Marc Dann starts cleaning house

As predicted, Dann fired Guiterrez, the main employee who was the focus of the sexual harassment complaints. Leo Jennings, his personal friend and office spokesman, was fired after attempting to get an attorney in the office to offer untruthful testimony to Ben Espy's investigation.

According to the Columbus Dispatch:

A third longtime friend, Dann's top nonlegal adviser, Edgar C. Simpson, resigned last night instead of being fired this morning. And Jessica Utovich, Dann's former scheduler, also quit last night.

...

Simpson [Dann's chief-of-staff] should be “disciplined” because he violated equal employment opportunity and professional conduct standards by failing to respond adequately to the sexual harassment complaints.

And although Espy said that he didn't consider his investigation was to serve as the morals police and to investigate whether superiors were engaged in sexual relationships with inferiors:

Dann's top assistant who headed the probe, former state Sen. Ben Espy, said during the investigation he asked her if she ever stayed overnight; she refused to answer the question. Dann, however, acknowledged she had stayed overnight; “he did not, however, give reasons,” Espy said.

Dann today acknowledged that he did, in fact, have an inappropriate relationship with Utovich.

On the issue of his hiring practices, Dann admitted that he hired people with "unconventional" qualifications and was a little naive.  In fact, for the first time, Dann admitted that he didn't expect to win in 2006.

Top officials in the office looked the other way instead of probing the bad behavior, the report said.

“There was an active effort in the office by longtime friends at the administrative level to overlook the transgressions by Mr. Gutierrez over a long period of time. Mr. Gutierrez used these relationships to exert his influence in the General Services Section and to impress female employees of his connections.”

In addition, “management employees encouraged and tolerated a workplace atmosphere of frequent profanity, extremely casual and improper personal interactions with subordinates and a general lack of professionalism and respect.”

The AG's office also announced the following course of action:

• Review the qualifications of all managers.

• Contract with an outside expert to look at office policy on use of state property and equipment.

• Create a call center for anonymous employee complaints.

• Establish a “zero tolerance” policy for sexual harassment.

• Use an outside investigator for future harassment complaints.

• Require all employees to under sexual harassment training.

• Reassign the Equal Employment Officer.

• Contact the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Cleveland to offer full cooperation with the agency's investigation.

• Cooperate with the State Highway Patrol and the Department of Administrative Services in doing further investigation and review.

• Meet with the Ohio Ethics Commission to discuss Gutierrez's misuse of state property and allegations that he conducted work on state time and using state property.

I'll have some thoughts on this later.  Right now, Dann is being grilled by the Ohio press corp.  Which is odd because it's so odd to see that there is a press corp in Ohio.  The biggest unanswered question at the press conference for Dann is why these employees were terminated over this, but he shouldn't resign.