DV Journal

(This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty)

Delaware County spent $4.5 million in 2023 to hire the help of third-party attorneys, continuing a dizzying years-long rise in that category, according to a Broad + Liberty analysis of documents obtained by a Right to Know request.

The $4.5 million figure is eleven times more than what the county spent on outside counsel in 2019, the last year Republicans were in control of the county council. For a simple year-over-year comparison, it’s a 30 percent increase over what the council spent in 2022.

The increase in spending is just one of the contributing factors that led to council’s decision to raise taxes in 2023 by five percent, and at least one council member is already signaling that a “sizable” tax increase is likely for the next year.

The legal spending also surprises when compared to the county’s neighbors.

For example, Delco’s third-party attorney spending in 2023 is just a few thousand dollars away from the same category of spending by Bucks County across all four years of 2020-2023.

Bucks County, 2020-23:  $4,542,000         Delaware County, 2023 only: $4,511,000

Determining exactly what the legal fees are going towards is difficult, if not impossible to determine. The documents returned in a request for engagement letters — letters in which the outside attorney or firm puts in writing the scope of its work as well as its fee structure — are largely blacked out when it comes to the firms declaring what their work is for.

The increased spending on outside legal help also comes at a time when the county’s budget for its own in-house solicitor has also seen eye-popping increases.

The 2024 budget shows the line item for the solicitor’s office is up 144 percent from 2020 to 2024. The 2024 budget of $3.99 million is also 25 percent higher than the next closest year, when the county spent $3.19 million.

It is possible that some of that increase is unencumbered funds meant to help the solicitor’s office pay for the outside help it retains. But if that is the case, the county declined to delineate how much overlap there was between the solicitor’s budget and what part of that is earmarked for spending on outside help.

The county declined to provide comment to other questions related to its legal spending.

Delaware County GOP Chairwoman Meaghan Wagner blasted the latest numbers.

“As a practicing attorney, former prosecutor, and local elected official who has intimate knowledge of the inner workings of both county government and political parties, these numbers are offensive. It’s just another example of this administration’s total incompetence which comes at the expense of Delaware County taxpayers.”

Of individual firms, Ballard Spahr came out the biggest winner of the county’s largesse. The firm billed over $582,000 in 2023.

The billing for Ballard and others, however, is a sticking point for local Republicans who say the Democrats elected to county council are hypocrites for funneling their spending to political patrons — a complaint Democrats wielded freely against Republicans in the 2010 decade.

For example, when the Republican-controlled council cut taxes in 2018, then-councilor Brian Zidek, a Democrat, turned it into a dig against Republicans.

“I’ve come to conclude a big part of the problem is that Delco citizens pay a corruption tax,” Zidek said, pointing to “instance after instance of no-bid contracts being granted to Republican Party insiders.”

Other Delco Democrats made the same allegations, sometimes accusing Republicans of levying an invisible “patronage tax” on Delco citizens.

When Democrats passed an ordinance in 2021 banning contracts going to firms who might be linked to the county’s elected leadership in some way, Christine Reuther told WHYY it wasn’t just about past behavior, but a pledge to the future.

The ordinance was also “to send a message to the voters that we’re going to hold ourselves to the same standards that on the campaign trail we try to hold our opponents to,” Reuther said.

But some Republicans have said Democrats are paying back some of their wealthiest and most influential donors with some of this legal spending. Last year, for example, then-chairman of the Delaware County GOP Frank Agovnio said, “The county administration’s claim that contracts such as these do not benefit the politically connected is preposterous on its face.”

Reuther is a former employee of Ballard Spahr, and the firm has held at least one fundraiser for her campaign, that coming in October 20219.

Ballard is also politically important in the area because its former managing partner, Mark Stewart, is the husband of Democrat Representative Mary Gay Scanlon, whose 5th Congressional District encompasses all of Delaware County. Scanlon herself served as Ballard Spahr’s pro bono counsel prior to her election to the U.S. House of representatives.

Ballard Spahr’s political committee gave $2,000 to Council Chair Monica Taylor’s re-election in 2023, and Mark Stewart made a personal contribution of $500.

Appearing for the first time on the list of payees are two southeastern attorneys who have built large Democratic political machines using their law practice as the base of operations: Sean Kilkenny and Michael Clarke.

Kilkenny is the Democrat sheriff of Montgomery County whose clout is on the rise in his party’s circles. His newfound power caught the attention of Inquirer reporter Andrew Seideman, who authored a lengthy exposé on the southeastern politico, which included a look at how his legal business is intertwined with his politics.

“Yet to some of his critics, Kilkenny is a transactional politician who has used his influence, personal wealth and campaign cash to grow his business — a coziness that once gave him a front-row seat to a corruption scandal that brought down the mayor of Allentown,” Seideman wrote. “And some describe him as a bully willing to use the levers of government power against political foes — an accusation he denies.”

An Inquirer analysis noted Kilkenny was “ the sixth biggest Democratic donor from the Philadelphia suburbs” over a two-decade period. Kilkenny defended himself against the charges of being “transactional” by saying, “many of [my political contributions] have nothing to do with my business or potential business or anything related to that.”

Broad + Liberty identified $5,000 donated by Kilkenny to Councilwoman Reuther, $2,500 to Councilman Richard Womack, and about $4,450 combined to the county Democratic party as well as to Delco Victory, the main political action committee supporting all Democratic candidates for county council. He also donated $1,500 to Councilwoman Monica Taylor’s 2023 campaign.

All told, Kilkenny has given at least $13,450 in campaign finance donations to members of the current council, to the jointly operated PAC that supports them, or to the county Democratic party.

Kilkenny is also the solicitor for several local governments, like Upper Darby, Haverford, Jenkintown and more.

Screenshot from the Kilkenny Law website shows the extensive list of government clients served by Kilkenny Law.

Michael Clarke is the named partner in the firm Rudolph Clarke, which employs three current Democrat members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly: House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (Montgomery), Sen. Maria Collett (Montgomery), and Steven Santarsiero (Bucks).

Clarke also was the target of a lengthy Inquirer exposé that examined the influence Clarke had amassed and wielded in the last several years.

“Democrats have cast themselves as reformers as they’ve gained more power in the suburbs, particularly after the election of former President Donald Trump. But emails, financial records, and campaign finance data reviewed by The Inquirer — as well as interviews with almost two dozen people involved in local politics — reveal a pay-to-play culture in which the line between business and politics is often blurred,” reporter Seideman wrote, although not directly naming Clarke as having engaged in a pay-to-play scheme.

Delaware County campaign finance filings show the Rudolph Clarke Leadership PAC, and Clarke personally, contributed $1,100 to Reuther’s re-election campaign in 2023. The leadership PAC also contributed just over $2,000 with an in-kind contribution to Richard Womack in 2023. Although specifics of this transaction are lacking, In-kind contributions of that sort usually indicate the donor supplied some or all of the necessities for a fundraising event, such as costs associated with venue, catering, and other food and drink.

In addition to the in-kind contribution, Clarke and his firm’s leadership PAC also contributed $2,500 to Womack, and $3,600 combined to Delco Victory and the county Democratic party. He donated $1,000 last year to Councilwoman Taylor. All told, Clarke has given a minimum of $10,000 in campaign donations to members of the current council, to the jointly operated PAC that supports them, or to the county Democratic party.

Like Kilkenny, Clarke and his firm have the in-house counsel contract for a number of local governments in the southeast like Abington, Bensalem, and Jenkintown. Rudolph Clarke is also counsel to Falls Township, which has been roiled by an FBI investigation spanning several years but for which no charges have ever emerged.

Kilkenny, Clarke, and Ballard Spahr all did not return a request for comment. The county also did not return a request for comment.

Most of the spending with Duane Morris is through attorney J. Manly Parks, who “currently serves as Solicitor for the Delaware County Board of Elections and Voter Registration Commission,” according to Parks’s professional biography.

“[Parks] served as Solicitor of the Delaware County Democratic Committee from 2010-2018. He has represented several candidates and elected officials in election law-related matters, including nomination petition challenges and election recounts,” the biography goes on to say.

As Broad + Liberty has pointed out in previous reporting, “Parks’s resume includes highly partisan campaign work for Democrats such as former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf.”

Archer Greiner, the second highest biller, mostly handles issues with the county prison, the George W. Hill Correctional Facility. The prison is facing two consequential suits: one in which guards say the current management team tried to bust the correctional officers’ union by unjustly firing many of its members, and a civil rights suit regarding the death of Nathan Funkhouser, who is believed to have been murdered by a cellmate.

Broad + Liberty currently has a Right to Know appeal pending before the Pennsylvania Office of Open records, in an attempt to win unredacted copies of the county’s “engagement letters” — what essentially are the contracts between the county and the lawyers or law firms — in order to see the topic or area of law for which each entity is providing services.

That area of open records law has been contentious between elected officials and journalists before.

“The legislature’s handling of legal bills is among the starkest examples of how it spends tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money each year while shielding most of the details from the public — the subject of a yearlong and ongoing investigation by The Caucus and Spotlight PA,” a report from WHYY noted.

More recently, a three-judge panel in Commonwealth Court ruled that the governor’s office must unredact some parts of its legal bills and communications so as to reveal the purpose of the legal spending. That case was brought jointly by Spotlight PA and LNP | LancasterOnline for a request dating back to Governor Wolf’s administration.