Former Columbus City Hall lobbyist John Raphael had been receiving steady consulting payments over eight months, totaling $45,000, from the village of Obetz when the checks stopped arriving in his mailbox.

He had emailed the village another invoice on June 28, representing what it owed him for July, but Obetz Finance Director Matt Cramblit emailed back 27 minutes later, balking.

"Did we extend the contract?" Cramblit asked, referring to an agreement with Raphael signed by village Administrator Rod Davisson and Cramblit in mid-November that had expired when it reached its $45,000 limit in June.

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More than three weeks later, on July 22, Raphael emailed back: "Yes, July2 (sic) Rod said he was going to He's been busy, probably forgot."

But on July 29, Raphael was still pressing Cramblit for money, apparently still lacking a contract.

"Matt, haven't received July payment," Raphael wrote Cramblit. "Please advise."

"Will you please forward me your signed agreement, or extension?" Cramblit emailed back 16 minutes later.

"On July 2, in Rods office he said he was extending the contract thru August," Raphael replied about 20 minutes later. "... Told me he would handle it."

By the end of the week, the village had cut a check to Raphael for an additional $10,000, bank records obtained by The Dispatch through the Ohio Public Records Act show.

But when asked to see the contract that the check was written against, Davisson could point only to a handwritten note in blue marker at the top of one of Raphael's invoices that said only: "EXTENSION 8-10K 9-5K 10-5K 11-5K 12-5K OK," atop a squiggled, undated signature.

That cleared the way for an additional $30,000, Davisson said.

"It’s a legitimate extension of an existing contract," Davisson wrote in an email last week. "The new terms regarding payment amounts, timing, and expiration are clearly delineated on the extension (and) everything else remains the same."

In 2016 Raphael, who once lobbied Columbus officials while representing many major city contractors, began serving a 15-month federal sentence after pleading guilty to one count of extorting campaign contributions from Redflex, a vendor of red-light cameras. Redflex executives who cooperated with federal prosecutors said the payments to Raphael were bribes intended for elected officials as the company sought to secure business contracts with the city. No city officials were charged with wrongdoing.

"This is like watching a mom-and-pop store that does its cash accounting out of a cigar box," said Ned Hill, a professor of economic development policy, public policy and finance with Ohio State University’s John Glenn College of Public Affairs. "It may be perfectly legal; it's just way too casual."

Almost 300 pages of Obetz records obtained by The Dispatch, including legal documents and emails, also show:

• On July 10, a Jacksonville, Florida, law firm, Adams and Reese, sent Raphael a letter of engagement offering to represent Obetz through him in a case dealing with a closed railroad crossing the village wants to reopen. "We will report to and take direction from you," attorney Timothy Volpe wrote to Raphael, offering to bill Obetz up to $775 per hour billed in six-minute increments.

• Raphael appears to have begun working for the village months before he had a contract. Emails indicate that he was making calls to officials, including U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Jefferson Township, and taking photos in August and September of 2018. An unsigned draft engagement letter that Raphael sent to Obetz outlines that he would begin work on Oct. 1, 2018, for $5,000 a month. He eventually started in mid-November, but he was paid $10,000 — double his monthly rate — for the first month.

• Although Davisson said that Raphael's lobbying doesn't involve the Columbus Crew SC leaving its Obetz practice facility for proposed new practice operations at Mapfre Stadium in Columbus, documents show that Raphael sent Davisson state plans on reorganizing parking around Mapfre to support the plan to create a city of Columbus recreation facility there.

Raphael's original contract states that it can be "amended or modified only by a writing executed by the duly authorized officers of the parties hereto," and that it can't be "changed, modified, or altered except by an instrument, in writing, signed by both parties."

Davisson said those words mean that he is empowered to unilaterally extend the contract by writing notes in blue marker on a Raphael invoice. The village board isn't required to approve the contract.

The blue notes might have made the payments legal, but "I don't know that it's advisable," said Trevor Brown, dean of OSU's Glenn College, who specializes in public contracting and managing vendors.

"You throw 10 bad $100,000 contracts out there, and there's a good portion of your budget," Brown said. "You're just exposing yourself to a lot of risk, and more importantly, you don't have a lot of transparency here."

As for the engagement letter from the Florida law firm stating that Raphael would direct their work on behalf of the village, Davisson said it was "an error."

"Because John was the liaison to find appropriate representation in Florida and made the necessary introductions, the firm mistakenly put his name on the proposed engagement letter," Davisson said.

Asked why a lobbyist, rather than the village's law director, Stephen Smith Jr., would be in charge of hiring outside legal counsel, Davisson said: "In almost every case, counsel for the village would be responsible for hiring and managing outside counsel. In this instance, the village solicitor had a legal conflict preventing them from doing so."

An effort to reach Smith by phone was unsuccessful.

bbush@dispatch.com

@ReporterBush