WARREN, Ohio (WKBN) – A workplace disagreement in Trumbull County Tuesday had Commissioner Niki Frenchko and a county clerk at odds. The whole incident was recorded on cellphone video.

It started out as a conversation over items Frenchko wanted to appear on the agenda for the upcoming meeting.

“I came in and I asked for those things to be done, which is customary. She should be doing that type of work. That’s well within her job description,” Frenchko said.

But when Clerk Paula Vivoda-Klotz walked away, a shut door became the focus of the conversation.

Paula Vivoda-Klotz: “Don’t shut the door.”
Another county employee: “Do not shut the door.”
Shara Taylor: “She just shut the door and locked her in.”
Niki Frenchko: “I don’t want her. She’s in my face.”
Paula Vivoda-Klotz: “Whatever, you’re in my face, so.”
Shara Taylor: “Go.”
Paula Vivoda-Klotz: ‘Don’t lock the door with me in there.”

Frencko says she closed the door because she wanted some privacy to talk with Vivoda-Klotz.

“When I walked into the room to Paula’s office, which has two doors, I walked in and Shara (Taylor) was pushing it on me,” Frenchko said.

Shara Taylor remembers it differently.

“I couldn’t even budge it. She had already shut it and was locking it. It was already latched. There was no pushing it open,” Taylor said.

The issue sent deputies to the fifth floor of the county administration building to investigate. Chief Deputy Jeff Palmer said they collected statements and referred all parties to the prosecutor in Warren Municipal Court.

The intial exchange between Frenchko and Vivoda-Klotz was to add items to the agenda to fill board appointments that expired at the end of last year. Frenchko says she wanted commisioners to vote on them and claims the process wasn’t up to par.

“We could either do it in a fashion where we entertain motions to nominate, or we can put them all on or certain ones on and we can vote on them, but we cannot have only those who have been agreed upon going on the agenda,” Frenchko said.

Vivoda-Klotz says she was just doing her job the way she was trained to do it.

“I’m under the understanding that this is how the procedure works, and I just can’t do something that I feel in my heart isn’t for the good and welfare of the county,” Vivoda-Klotz said.