Photo by Linda Harris Nicole Balakos listens as her attorney, Ronald Yarwood, center, speaks during Friday’s court session. Looking on is Assistant Ohio Attorney General Micah Ault.

STEUBENVILLE — A former Jefferson County health commissioner agreed Friday not to run for office for at least three years after pleading guilty in Common Pleas Court to misdemeanor unlawfully benefiting from a public contract.

Defendant Nicole Balakos told Judge Joseph Bruzzese she wanted to put it behind her.

“This has been four years of a lot of trauma to me, to my family, to everybody who supported me,” she said. “And I’m happy to have the option to leave this chapter behind me.”

Balakos, originally charged in March with felony unlawfully benefiting, “apologized for everything that happened.”

“If I had known, I would have never quit (the) job that I had to take (that) job,” she told Bruzzese while about 40 family and friends packed into the gallery — among them county commissioners, business leaders and former board members — looked on.

“They asked me to do it because there were no other candidates and I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said.

She added she “certainly never intended to do anything wrong.”

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” she said. “I filled a job no one else was able to do at the time. I didn’t know, but that’s not an excuse — that’s me taking responsibility for it.”

Balakos, then a member of the Jefferson County Board of Health, accepted the commissioner’s job in 2019 after the health board was unable to find a suitable candidate willing to take it on. She was abruptly terminated in September 2020.

Assistant Ohio Attorney General Micah Ault argued that as a board member Balakos had “been involved in the process of creating (the) contract and she was involved in creating the terms of the contract” she signed when she became health commissioner.

“Several of the terms were, I think, a bit unusual and favorable to the defendant,” he said. “So that’s why we’re here today.”

Specifically, Ault referenced a five-year salary guarantee and also questioned the start date of her public service, which is used to calculate other benefits.

But her attorney, Ronald Yarwood, told Bruzzese there was no intent and she was “a bit embarrassed” by the events.

“She was involved in the negotiations and she realizes that that was probably, in hindsight, improper,” Yarwood said. “But you have a person with no prior criminal record, a person who’s raised her family here, who’s dedicated her life to this community, who is held in high regard in this community. And it’s kind of a warning to a lot of us that sometimes we go astray of the law (and) we don’t even know (it), we’re not even aware of some of the nuances that are required of us. Ignorance of the law is not an excuse, but it certainly is mitigation.”

Yarwood said he “doesn’t think there was ever any ill intent on her part.”

“I think she was trying to do right by the community, and she is suffering some consequences for it, but this is not (a case) where she was trying to line her own pockets or have some great financial benefit,” he said. “I’m not trying to make her out to be a saint, but I am trying to balance the mitigation with what we’ve heard (from prosecutors.)”

Yarwood said that, given the events of the past four years, he doesn’t foresee Balakos running for office.

“Quite candidly, I don’t think she wants to be in an elected position,” he said. “This has been very difficult for her and her family.”

In addition to being on community control for the next three years, Bruzzese fined Balakos $250 plus court costs and ordered her to pay a $25 monthly supervision fee. He gave her a 90-day suspended sentence.