SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP — Shawnee Township released a notice of administrative charges laid against suspended Fire Chief Austin Miller on Monday, with those charges revised Wednesday.

In a release by attorney Daniel Sabol on behalf of the township trustees, four administrative charges have been laid against Miller, who has been on paid leave since May 11. Sabol noted these are administrative charges and independent of any criminal investigation. The full text of the notice of charges can be viewed at tinyurl.com/3bkz8bcr.

“Regarding potential criminal charges, it is the Township’s understanding that the Special Investigations Unit of the Ohio Auditor of State’s Office has fowarded the investigation to the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office,” he said in the statement. “Further documents and information will be provided in the coming days.”

Attorneys at the Allen County Prosecutor’s Office could not be reached for comment Friday as they were not in the office due to summer office hours. An email sent Friday from David Roorbach, the press secretary for the Ohio Auditor of State’s Office, said that the investigation is ongoing, “so no further updates are available.”

A disciplinary hearing will be held at a special board of trustees meeting at 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 3 at the township building, 2530 Fort Amanda Road, Lima.

Questions on due process

Miller’s attorney, Dalton Smith, maintained the Shawnee Township trustees have not given Miller any form of due process throughout the investigation and the presentation of the charges against him.

“There was a livestream of the Shawnee Township (trustees) meeting where they not only voted to place Chief Miller on unpaid leave without giving him a chance to respond to the allegation, which is a violation of his right of due process under Loudermill, which is well-estabished federal case law,” he said.

“Loudermill” is a reference to the 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Cleveland Board of Education v. Loudermill requiring the written or oral notice to public employees of any charges or complaints, along with an explanation of any evidence gathered against the employee and the opportunity for the employee to respond.

By publishing the charges to the public and holding a special meeting for the hearing rather than saving the hearing for the next regular board meeting, which Smith said is required by law, the trustees are tipping their hand that they already are invested in seeing Miller fired, Smith said.

“They specifically note that they have expedited the hearing beacuse the longest they can keep Chief Miller on suspension is 15 days,” he said. “Well, he’s been on suspension for the past four months. But by putting that in writing, (saying,) ‘We’re rushing this hearing because we can only keep you on leave for 15 days or you have to come back,’ means that you’ve already decided the outcome. ‘We don’t want you to come back, so we’re going to violate Ohio law, and we’re going to force you to attend a hearing ahead of time and without documents and publicly embarass you without a chance to properly defend yourself because we don’t care what the truth is.’”

What are the charges?

The first charge is falsifying a public record, with this accusation centered around an exit interview with former township firefighter Matthew Green.

“A review of your notes from that exit interview revealed that you added additional information that was not part of that exit interview,” the notice of charges issued to Miller said. “Specifically, you added comments to the exit interview that the former employee never said. These comments were inflammatory and potentially damaging to the individuals involved. In adding the false information, you falsified a public record, which also is potentially a criminal violation.”

The second charge is failing to repay money paid to him for T-shirts for breast cancer awareness in 2024, “including receiving Venmo payments from employees and failing to repay them to the Township and also failing to pay the invoice,” Sabol said in a statement. The invoice to Cappy’s Sportswear was unpaid for approximately one year until the business brought the issue to the township’s attention in October 2025, the notice of charges said.

“You collected money from individual employees who had purchased the shirts and placed some of the money in your desk drawer, which was discovered after you were placed on administrative leave in 2026,” the notice said. “However, the money found in your desk was not enough to pay the outstanding balance for the shirts and you further failed to pay the money to Shawnee Township.”

The third charge against Miller alleges that he was utilizing a program, Data Destroyer, on his township-issued computer to “destroy data, information and records, which is a violation of State public records law, Township policies and Ohio Historical Society standards for the preservation of public records,” Sabol said in the statement. The program had initially been identified as Bitlocker on Monday before the correction was made Wednesday.

Smith took issue with the update to the charge, asserting this as another example of an action taken improperly by the township.

“If they’ve amended those charges themselves outside of a public session, (it) is, one, a violation of the Open Meetings Act, and two, a blatant example of how they’ve already predetermined the outcome of this hearing because they’re guaranteeing that their charges are as good as they can be to make sure they get the outcome that they obviously want,” he said.

The fourth charge is that Miller misused public funds to “authorize pre-employment phyiscals for applicants that he had not been authorized to hire,” Sabol said in the statement. This allegedly happened twice, the first on March 10 and the second on April 7, and involved two separate candidates.

“These actions caused the Township to suffer a financial loss and were not authorized or approved,” the notice said. “This is a failure of your Performance Improvement Plan, as it was discovered following the Performance Improvement Plan being implemented.”

Smith emphasized Thursday’s meeting is open to the public, and he encouraged supporters of Miller to attend.

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