On Friday, Aug. 22, The Scioto County Grand handed down indictments against Scioto County Commissioner Bryan Davis and his wife, Lorinda Davis, as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged bribes and public contracts involving the Southern Ohio Port Authority and a Portsmouth-area business park, Auditor of State Keith Faber announced.
Bryan Davis faces 13 felony counts, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, theft in office, money laundering; aggravated theft, tampering with evidence, attempted tampering with evidence, receiving stolen property, forgery, obstructing justice, tampering with records and filing incomplete, false and fraudulent returns.
Lorinda Sue Davis faces 10 felony counts, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, money laundering, tampering with evidence, attempted tampering with evidence, receiving stolen property, forgery, obstructing justice, tampering with records and filing incomplete, false and fraudulent returns.
“This is an outright abuse of the public trust,” Auditor Faber said. “We will work to ensure justice is served for the people of Scioto County.”
Since then, the County has been rocked by the news, with many demanding for Commissioner Davis’s resignation.
Both of Davis’s counterparts in the Commissioners’ Office have released public statements regarding the matter, resulting in a request that he resign.
Scioto County’s Merit Smith, who was appointed last month, released the following statement, “I have been in the position of Commissioner for a short period of time, and was not in this position when these alleged offences occurred. I believe that a person is innocent until proven guilty, but I also believe that being under indictment would distract from doing the business of Scioto County. When I was appointed to the position of commissioner, I made the comment that I would always try to do the right thing, and I believe the right thing is to ask Mr. Davis to resign his position as County Commissioner for the best interest of the people in Scioto County.”
Powell, who has served throughout the entirety of the investigation, released a much longer statement that starts, “In light of the most recent felony indictments against Commissioner Davis and his wife, I am calling for his immediate resignation from his position as Scioto County Commissioner.”
Powell continues to outline his involvement in the investigation and stated he was part of the investigation, outlining a previous decision by the commissioners to terminate Robert Horton when he was indicted as precedent, and an explanation that his statements are not based on determining guilt but about public trust.
In February, Robert Horton, who headed the Southern Ohio Port Authority and the Scioto County Economic Development Department, was indicted on 15 criminal counts, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activities, theft in office, telecommunications fraud, aggravated theft, money laundering, tampering with public records, tampering with evidence, bribery, having an unlawful interest in a public contract and falsification.
His wife, Lioubov Horton, was indicted on 12 criminal counts, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activities, theft in office, telecommunications fraud, aggravated theft, money laundering, tampering with evidence and having an unlawful interest in a public contract.
During this indictment, official documents outlined several redacted names, leaving Scioto County in wait of potential future indictments.
The 13-page indictment filed in Scioto County Common Pleas Court Friday outlines the alleged schemes involved, including Horton receiving kickbacks for securing a public contract for construction at the SOAR Business Park and Davis using his position as county commissioner to secure the contract and public funding involved, among other alleged crimes.
Lioubov Horton and Lorinda Davis allegedly received related kickback payments through consulting firms they owned.
The four also allegedly met in person and discussed ways to provide false information to investigators and attempted to falsify records to hide their crimes.
During the investigation, Horton had been allowed to continue doing logistics specific to SOPA during his paid administrative leave without contact with county employees to keep the board functioning. These administrative duties included such things as signing checks. SOPA is not a county government agency, but it does include some county employees on its board.
At the time, Commissioner Cathy Coleman made the motion to allow Horton to do limited work for SOPA, and then-Chair Bryan Davis, now allegedly to be “John Doe #1” in filings associating him with the scheme,” voted “yes.” Current Chair Powell voted “no.”
The first calls for Davis’s resignation stemmed from this issue in March.
While a quote was requested from Davis on Aug. 25, 2025, he did not respond. In March, however, he responded to the request for quote. While not taking the requests for his resignation seriously, he followed his comments with why he voted the way he did with Horton.
“Regarding the claim that we re-appointed Mr. Horton against counsels’ advice. That is not true. Commissioner Coleman explained this in detail in a recent commissioner meeting. We were given the choice to do it or not to do it. Our attorney gave us both options. There were pros and cons. The cons were mostly about political and public perception considerations. I, for one, have never allowed political or public perception stop me from doing what I feel is best for Scioto County. I have butted heads with several in the Democrat Party and my own party at times,” Davis said. “The choice was clear for me. He was not indicted at that time. In America, people are innocent until proven guilty and he hadn’t even been charged, which I know the Democrat Party doesn’t agree with, which is evident, based on the lawfare employed against Donald Trump and others. I chose to reappoint and take care of much needed business that no one else could have or would have done no matter what anyone else may claim. Having spoken to SOPA board members personally, and knowing their personal and business commitments, I know that was the case. If this had not happened, Scioto County would have been on the hook for potentially millions of dollars. Anyone not understanding this concept, or taking this into consideration, either doesn’t understand the magnitude of what SOPA was facing or what they actually do, or they simply don’t care about Scioto County. Perhaps both.”
Powell disagreed from this stance. In the Feb. 27 meeting of the Scioto County Commissioners, Powell stated that, “They (SOPA) did have board members who could have stepped in, from my perspective.”
During the meeting, Davis disagreed with the assertion, saying the available, trained personnel weren’t sufficient.
Powell commented on the matter again, stating that the timeline is confusing, but he also believed not only were there available SOPA members to step up, but the bond matter in question was also previously addressed prior to Horton returning. Powell’s comments contradict Davis’s response received by the Daily Times.
“To be clear, the bond issue was taken care of before Mr. Horton coming back to work full duty. That action took place while he had guardrails in place. So, that vote happened, and that action was taken prior to coming back to full duty,” Powell said. “He was still able to do some SOPA stuff with the guardrails that indicated anytime he interacted with County staff, equipment, that he was supposed to run that by our clerk just for clarity. So, once again, it is an interesting exercise to go back and kind of re-live why we made decisions and how that played out. The timeline is all over the place, in terms of did we have enough people or not, there were resignations that came out after the bond issue was taken care of, so I still believe we had, at least on paper, that we had board members to handle the situation.”
Powell, in public meetings, had stated the legal options offered by counsel to Scioto County Commissioners regarding the reinstatement of Horton had legal options for and against the issue, and that Commissioners were within their legal rights to vote either way. This information correlates Davis’s comments about counsel opinion on the reappointment, and Davis’s and Coleman’s decision to vote in favor of the measure.
However, in another meeting held on Feb. 16, in line item 23, which released economic development and SOPA files, the three commissioners disagreed once again. This time, Powell voted against Coleman and Davis in a vote of nay, stating, “Due to the opinion of our legal counsel, I will be voting no.”
Despite this legal opinion mentioned by Powell, which wasn’t argued in the meeting, Coleman’s and Davis’s votes supported the measure.
Following Horton’s termination, the commissioners were also asked about any potential conflicts of interest in the situation with Horton.
“Conflict of interest law is a self-disclosure law. Unfortuanately or fortunately, not everyone would look at that,” Powell said. “I know I do not have any conflict of interest in this matter.”
“I do not,” Coleman said.
“For me, it’s, you’ve got to do what is right for the county,” Davis said.
Months later, Davis was decrying the standstill of economic development in the wake of the former director’s corruption indictment, suggesting the Scioto County economic machine needed reactivated.
Since Bryan and Lorinda Davis’s indictment, many have called for his resignation, not just his counterparts in office and not just from one party. The chair of the Scioto County Republican Party was contacted for a quote and was unavailable.