The CCI Lawsuit: How Secrecy and Mismanagement Brought Lorain County to the Brink
What began as a routine communications contract has spiraled into litigation, lost trust, and a crisis of credibility for Lorain County’s leaders.
Aug 27, 2025
By Aaron C. Knapp, Investigative Reporter, L.S.W., B.S.S.W., The Ohio State University
A Contract Undone: Politics Over Public Safety
For months, Lorain County’s leadership portrayed their deal with Cleveland Communications Inc. as a forward-thinking investment in public safety. They described it as cost-efficient, essential, and on schedule. Questions about the contract’s terms, its rising costs, and repeated delays were brushed aside as misunderstandings. Public records requests seeking details were ignored, delayed, or heavily redacted. Residents were told to trust the process.
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“We’re giving our first responders the tools they need without overburdening the budget.” — Commissioner Dave Moore, 2023 announcement of the contract.
But the truth began to surface. My reporting on Lorain Politics Unplugged pieced together what officials had tried to obscure. I published documents showing missed payments, scope changes pushed through without public input, and internal warnings from former 911 Director Harry Williamson, who cautioned that bypassing procurement safeguards and excluding first responders “all but guarantees this project will fail.” Those warnings were ignored. When Cleveland.com followed with its own investigation, the picture became undeniable: Lorain County had mismanaged one of its most critical infrastructure projects, and the fallout was coming.
By early 2025, the fallout arrived. CCI sued the county for breach of contract, alleging that officials wrongfully terminated the Harris Phase II contract after work had begun, withheld payments to gain leverage, and interfered with its delivery. The lawsuit has already drained significant sums in legal fees and threatens to expose how the county’s reversal from the CCI-supported system to MARCS was mishandled.
“Unreliable coverage in key response zones.” — Elyria Fire Department memo, 2024.
“Repeated outages affecting interoperability.” — Amherst Police report, 2024.
The coverage issues that followed were not from CCI’s network—they were tied to the MARCS rollout. Public records show departments reporting persistent problems with MARCS testing. These were precisely the types of failures the Harris Phase II system had been designed to solve, and why chiefs had opposed the switch in the first place.
What Came First, And Why It Matters
Lorain County’s first responders were operating on a locally managed, modern P25 Phase II digital trunked system supported by CCI, with several municipalities already invested in Harris radios tied into that network. A county-commissioned consultant study evaluated options and recommended building on that Phase II platform, not joining the older Phase I architecture used by the state’s MARCS system. Field testing by local chiefs compared the Phase II Harris network against MARCS and found the Harris radios had stronger coverage, especially in buildings, and greater capacity for future growth.
Coverage And Reliability, Tested In The Real World
In the summer of 2024, a severe thunderstorm swept across Lorain County, bringing down power lines, toppling trees, and triggering widespread blackouts. For hours, large portions of the county’s emergency communications were compromised—but not all systems failed equally. The Ohio MARCS network, which county officials had championed as a long-term solution, suffered a critical outage during the storm. Agencies reported being unable to transmit or receive over MARCS for extended periods, leaving dispatchers scrambling to relay messages by phone and forcing first responders to revert to backup systems.
Those backups included the county’s legacy VHF channels and the CCI-supported Harris P25 Phase II system, which remained fully operational throughout the crisis. Fire and police leaders later testified that the Phase II network’s performance during the blackout wasn’t just luck—it was the result of deliberate engineering.
“Coverage should never be sacrificed for politics.” — Former Lorain Police Chief Jim McCann, Vice President, Lorain County Police Chiefs Association.
By contrast, MARCS’s architecture in Lorain County was exposed as vulnerable. The system relied on a single zone controller located outside the county, in Lake County, with no on-site backup. When that controller or its backhaul lost power, as it did during the 2024 storm, entire segments of the network went dark. Elyria’s fire chief echoed those concerns in a 2024 memo citing “unreliable coverage in key response zones,” underscoring that the system’s vulnerabilities were already affecting operations.
The Burns Road Tower Flashpoint
On August 12, 2025, the debate over Lorain County’s radio systems reached a boiling point. In a contentious vote, the commissioners decided not to renew CCI’s lease on the county-owned Burns Road tower—a site that has long provided critical in-building coverage for Elyria, Lorain, and surrounding communities.
Our reporting first revealed the significance of this tower in the county’s radio infrastructure, documenting how its strategic location and height delivered coverage where other sites could not—hospitals, schools, government buildings, and densely populated neighborhoods. Removing CCI’s equipment from Burns Road, public safety officials warned, would create immediate gaps in communication in precisely those high-risk areas.
“Losing this signal will place responders and citizens in avoidable danger.” — Elyria Fire Chief, 2024 memo.
The reaction was swift. McCann called the decision “reckless,” arguing that coverage should never be a political bargaining chip. The Chiefs Association and several municipal councils called on the Board to keep both systems operational until MARCS could demonstrate equal performance. The commissioners ignored those pleas and proceeded, signaling their intent to consolidate Lorain County’s communications under MARCS alone.
How MARCS Led To This Lawsuit
The litigation stems from a fundamental reversal of course. In 2022, Lorain County commissioned Mission Critical Partners to evaluate its public safety radio options. That independent study concluded that a locally managed P25 Phase II system, built and maintained by Cleveland Communications Inc., offered the best long-term solution for coverage, resiliency, and cost predictability. Local chiefs confirmed those findings in field tests, publicly supporting the Phase II system as the most reliable option for first responders.
“This decision has left Lorain County scrambling to maintain basic service.” — Local municipal council statement, 2025.
Armed with that expert validation, the previous Board of Commissioners approved a contract with CCI in December 2022. By early January 2023, work had already begun—equipment was ordered, tower sites were being prepared, and municipalities were coordinating with CCI to integrate their systems.
Then politics intervened. After the November 2022 elections, a new Board majority took office and abruptly rescinded the CCI contract. Commissioners Dave Moore and Jeff Riddell justified the decision with allegations of a “tainted” procurement process, despite the absence of any findings of wrongdoing. They pivoted the county toward the state’s MARCS network instead, signing a multimillion-dollar deal with Motorola to build out new towers and integrate into MARCS.
A Pattern That Repeats
The CCI dispute did not arise in isolation. It mirrors a broader pattern in how Lorain County’s leadership has approached major projects: promise big, dismiss dissent, and deal with the consequences later. The MARCS rollout, touted as a cost-saving upgrade, has already cost millions more than planned and delivered less reliable service than the system it replaced.
Clearwater is on track to follow this path. The push to create a regional sewer district under ORC 6119 is being sold as modernization but was rejected a decade ago for the very same reasons opponents cite today: loss of local control, lack of transparency, and long-term cost risks. Our reporting has shown how state funding streams like the All Ohio Future Fund are driving this sudden urgency, not a grassroots demand for change.
The Midway Mall redevelopment is another cautionary tale. In 2021, commissioners declared it the linchpin of Lorain County’s economic revitalization, allocating over $14 million in public funds to transform the failing property. Today, the mall remains largely vacant, producing no measurable return on investment.
“These are not isolated missteps; they are symptoms of systemic dysfunction.” — Lorain Politics Unplugged analysis.
Taken together, these cases form a clear throughline: a governing philosophy that prioritizes consolidation of power over service to the public. Each time, the pattern repeats. Each time, the cost grows. And each time, accountability is deferred.
Written by Aaron C. Knapp for Lorain Politics Unplugged
Legal Disclaimer: The information and opinions expressed in this article are based on publicly available sources, official statements, and my independent analysis as a journalist. While I have taken care to ensure accuracy, this article is not legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Readers are encouraged to review public records, attend public meetings, and consult qualified professionals before making any decisions based on the issues discussed here. All individuals and entities mentioned are presumed innocent of wrongdoing unless proven otherwise in a court of law.
Up Next: Part IV – The Finale
In the concluding chapter of this series, I will tie together Clearwater, the Public Defender’s Office, MARCS, CCI, and the Midway Mall into one story of systemic failure. It’s not just about one bad decision—it’s about a culture of mismanagement, misplaced priorities, and a refusal to listen until it’s too late. Stay tuned for the finale on Lorain Politics Unplugged.
https://lorainpoliticsunplugged.substack.com/p/the-cci-lawsuit-how-secrecy-and-mismanagement
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