Janet Esposito and Michelle Bogo are competing this election season in the race for Portage County Auditor, the county’s chief financial officer.

The auditor helps determine the annual budget for almost every county division and oversees the county’s Information Technology Services Department.

Janet Esposito, a lifelong resident of Ravenna Township, has held the office of Portage County auditor for the last 11 years.

“Everything comes in and out of here,” Esposito, 64, said. “It isn’t all county money, so you work with a lot of governmental agencies. We handled over $720 million last year.”

For Michelle Bogo, the Democratic challenger, the role of overseeing the county’s Information Technology Services Department would near the top of her list.

“I look at the big picture,” Bogo, 39, said. “Times are changing. People want information, and they want it now.”

Bogo has been on the Planning and Zoning Commission for Portage County since 1999. She is concerned with the process by which the county auditor’s office conducts its real estate appraisals, which in turn determines the amount of taxes people owe to the county.

She sees fostering cooperation and communication as essential to the role of county auditor and wants to sit down with workers throughout county government “and find out exactly what they need,” Bogo said.

A Global Information System is in development for the county. The system will integrate digitized aerial photographs of the entire county with information specific to each property parcel within it, Esposito said.

“This will be our tax map,” she said. “It won’t be on paper.”

The information programmed into the GIS, which is paid for through the real estate assessment fund, will be used for property appraisal, she said.

Esposito oversees the payrolls of 1,300 county employees every two weeks. For the last six years, her office has been recognized for its excellence in financial reporting by the Government Financial Organization of America, she said.

“My only issue is doing my job,” Esposito said. “I don’t have an agenda other than to do what’s right.”

Contact public affairs reporter Theresa Montgomery at [email protected].