Bruns’ wife is Julie Bruns, who is chief of Heck’s juvenile division and Heck’s second cousin.
Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman Greg Flannagan said Wednesday that Julie Bruns is not suspended nor facing any discipline over these allegations.
“She is not part of the investigation,” he said. “She is not suspected of having any part in the theft.”
Officials with the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office said Wednesday that they are still conducting interviews in the case. If charges are filed, they said, they would be in Montgomery County court.
Bruns’ personnel file, obtained by the I-Team, shows he was hired at the prosecutor’s office in July 2009 as part of the Delinquent Tax and Assessment Collection (DeTAC) Unit.
Prior to that, Bruns supervised the civil department at the Montgomery County Clerk of Courts Office for three years before he took a $11,533 voluntary separation in July 2009.
Clerk of Courts Greg Brush said Bruns was one of nine people laid off as part of budget cuts that year. Brush said Bruns worked at the clerk’s office when he was appointed in 2007 and was a committed employee.
Brush said he was “shocked” when it was announced this month that Bruns was under investigation and had already paid back $40,000 in allegedly stolen funds.
“There was never even a hint of anything like that at all,” he said. “We never had any discrepancies, any issues that would indicate anything.”
In 2012, Bruns was reprimanded at the prosecutor’s office for not opening office mail and throwing away mail without opening it, embarrassing the office and putting it at risk professionally, according to the written reprimand.
Other than that, he received positive performance evaluations. In July, he was commended by Heck for shepherding through a tax foreclosure for the city of Trotwood to help obtain a property for the Trotwood-Madison Historical Society.
The DeTAC Unit Bruns worked for was part of the civil division under Mary Montgomery and currently has 16 employees.
Most of the money the unit collects is distributed to the taxing authorities owed money. State law says 5 percent of the money collected can be split evenly between the prosecutor’s and treasurer’s offices, which totaled $2.1 million last year.
County officials say the money Bruns took came from funds that should have been distributed to the prosecutor’s office to fund the DeTAC Unit. Total revenue was nearly $1.1 million last year, officials said. The unit spends less than it collects running the DeTAC unit, allowing it to build up a reserve of $7.3 million in recent years.
Officials said the money was not from delinquent payments, so had no effect on people being foreclosed upon. And it was not from the funds distributed to schools, cities and other taxing districts.
DIGGING DEEP
Our I-Team obtained records to bring you details on the responsibilities of a county employee accused of stealing from the prosecutor’s office and how the alleged theft could impact county services.
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