CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The branches of Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason's large family tree have blossomed in state and local government.

During Mason's two-decade career in politics, taxpayers have paid his relatives more than $2.2 million in salary, a Plain Dealer review of public payrolls and other records has found.

At least 13 of his family members have received a public job -- several of them more than one -- since Mason began his climb in 1991 by winning a City Council seat in Parma.

The county has hired 10 of those 13 since Mason became prosecutor in 1999. Four are nieces he hired for his own office. A fifth woman, whom Mason hired as a paralegal, was engaged to one of his nephews when she applied but listed no legal training on her r sum .

Others received jobs with the prosecutor's fellow officeholders and close friends, including former County Recorder Patrick O'Malley, whose brother is Mason's top assistant.

The work has ranged from summer internships to high-paying positions. And though some were demonstrably qualified for their jobs, many of the openings were not publicly advertised.

"These people in Cuyahoga County," said government watchdog Henry Eckhart of Common Cause Ohio, "seem to have a habit of taking in each other's relatives and getting them jobs."

The list of 13 does not include Mason's wife, Carol, to whom the Parma Municipal Court has handed more than $36,000 in process-service work since 2007. It also does not include a sister-in-law who worked for the county engineer before marrying a Mason brother in 2009.

Previous Plain Dealer coverage of Bill Mason

Mason's daughter holds unposted job in Parma

Presumed Guilty: Prosecutions without evidence

FBI investigating coroner's hiring of Pat Coyne

Mason's supporters get lucrative title work

Mason accepted $30,000 from contributors implicated in county corruption probe

Mason hires lawyer who gave his sister a job

Coroner accuses Mason of making him hire Strongsville Councilman (and Mason ally) Pat Coyne

Immediate family includes 119 people

But the list, limited to relations verified after examining county and Parma payroll records, also might be incomplete given that Mason's immediate family, by his count, has 119 members.

Mason, who has 15 brothers and sisters, declined to be interviewed for this story and would not disclose whether other relatives have obtained public jobs. In a statement issued through a spokesman, he said he encourages everyone, "including my family," to consider public service.

"I, of course, take full responsibility for all those who work for me," Mason said. "I do not hire people because of who they are nor do I discriminate against them for those reasons.

"I ensure that the people who work for me are of the highest ethical caliber, qualified, and hardworking and motivated. The composition of my staff reflects this principle."

Mason is hardly the first county official whose relatives have scored public jobs.

At least five relatives of ex-Commissioner Tim Hagan have worked for the county since 1990. Former Sheriff Gerald McFaul, who resigned amid scandal and subsequently was convicted of theft in office, hired his son-in-law and a niece he promoted while laying off others. McFaul also made his son a special deputy, qualifying him for lucrative private security jobs.

Summit County is more strict

The appearance of political nepotism is a recipe for controversy. Voters in adjacent Summit County passed a 2006 law that bans relatives of top officials from receiving county jobs.

The Plain Dealer began exploring Mason's family ties in state and local government in January after reporting that one of the prosecutor's daughters, Kelly, works as a Parma law clerk. The part-time job pays $11 an hour and was not posted for the public to apply.

Kelly Mason, a 23-year-old student at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University, has had at least three other public jobs since 2002, including a 2004 summer stint with the Cuyahoga County engineer.

State law prohibits public officials from hiring or asking others to hire close family members for public jobs. The law specifies such relatives as spouses, siblings, children, grandchildren, parents, grandparents or other immediate family who live with an official.

County Prosecutor Bill Mason's family members in public jobs

Rest your mouse cursor on a picture to see who has worked where.

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Several people appear in more than one place, reflecting multiple jobs they have had. Pay cited is highest rate for that job.

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Mason family ties

Felesia M. Jackson, The Plain Dealer. Sources: Public records, Plain Dealer research

Mason, in his recent statement, said he has complied with the law by hiring only nieces, whom the state statute did not forbid. But he declined to answer specific questions about whether he ever made a telephone call or wrote a letter on behalf of a job-seeking family member.

Prosecutor's paralegal listed no legal training

Among the newspaper's recent findings:

* Shannon DiBacco Bodach, hired in 2010, makes $28,000 a year as a full-time Mason paralegal despite listing no legal education or training when applying. Bodach, who was engaged to Mason's nephew at the time, listed two retail jobs and an associate's degree in massotherapy.

"That's not a paralegal," said government watchdog Eckhart, who also is an attorney in Columbus. "There are specific qualifications and licenses. That's just not right."

No law requires a paralegal to be licensed. But according to the Cleveland Association of Paralegals, Bodach, because of her lack of experience, at the time did not meet the definitions of a paralegal that national organizations such as the American Bar Association use.

Bodach did not respond to requests for comment.

* The county engineer hired brother Edward Mason in 2006 as a sewer maintenance worker, a $34,000-a-year job that officials have no record of advertising to the public. Months later, Edward Mason tested for and won a slightly higher-paying job in the office. And in 2009, he resigned, then was rehired a week later for a $68,000-a-year job as a carpenter.

* Niece Melinda Kowalski got her first public job in Parma in 1996. She was a summer intern for O'Malley from 2000 to 2003 before her uncle hired her, first as a law clerk, then as an assistant prosecutor. After several raises that brought her pay to $52,000 a year, she resigned in 2008. Then-Attorney General Richard Cordray, a Democrat, hired her in 2009. She remains on the payroll as an assistant attorney general under new Republican boss Mike DeWine.

* Former Parma Treasurer Jack Krise Jr., who made Mason's brother Michael his deputy in 1991, was hired in 2005 as an administrative assistant in the prosecutor's office.

Krise told The Plain Dealer in 1996 that Bill Mason, who in 1991 had just been elected to the Parma City Council, pitched his brother for the opening -- an account the prosecutor confirmed at the time. Krise makes about $46,000 a year at the county. Michael Mason remains on the payroll in Parma, where he makes more than $76,000 a year as the tax commissioner.

Was the prosecutor's hiring of Krise a returned favor?

"That's ludicrous," Bill Mason responded through a spokesman.

Hirings mirror other family moves

But taken together, Krise's hiring of Michael Mason and Bill Mason's later hiring of Krise mirror other moves by the prosecutor and those who have employed his relatives.

Last spring, for example, Mason gave Michael Dolan, a fellow Democrat, a $65,000 annual salary to serve as a civil lawyer. Dolan, while running the Ohio Lottery Commission in 2007, had hired Peggy Mason Bodach, the prosecutor's sister, as a policy analyst at $79,000 a year.

And it was Parma Law Director Timothy Dobeck, a longtime political ally whose wife Mason once hired as an assistant county prosecutor, who gave Kelly Mason the clerk's job.

Bill Mason and Dobeck previously denied that those hirings were payback.

County officials could not find evidence of public postings for at least five of the positions that ultimately went to Mason relatives. Three were seasonal jobs with relatively low pay.

Mason would not confirm if any of the five jobs he gave to family were posted.

Two nieces responded to The Plain Dealer's requests for comments.

"At this point, I think you guys should question your own reputation, but I am not concerned about mine," said Kimberly Kowalski, who for more than four years was Mason's public information officer and, like her sister, later worked for Cordray in state government.

Katrina Mason, who spent several months in 2004 as a Web design trainee for the county's Information Services Center, defended her qualifications. She said she had a 3.9 grade-point average after a year as a public relations major at Purdue University. Mason, a law student in Washington, D.C., also described a "rather intensive" interview for the county job.

"To reflect," she wrote in an e-mail, "it was actually more difficult than my most recent interview with the International Trade Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce."

Nepotism a no-no in Summit County

Mason's 2010 hiring of Shannon DiBacco Bodach, his nephew's fianc e and soon-to-be wife, has shades of the appointment that sparked the Summit County nepotism ban.

In 2006, then-Summit County Executive James McCarthy hired the 23-year-old daughter of a county councilman for a $61,000-a-year job as an animal control chief. In doing so, McCarthy, a Democrat, waived experience requirements and paid her more than her predecessor.

A subsequent Akron Beacon Journal newspaper investigation found that four top county officials and their relatives were collecting at least $1.3 million in public salaries.

Republicans responded by collecting signatures for an ultimately successful ballot issue that outlawed such hires in the future. The charter amendment prohibits the hiring of anyone related to an elected county official or other high-ranking employee making more than $80,000 a year.

The amendment is broad in its definition of family. Spouses, siblings, half-siblings, children, nieces, nephews and first cousins are all disqualified from jobs. So are parents, grandparents, grandchildren, stepparents, stepchildren, stepsiblings and most in-laws.

Summit County served as a model for Mason and fellow reformers who in 2009 pushed a successful reorganization of Cuyahoga government that has begun to take root. No language was included to address nepotism.

Through his spokesman, Mason said he has pushed for hiring reforms here.

"As one of the framers of the new government, I supported the creation of what I believed to be an improved and streamlined process for hiring civil servants," Mason said. "Article 9 of the charter creates a Human Resources Commission. When this new entity is organized and functional, this office looks forward to participating and cooperating with it fully."

But Rob Frost, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Republican Party and, like Mason, a proponent of county reform, said the time has come to discuss a definitive nepotism ban.

"Under the old system, going to the county was like going to a family reunion," Frost said. "We still have people in county government who are there because they knew the right people or had the right connections -- particularly in prosecutor's office."

Plain Dealer reporter Laura Johnston contributed to this story

