Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office Reviewing Request for Investigation Into Wiretapping Allegations Against Cleveland Heights Mayor

Cleveland Heights Mayor Kahlil Seren at a council meeting in May. Credit: Mark Oprea

There’s never a dull week at Cleveland Heights City Hall.

In the past 10 days, there have been accusations of Mayor Kahlil Seren blocking residents from seeing his Facebook account; there have been proposals for legislation by City Council to limit Seren’s access to city emails after allegations — and confirmation — that he was searching through two members’ email accounts; and there’s been general uproar over Seren firing former Communications Director Jessica Shantz and replacing her with Frances Eugenia Collazo, who was behind the letter—signed by 18 people—declaring to the public that there’s no “hostile work environment” at Cleveland Heights City Hall.

The latest entry into As Cleveland Heights Turns comes as the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office confirms it is reviewing a request for investigation from Cleveland Heights police into allegations that Seren violated wiretapping laws by leaving a laptop in the Law Department in April of this year on the same day employees were being questioned by an outside investigator about the behavior of his wife, Natalie McDaniel.

“We have reviewed a request for investigation from Cleveland Heights Police regarding the allegations about the laptop,” a spokesperson for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office told Scene. “We are reviewing it.”

Heights officials had previously asked Ohio BCI to investigate. The department declined to pursue one, however.

That barrage of activity, nothing new for a City Hall shaken by scandal and political theater, comes as Seren was dealt with news that he didn’t gather enough valid signatures to appear on the November ballot and that a group of citizens had gathered enough valid signatures to place a recall measure on the ballot in September.

Seren doesn’t seem to be budging.

Last Monday, Seren emailed residents an addendum to a town hall he’d hosted the week prior, an emergency meeting he’d used to try and clarify a report the city had funded to investigate the so-called hostile work environment. The report itself found that though McDaniel was known to use expletives and was “loud” on several occasions, there was no culture of harassment that breached city policy or federal law.

Ensuing criticism that Seren was glossing over parts of the report to mislead the public, as the Plain Dealer reported, seemed to rile the embattled mayor and push him further into defiance.

“I welcome disagreement. I welcome debate,” he wrote in that email on June 30. “But I cannot remain silent while the facts are twisted and weaponized agianst my integrity, my family and the work we are doing in this city.”

That same day Collazo announced she was replacing Shantz, who had led public relations for a tense government since August of last year. And that same day, Seren claimed that Shantz was fired after allegedly leaking “personnel matters” to the public, for which she’d received, Seren wrote, “extensive support and coaching.”

Shantz, like several ex-Cleveland Heights employees dispatched this year, was flabbergasted.

“I am alarmed that my professional integrity has been so mischaracterized,” she wrote Scene in an email. “In my 25 years as a professional, my values of trust, respect and integrity have been at the core of everything I do.”

Collazo herself had been picked by Seren and McDaniel, several sources told Scene, to lead a marketing project at City Hall and produce and design its in-house Focus Magazine.

Scene reached out to Collazo for details on the wiretapping investigation referral.

“We are not aware of a request to the county prosecutor,” she wrote.

In a letter emailed out last week, Collazo painted herself as an experienced designer both empathetic to Seren’s take on government and for residents concerned that he’s taken political agendas a little bit too far.

Collazo adopted a truth-above-all stance, claiming that scandal erupted not primarily because of Seren’s actions but more so because of how news of those actions was communicated to the public.

“The mayor has not always been positioned appropriately, and messaging has at times relied on half-truths, unclear narratives, or reactive framing,” Collazo wrote. “That kind of communication neither protects the City nor truly serves its residents.”

“My commitment is to restore clarity, consistency, and trust in how this city communicates,” she added, “both internally and publicly.”

City Council will decide on July 7 whether or not to advance legislation that would make it tougher for Seren to use city accounts to disseminate personal messages and whether or not to limit his ability to install security cameras on city property.

“These are abuses of authority,” Councilman Craig Cobb said at a July 1 meeting, “that no one ever envisioned would happen.”