opportunity there for abuse, essentially.”
The Bureau of Adult Detention in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction inspects county jails on an annual basis to ensure they comply with more than one hundred standards set by the state. None of these include assessing inmate labor programs.
McCullough outlined his concerns in a letter sent to the attorney general, the secretary of state and the Ohio Elections Commission. The attorney general's office is looking into the matter after getting a referral from the Portage County Prosecutor’s Office, a spokesperson said. The Ohio auditor's office confirmed they are reviewing the complaint as well, after being forwarded it by the elections commission, a spokesperson said. The secretary of state's office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Portager, a community news source in Portage County, contributed to this story.
