THE BREAKDOWN: An Ohio appeals court has upheld a $392,847 judgment against Stephanie Millard, the former fiscal officer of Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy, following state audits that revealed public funds were used for personal luxuries, luxury trips, and entertainment.
The First Appellate District Court of Appeals in Hamilton County has affirmed a trial court’s ruling holding Stephanie Millard jointly liable for $392,847 in misappropriated public funds. Millard served as the designated fiscal officer for the Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy (CCPA) from 2005 to 2013, a tenure that overlapped with a massive state investigation into the charter school’s financial management.
The legal battle began after the state auditor received an anonymous tip in 2009 regarding credit card abuse by the school’s superintendent, Lisa Hamm. The state auditor expanded the inquiry after uncovering a pattern of non-operational expenses.
Special and yearly audits eventually revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for education were spent on personal luxuries. These expenditures included over $60,000 in Christmas bonuses and gifts, Broadway shows, a Tina Turner concert in Chicago, Carrie Underwood tickets, Los Angeles Lakers tickets, and unapproved trips to Spain and England. Public funds were also used for spa services, private property taxes, and lawn care for Hamm’s residence.
During the trial, CCPA Board Chair Ronnie Gore testified that Millard was “in charge of taking care of all of our finances, writing checks, paying our bills.” Gore stated that the board considered Millard their financial “gatekeeper” and “leaned and depended on [Millard as the] Treasurer to make sure that she only paid the expenses that we approved.” Gore noted that a close relationship developed between Millard and Hamm, testifying that the relationship explained “why [Millard was] . . . approving these expenses when she knew they were not an expense that the Board had [] approved.”
Millard contested the allegations during her defense, arguing that she lacked final decision-making authority over the school’s accounts and simply fulfilled the directives of the board and the superintendent. In her opening statement, Millard’s counsel told the jury, “Here’s the laws of the State of Ohio. What law did they break? [The State] can’t find any law that you broke. . . . [The State] can’t point to any regulations or any laws that were broken. . . . No wonder the prosecutor passed. . . . They are trying to hold her liable for checks her boss wrote for things.”
The appellate court rejected all six of Millard’s arguments on appeal. Judge Bock, writing the court’s opinion, referenced a prior case regarding community-school administrators who “squandered” public funds to enrich themselves at the expense of “the lives of countless children, often from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
The court ruled against Millard’s claim that she was immune from liability under Ohio laws protecting traditional public school district treasurers, clarifying that those protections do not extend to fiscal officers of independent community charter schools. The court also rejected Millard’s defense regarding a six-year statute of limitations, ruling that the State of Ohio is exempt from general limitations periods when seeking to recover public rights and revenues.
Additionally, the court addressed the introduction of Millard’s expunged criminal records at trial. Though her prior misdemeanor convictions for unauthorized use of property had been expunged, the court found that Millard opened the door to the evidence by claiming in her opening statement that prosecutors had passed on bringing charges against her.
Judges Zayas and Crouse concurred in the decision, leaving the $392,847 monetary judgment intact.
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