After a hearing on Friday, Delaware County Common Pleas Judge John J. Whelan dismissed a lawsuit over voting machines brought by a Republican congressional candidate and others.
Alfeia Goodwin is challenging three-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon.
“The judge’s decision was anticipated, and we’re appealing,” Goodwin told DVJournal.
The suit claimed the 18 Hart Verity voting machines in question should be quarantined and the FBI should be called in to investigate who installed the rogue software, the lawsuit says. Also, the county’s other 838 machines should be tested to see if they have the same issues.
Goodwin’s co-plaintiff, Robert Mancini, a computer cyber-security expert, said MathNET Numerics Dll, a program not authorized by state or federal elections officials, was found on the machines. He warned the county council about the MathNET program at its April 17 meeting before the state primary. The county took no action to remove it, he said.
The county welcomed the court’s decision, according to a press release.
“The court’s ruling, issued after a thorough five-hour hearing, confirmed that the Bureau of Elections and Voting Machine Warehouse had fully complied with regulations and conducted additional testing that exceeded state requirements,” county officials said.
At the close of the hearing, Whelan said the county’s performance of testing beyond what the state requires weighed in the ruling. He stated the evidence suggests Delaware County voters should feel confident in their election systems.
“This decision confirms what we have said all along: our voting equipment is secure, reliable, and compliant with both federal and state standards,” said Delaware County Elections Director Jim Allen. “The thoroughness of our Logic and Accuracy testing demonstrates our commitment to fair elections. We encourage voters to participate in the upcoming election with full confidence that every vote will be counted accurately and transparently.”
He called the claims made in the lawsuit “baseless.”
“The county’s Logic and Accuracy testing—a vital component of election preparation—ensures that all voting machines function correctly and match the certified software. In addition to pre-election testing, the county conducts a test to verify that the software in use perfectly matches the software that was certified by the federal government. The election offices also perform post-election audits and recounts, including hand recounts, to further verify the accuracy and reliability of election results.
The lawsuit sought emergency relief, claiming improper software had been installed on the county’s voting machines. However, the plaintiffs failed to provide evidence of these claims, county officials said.
Mancini said, “Judge Whelan does not understand that software not verified by the EAC is not allowed on Electronic Voting Systems. Defendant Delaware County successfully conflated the difference between loading software and validating that the software matches the original build that was tested in an accredited lab by the Election Assistance Commission.
“The judge ruled that non-technical people can make a technical decision,” he added. “Not a single witness knew what the output a ‘trusted build validation’ or what a hash code is ! The judge allowed software that has not been tested, verified and validated on the scanner, a software package that is designed specifically to manipulate date because it was too much work to count the ballot by hand.”
Delaware County election board member John McBlain has resigned, accusing the panel of rushing to add three “voter service centers” in deeply Democratic parts of the suburban Philadelphia county, something he said adds a blatant element of unfairness to the county’s election process.
McBlain, the lone Republican on Delaware County’s election board, has been the minority party appointee on the three-member election board since 2021. All members of the election board are appointed by the county council, which has been majority-Democratic since early 2020. A provision in the county’s charter ensures a check on the majority party, however, requiring that at least one member of the election board be a representative of the minority party.
At a special meeting of the election board on Friday, McBlain announced his intention to quit effective at the end of November, saying his decision was due to the board’s approval of three voter service centers in Upper Darby, Chester, and Chester Heights — all three Democratic strongholds.
“I thought I could serve on this board as long as I believed that we were making sure the elections were both secure and fair,” McBlain began at the end of the meeting on Friday, October 11. “I think the board has put their finger on the scale, so I don’t think that that fairness aspect is there anymore. Therefore, I — as much as I’m tempted to do it, as of effective immediately — I tender my resignation as of November 30th, 2024, so that I’ll complete my duties during the election certification process. But then I hereby resign from the board after that date.”
Voter service centers (VSCs) are essentially no different than “satellite election offices” which were controversial as far back as the 2020 general election. Whichever name is used, the creation is meant to be a literal extension of the county’s primary election office — the one place where a voter could register to vote, request a mail-in ballot, and return that ballot, all at the same time and same place. Philadelphia’s satellite election offices drew the ire of Republicans that year because Philadelphia refused to allow poll watchers anywhere inside, arguing that the locations were county election offices, so they could not be polling places. A Commonwealth Court ruling later upheld that argument to exclude poll watchers.
Like Philadelphia, Delaware County also used satellite election offices in 2020, the rationale largely being the pandemic. But according to McBlain, since 2020 “the only voter service center that we’ve maintained has been [the original and main election office] at the Media courthouse, and we’ve done that for each election, and that has been adequate.”
Now, McBlain says, the three VSCs seem to be created spur of the moment, and they’re in some of the deepest blue parts of the county.
“I don’t understand what has changed. We are down — I want to say by more than a third, if not two thirds — the number of applications for mail-in votes as we were in 2020,” McBlain said.
“There’s no more pandemic where we need to sort of spread things out. There’s not a need for it. The Media [county seat] office is more than adequately handling all requests for registration for applications to handle receipt of mail-in or absentee ballots,” McBlain told Broad + Liberty after his resignation. “No one has been calling publicly for [VSCs]. I don’t recall one member of the public attending a previous meeting this year [prior to Oct. 11] and advocating that we ought to have voter service centers for better service to the residents.”
In the September 24 meeting of the election board, county election director Jim Allen distinctly raised the possibility of adding VSCs, and listed only the sites of Upper Darby, Chester, and Chester Heights as possibilities.
But it’s what happened next that troubled McBlain the most.
McBlain says just after that meeting, he was talking to Allen. Then Donna Cantor, who McBlain says is a lawyer for the county Democratic party, approached them both.
“She [Cantor] came up to Mr. Allen and said to him that Colleen Guiney, the chairwoman of the [county] Democratic Party, had the list of volunteers to staff the voter services center ready. And I expressed shock,” McBlain said.
“I said, ‘I didn’t realize that we had decided that we were going to have voter services centers.’ And to Jim Allen’s credit, I mean, he immediately said ‘Well, listen at any voter services centers, we’re not going to have partisan volunteers staffing.’ But the Democratic Party was already prepared to staff these voter services centers at the September meeting where again, it was discussed almost in passing,” McBlain explained.
Election Director Allen did not directly refute that a conversation with Cantor happened, but he did offer his own context.
“[S]omeone approached me about the possible use of volunteers, in front of Mr. McBlain, and I turned away the suggestion. There were no specifics or a ‘list,’” he said.
Cantor did not respond to a request for comment asking if she disputed McBlain’s version of the conversation.
Guiney responded to a request for comment, but did not answer specific questions about whether the county Democrats were somehow prepared to staff VSCs before the VSCs were even discussed publicly and approved. Guiney mostly filibustered.
“It is a matter of public record that voter services centers are located in areas convenient to public transit, and in facilities already wired into the secure Delaware County communications system,” Guiney said. “We have had Voter Service Centers in previous elections, and surrounding counties have already opened Voter Service Centers this cycle. This matter has already been discussed on the publicly streamed Board of Elections leading up to the most recent meeting.
“The Democratic party has robust volunteer engagement, but the County is not using volunteers in the Voter Service Centers. Any Delaware County resident, of any political party is welcome to apply for a temporary position with the Board of Elections by contacting the Bureau of Elections for more information,” Guiney concluded.
For the public comment portion of the Oct. 11 special meeting, 21 total people rose to address the election board. A Broad + Liberty analysis showed five of them spoke about regular polling locations, one spoke about poll worker safety, thirteen spoke in favor of adding VSCs, and two expressed concerns about VSCs.
“So at the time of the [Oct. 11] meeting, it was clear that there was a partisan [effort] to pack the room in favor of this. There were dozens of Democratic committee people or volunteers,” McBlain said. “There were a dozen or more members of the League of Women voters who were nothing more than the provisional wing of the Delaware County Democratic Party who were present to speak in favor of it.”
A request for comment to the two other members of the election board, sent to them via the county’s spokesperson, was not returned.
Democratic State Representative and chair of the Upper Darby Democratic committee Heather Boyd was among the thirteen who spoke in favor of the measure. Others included a county Democratic committee member, someone that ran for delegate to the Democratic National Convention last May, as well as a donor to a local Democratic candidate, and the founder of a progressive group in Delco. Two persons from the League of Women Voters also spoke.
One Drexel Hill resident questioned the rationale of the satellite site locations. “I’m also concerned about the equity of these polling places, these satellite polling places. Where is the equity for the communities that have heavy Republican presence? Where is their pop-up satellite location [in] communities such as Parkside, Trainer, and Upland — communities that are also considered perhaps low income communities, where is their pop-up voting site?”
McBlain also said VSCs came up very briefly but somewhat unseriously months ago, he suggested the county survey all municipalities to see which ones might be interested, but that the county never acted on that suggestion.
To anyone thinking McBlain has a hair trigger for an election conspiracy need only listen to his Democrat counterparts to understand that’s not the case.
“I think you served the board with great distinction,” Election Board Chairwoman Ashley Lunkenheimer said upon hearing McBlain’s intention to resign. “I think there’s very few in the county or in the commonwealth who have a better knowledge of election law and I think that your viewpoint has always been well served on this board, but I appreciate that you’re continuing your duties than through the election because we need — you have a really good perspective on elections.”
“John McBlain is someone who I’m gonna disagree with on a great many policy issues, but we both have the same factual understanding of how elections are conducted,” Democratic Councilwoman Christine Reuther told the Inquirer in November, when Reuther was about to renominate him to the election board. “He doesn’t see conspiracy theories every time you turn around.”
Reuther’s November comments to the Inquirer came just as a long-simmering partisan power struggle over the election board was about to come to a close. Earlier in the year, the county council passed an ordinance that would allow it to reject the minority party’s nomination for the election board. The resolution went further, saying that the county had the “unfettered discretion” to reject as many candidates from the minority party as it liked until it found a suitable candidate.
Council Democrats passed the ordinance in January of 2023. Republicans quickly denounced the move as a power grab. When Republicans sued in June, a spokesperson for the council accused Delco Republicans of playing politics.
“Interestingly, the Delco GOP public statements on this case suggests [sic] a ‘blatant power grab,’” the county said in a statement to the Delco Daily Times. “However, the change in law which is being challenged was passed on January 17, 2023. Now, more than five months later, has the lawsuit [sic] been filed. It appears less an effort to secure a fair election, and more a weak effort to develop a talking point for an upcoming county election.”
However, a judge ruled in December the ordinance was illegal and struck it down.
“The Ordinance was an arrogant attempt by County Council to create a veto power for themselves to block the right of the Delaware County Republican Party Chairman to nominate his preferred member to the Delaware County Board of Elections,” said Wally Zimolong, one of the attorneys who fought the suit on behalf of the county GOP.
Reuther, the member of council who oversees the county’s elections, has also danced on the partisan tightrope in a presidential election before.
In 2020, Reuther was clearly the lead on the county’s pursuit of and eventual acceptance of election grants from the Chicago-based Center for Tech and Civic Life, or CTCL. Those grants would later be famous for receiving a $350 million infusion from Mark Zuckerberg
As Delaware County got nearer to accepting the grant, the county solicitor flagged to Reuther some of the left-leaning tendencies of the granting agency.
“Not at all surprising,” Reuther said in response. “I am seeking funds to fairly and safely administer the election so everyone legally registered to vote can do so and have their votes count. If a left leaning public charity wants to further my objective, I am good with it. I will deal with the blow back.”
The Pennsylvania General Assembly later banned local election offices from accepting grants from outside, private agencies, in part because of the concerns that the grants resulted in improper and unbalanced political influence.
McBlain was not a part of the election board at that time.
But this time, he says it’s not election security he’s worried about.
“I think this is the Delaware County Democratic Party putting their hand on the scale with these voter services centers to literally get out the vote in highly partisan areas of the county without any consideration of [if] there’s a reason that they didn’t come in and offer it in Marple or Springfield. So I just wasn’t going to be part of it anymore. I’m disgusted with this partisanship showing its head at the 11th hour.”
With what may be one of the most consequential elections in American history this November, some local voters are worried about the security of the ballot box and preventing voter fraud.
Radnor resident John Child released a list of 12,000 possible “ghost” voters who no longer live where they registered to vote in Delaware County. Another Delco resident, Dean Dreibelbis, turned in a spreadsheet with 14,519 names.
However, Board of Elections Director James Allen said at the board meeting Monday the county follows the letter of the law when removing voters from its rolls.
Even if someone moves, the law says they cannot be removed unless they fail to vote in two federal elections. They also send letters to request voters identified as changing their residence to verify their current address.
“We’re required under Pennsylvania law to receive an affirmative response,” he said. “What you’re asking would violate both state and federal law. We do not have the power of summarily removing any individual from the voter rolls simply because they filed a national change of address.”
He also randomly checked the list of 12,000 voters submitted by Child. Some had moved but didn’t meet the requirement of not voting in two consecutive federal elections.
Josie Zostik of Brookhaven said a “ghost voter” is “someone who died, someone who is in jail, someone who is mentally incompetent, someone who has moved and registered elsewhere.
“That’s what a group of us has focused our efforts on. The NCOA, which is National Change of Address Records, indicates there are almost 40,000 voters who moved from the county between 2019 and 2024. We’ve challenged about 14,500 of those. Or just 40 percent.
“We’ve compiled these on detailed spreadsheets…I’m sure you can agree we all want to prevent dual voting, and, in this day and age, it’s pretty easy to check the records…We don’t want to take away anyone’s right to vote,” she said.
Glenn Mills resident Dr. Patricia Bleasdale said, “The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 governs much of how the county must clean up apparent errors or obsolete records in the voter rolls. Due to a lot of confusion in how to apply the BVRA, Congress wrote a detailed clarification which states ‘the name of a voter may not be removed from the official list of eligible voters except by reason of death, criminal conviction, mental incapacity, change in residence or voter request.’ So, change in residence is deemed by Congress as a completely valid reason for removing a voter from the voter rolls in and of itself.”
Dreibelbis, also of Genn Mills, said, “14,500 is probably very low. The Postal Service said they only get 40 percent of people who change their addresses with them. Five thousand two hundred voters registered five years ago and never voted.”
Drexel Hill resident Joy Schwartz, who ran for county council last year, said, “Election Watch posted there are nearly 1.5 million invalid voters in Pennsylvania whose names are still on the books. It seems like ERIC, that organization that Delaware County relies upon and Pennsylvania relies upon to clean the voter rolls is not doing a very good job.
“We did have an opportunity to dump ERIC recently. But instead, this board voted to remain with that organization. And that organization is swelling our voter rolls with ghost voters.”
Allen suggested the state law would need to be changed to make it easier to remove inactive voters.
“We have not found anyone on that list that could have, should have, been removable prior to this upcoming election,” Allen said. “There’s always been this lag in the system to prevent anyone from being disenfranchised. We’re doing what we’re allowed to.”
“I would love at a minimum [to do] a biannual mailing to every single voter. I also believe a change in state law needs to occur.”
“I hope you understand our voter registration team takes it seriously,” he said.
With others helping him, Dreibelbis is sending challenge forms for voters who appear to have moved to the Pennsylvania Department of State, which oversees elections.
Asked to comment about the residents’ complaints, department spokesman Matt Heckel said counties are responsible for maintaining voter rolls.
“The department advises counties of list maintenance activities and deadlines on a routine basis, and it provides training for county election directors on how to conduct the statutorily required process of updating Pennsylvania’s voter rolls. That statutory process must be consistent with the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Pennsylvania voter registration law, which closely follows the NVRA.
“Pennsylvania counties do a robust job in fulfilling their responsibilities to update voter rolls, including sending over 160,000 notices to Pennsylvanians who may have moved last year… Canceling voters on the basis of unverified and unsolicited lists would violate federal and state law, risk disenfranchising voters, and could subject a county to litigation. Further information on voter roll list maintenance can be found in the Department’s Annual Report on the Administration of Voter Registration in Pennsylvania.”
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.
Screenshot from Ballard Spahr fundraiser for then-council candidate Christine Reuther, October 2019.
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.
The nonprofit trying to persuade local governments to sue “Big Oil” producers for damages allegedly caused by climate change has been making steady advances to Chester and Delaware counties, according to an email provided to Broad + Liberty.
The revelation comes just two months after the Bucks County Board of Commissioners announced it would sue major oil producers like BP, Chevron, Exxon, and others, arguing that the companies knew for decades that their products would cause climate change yet took no action. Several days after the announcement, the only Republican on the three-person board, Gene DiGirolamo, withdrew his support for the suit.
Indeed, it appears as if the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) was eager to use its success with Bucks County as a springboard.
Bucks County became the first local government in the commonwealth to take up the kind of suit that first began to sprout up about a decade ago. For example, in 2016, San Francisco and some other California municipalities sued longtime oil producers. Bucks County is being represented by the law firm DiCello Levitt on a contingency basis, meaning the county does not pay the lawyers unless the lawyers win the case.
In an email sent March 18, 2024, a senior political associate for CCI emailed Delaware County Councilmember Christine Reuther, and cc’d Bucks Commissioner Bob Harvie, both Democrats.
“My name is David Zeballos and I’m with the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI), a nonprofit that helps elected officials and their communities hold oil and gas corporations accountable for the massive costs of climate change. I’ve met with a number of folks who have told me about the southeast PA regional call that you are now leading! That includes Council Member Elaine Schaefer, Commissioner Bob Harvie, Commissioner Josh Maxwell, and Commissioner Marian Moskowitz, who all expressed support about the work CCI does,” Zeballos wrote.
“Do you have any availability for a 30 min Zoom meeting to talk about our work in Pennsylvania and areas for collaboration?” Zeballos wrote later in the email.
The Center for Climate Integrity is a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that says its mission is to “educate communities and elected officials about the role of polluters in causing climate change and the need to hold polluters accountable for their actions.”
A spokesperson for Chester County said no action is imminent, but noted that could change.
“Chester County is not considering a similar lawsuit at this time,” spokesperson Michelle Bjork said. “However, we will continue to monitor any developments in Bucks County’s case and will reevaluate as needed.”
“Chester County’s commitment to protecting the environment and our residents is demonstrated by our efforts to preserve more than 30 percent of the County as permanently protected open space and we will continue to explore all avenues to safeguard our community,” Bjork said.
Requests for comment to Delaware and Bucks counties were not returned. A request for comment to CCI was also not returned.
Delaware County already has something of an established relationship with CCI. County Council Chair Monica Taylor (D) is listed as a member of CCI’s “leaders network” and recently participated in the press roll out of a major CCI study.
In November, Taylor rattled her rhetorical sword about the need to punish oil producers in a Politicoarticle.
“I agree that it’s not fair for this burden of addressing climate change to fall only on our residents,” Taylor said. “Polluters should and must pay.”
Yet the politics of oil are very different between Bucks and Delaware counties. In Delaware, thousands of people are employed in the industry at places like the Marcus Hook LNG terminal.
Counties do receive annual payouts from Pennsylvania’s “Act 13” of 2012, commonly known as the “impact fee” imposed on “unconventional” gas wells and distributed to counties and municipalities to help them maintain the environment, or to offset the wear on infrastructure from oil and gas drilling.
For example, for the five years from 2019 to 2023, Bucks County received $2.76 million from the impact fee, even though there are no active wells in the county. Delaware County took in $2.45 million over the same period, according to a state website devoted to Act 13 revenues and disbursements.
The impact fee delivered $179 million across all governments in the commonwealth in 2023.
In Western Pennsylvania, CCI gave a presentation in April on “climate accountability” to an environmental subcommittee of the Allegheny County Council. At the time, a council member said it would be premature to assume the county would sue oil producers.
Some of the initial lawsuits against Big Oil have already failed. In 2019, a New York judge ruled in Exxon’s favor, but as is often the case, the message of the ruling was nuanced, with Justice Barry Ostrager of the New York State Supreme Court writing, “this is a securities fraud case, not a climate change case.”
Other cases remain in progress, and, “[t]he number of climate-related cases against Exxon continues to grow,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
“In February, the city of Chicago sued Exxon and other major oil companies alleging they deceived Chicagoans about climate change. In March, Bucks County, Penn., filed a similar suit. The Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental group the Rockefeller charities helped create, swayed officials in both places to bring the suits.”
IRS filings show CCI is predominantly funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the philanthropic endeavor established by the legendary New York family whose business pursuits in the earliest parts of the 20th century produced Standard Oil, the petroleum monopoly whose most prominent corporate successor is Exxon.
The Journal also reported that the Rockefeller Family Fund “influenced President Biden’s decision in January to pause approval of new liquefied natural gas exports,” — a decision that touched off bipartisan condemnations in Pennsylvania, the nation’s largest LNG exporter.
“While the immediate impacts on Pennsylvania remain to be seen, we have concerns about the long-term impacts that this pause will have on the thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry,” Democratic U.S. Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman said in a joint statement. “If this decision puts Pennsylvania energy jobs at risk, we will push the Biden Administration to reverse this decision.”
Numerous other politicians, including many Republicans, and associations also heavily criticized the Biden LNG “pause” — something that could easily become an issue in the presidential election this year if circumstances continue to make Pennsylvania a crucial battleground state.
The email cited in this story was obtained via the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law by the nonprofit organization Government Accountability and Oversight. A database search of nonprofit tax filings did not reveal any significant grant donations to GAO in order to be able to characterize its funding.
Yesterday at work, when I was writing “Thursday, June 6, 2024” on the board for my students, I instantly recognized the significance of the date. As an American soldier and combat veteran, it is one of those dates in history that I and so many others should and do remember: D-Day.
One of those dates when your imagination takes you everywhere, wondering what those servicemen who landed on Omaha Beach experience on their mission to save the world. The determination of Allied forces to bring an end to a crude and merciless war that shamelessly claimed the lives of so many innocents must never be forgotten.
As the day continued, I kept receiving calls and text messages about a flag raising outside the Delaware County courthouse in Media. I assumed it was in honor of D-Day. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Indeed, there was a flag raising—but it was not Old Glory. Instead, a Pride flag was raised to commemorate LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
Why on June 6th and not on the official start date of June 1st?
Why ignore the memory of our fearless heroes?
Surely, Delaware County leadership understands that we all owe a great deal to their sacrifice.
Surely Delaware County leadership knows we have treasured veterans still with us who could have been asked to speak.
Does their inclusion count?
Whether it was due to incompetence or an intentional ideological snub, it raises fundamental questions about the competency of our county leadership.
Given the universal efforts by heads of state – including the President of the United States – to honor this incredibly special 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, I find it unconscionable that our County Council simply forgot what day it was. I do not want to believe it, but I cannot help but think that this was another attempt by our ideological and out of the mainstream County government to divide and push their ideology instead of commonsense unity.
Would it have really hurt to give all of us Americans and Veterans one day in June? Why not put together something special in honor of D-Day? Honoring the heroes who made the landings in Normandy takes nothing away from our LGBTQ+ community.
June is big enough to honor both communities. Leaders should be smart enough to understand that.
Whether or not County Council heeds my call for honoring our Greatest Generation and what they did on June 6, 1944, let all of us do it anyway.
Delco – join the rest of the nation and the world in remembering and acknowledging the importance of D-Day and of treating our heroes right.
During the last month, Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon has been busy representing Delaware County residents in Washington. Well, at least some of the residents. Others might feel even less represented than usual as Scanlon continues to lurch leftward, leaving the average Delco citizen behind.
Let’s look at a few of her well-thought-out and truly courageous votes.
First, a bill was put forward in the House called the Antisemitism Awareness Act.
The act was a response to the wave of virulent antisemitism that is sweeping college campuses. The authors believed that congressional action was needed to stop this hate on the campus and to keep it from spreading beyond the campus. Congresswoman Scanlon decided otherwise and joined 91 other members to vote against the bill. She was joined by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and the rest of the so-called “Squad” — essentially the far left of the Democrat Party.
This places Scanlon outside the mainstream, even among Pennsylvania delegates. Only Pittsburgh’s Summer Lee — another darling of the far-left — and Philadelphia’s Dwight Evans joined her. Other reliable Pennsylvania Democrats like Brendan Boyle and Madeleine Dean saw the wisdom of monitoring the hateful actions of these radical students and professional agitators. None of the Republicans from the state voted against the act, either. But Scanlon chose to join the radical fringe.
Second, a bill was introduced which would require the deportation of any — can I say this? — “illegal alien” who has assaulted a police officer. The bill passed, 265 to 148, with 54 Democrats joining 211 Republicans. Scanlon was, once again, not with the majority.
How can anyone conclude that someone who has entered the country illegally and assaulted a police officer, should not be deported? I presume she and the rest of the Squad had a Zoom call and came to the conclusion that illegal aliens trump police officers in their weird hierarchy.
Third, the House passed a resolution that condemns calls to defund the police. It did not have the force of law, but is a good way for members to let the country know where they stand on the issue. Scanlon and the rest of the Squad voted against it.
Sixty-one of the most progressive members of congress are still holding out hope of defunding the police. Scanlon, who lives in a tony and safe area of the county, thinks those who don’t should fend for themselves. She is not new to this cause — here is a photo of her marching in a parade calling for the defunding of the police.
Scanlon won’t fight campus radicalism and antisemitism, won’t vote to deport illegal aliens who commit violent crimes, and won’t show even a minimal amount of support for funding the police. Does that sound like representing Delaware County to you?
A month after an order from the office of the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records (OOR), Delaware County officials continue to hide basic information from the public about the tax dollars they are spending on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
Since the county announced in 2022 it was spending $125,000 to hire a DEI officer, DVJournal has requested basic information about its diversity and equity efforts, including total spending, the number of programs and, perhaps more relevant, any data showing the Democrat-run county has a diversity problem that would justify the taxpayer expense.
Instead, DVJ was repeatedly told “we have no records” to avoid releasing the information.
For example, in March, County Solicitor Jonathan Lichtenstein claimed the county conducted a search for information on DEI hiring numbers, targeted numbers, and salary information — and they didn’t exist.
“[The Chief Human Resources Officer] replied that the County did not have such records,” wrote Lichtenstein to an OOR appeals officer.
The appeals officer didn’t buy the explanation.
“One cannot logically infer that every responsive record flows through only [The Chief Human Resources Officer],” determined OOR Officer Catherine Hecker last month. She demanded the county do a more thorough search.
The result? The county still claims it doesn’t have basic information about its own DEI programs or spending.
“Neither of the…inquiries resulted in the finding of any records that were responsive to [your request],” Delaware County Open Records Officer Anne Coogan wrote Delaware Valley Journal in response to the OOR order.
One person who questions the county’s claims is the former DEI director, Lauren Footman. While her salary was made public, she told DVJournal there is more data in the county’s hands.
Footman was fired earlier this year after alleging discrimination by her boss, Chief Administrative Officer Marc Woolley. In a podcast interview with DVJournal at the time, Footman recalled the reaction inside county government to DVJournal’s requests.
“I would try to have conversations…because I believe I saw some of your requests. And they’re like, ‘Oh, well what is this answer? And I’m like, ‘Well, you know that I don’t even have access to the system that has the information so why are you asking me?’ It’s either with HR or the controller.”
According to Footman, the entire DEI effort was a “PR stunt” for elected Democrats on Delaware County Council.
“There were certain council members, particularly the individuals who identify as women on council — Dr. Monica Taylor, Elaine Schaefer, and Christine Reuther — who said that they were prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion when they ran for office.”
One way to disprove this claim would be to release information showing county government was disadvantaging people of color, or women, in its practices or policies. For example, the county’s population is about 22 percent Black. If the government workforce is only 10 percent Black, that would be a fact to bolster the county’s policies.
But county officials have repeatedly refused to release that data when requested by DVJournal, even after the OOR order.
Meanwhile, the DEI spending continues.
Publicly available budget documents contain nebulous language regarding exactly how much more money was used for DEI. Documents from Fiscal Year 2022 list a planned DEI Officer under the county executive director, but no other details.
It was the same last year when Delaware County budget documents mentioned the need for a “supplier diversity program” in Central Purchasing and more DEI awareness for staff.
A series of DEI initiatives was announced later that year that included a $450,000 taxpayer-funded “micro-grant” program for parks, community gardens, and bike facilities. The county spent at least $1,7000 for five directors to receive a DEI certificate from Delaware County Community College and spent an undetermined amount of money for department logos.
A Georgia-based consulting firm was hired for an unknown sum to investigate whether minority and women-owned businesses faced barriers in getting public works contracts. The study looked at contracts from July 2017 through June 2022. It was originally supposed to be completed by the end of May but the deadline was quietly extended to August 2024.
No reason was given. An email to the consultant was not returned.
Senior Assistant Montgomery County solicitor John Marlett said some 474 Montgomery County primary voters returned ballots with the wrong date.
“The year was either missing or incorrect,” he said. The Board of Elections then voted 2-1 to accept ballots without a year or the incorrect year. However, neighboring Delaware County adopted the opposite policy.
Marlett told the Montgomery County Board of Elections on Friday that the secretary of state’s guidance says a missing or incorrect year does not disqualify the ballot, leaving it up to county boards of election. The state issued that advice despite the fact that the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found wrong dates disqualified the ballots.
Montgomery County Board of Elections Chair Neil Makhija, a Democrat, said the policy of accepting incorrectly dated ballots was implemented during the North Penn special election and “the year [on the ballot] doesn’t provide any sort of security or validation.”
He moved to accept ballots dated between when they were distributed and when the election would be counted. Vice Chair Jamila Winder, also a Democrat, seconded it.
Republican Tom DiBello opposed the move, saying, “My opinion hasn’t changed.”
He noted that Act 77, the law allowing mail-in ballots, has not changed. “There’s been no change to the law. I didn’t support it then, I don’t support it now, and I won’t support it moving forward.”
Makhija said, “We shouldn’t allow something immaterial to disqualify or discount their vote… I think it’s really important for this board to protect the right to vote for all residents.”
The motion passed 2-1.
DiBello said, “Obviously, in Montgomery County, we interpret Act 77 the way we want.” He noted there were “significant issues” in the primary election process and suggested the election board meet monthly leading up to the general election to ensure a smooth process.”
In Delaware County, the Board of Elections took the opposite position from Montgomery County.
“The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the dates can be required by state law, overruling the federal Circuit Court ruling,” said James P. Allen, elections director for Delaware County. “Therefore, Delaware County did not process any ballots from envelopes that were completely missing a date or that were dated incorrectly.”
Linda Kerns, a Philadelphia election lawyer, said because of the guidance from the secretary of state, counties are making different decisions about which mail-in ballots to count.
“So, yet again, we have counties interpreting the issue quite differently which means, as usual, in Pennsylvania, ballots are being treated differently based on the county where you vote,” said Kerns. “Generally, counties with Republican election offices are interpreting date to mean month, day, year that you filled out the ballot. Democrat-led offices are taking a much more broad and liberal approach. That is not exclusive, though, as some Democrat counties are not counting. So it is, as usual, a disgrace.”
Kerns added, “Each court is interpreting a poorly written law very differently. We should have uniformity as to how these ballots are treated. That is what is fair and democratic. We do not have that.”
Delaware County Councilwoman Christine Reuther said last week the county was already eyeing a “sizable” new tax increase to meet the demands of an ever-expanding budget that now includes inflation-fueled pay raises, running a prison, and managing a health department that’s only two years old.
Reuther’s remarks at Wednesday’s personnel board meeting comes less than four months after council voted to approve a five percent tax increase on county residents — the first county-wide tax increase since 2014 and the first tax increase since Democrats took over the majority of the council after the 2019 elections.
Reuther seemed irked when responding to a presentation from the director of the county health department who was asking for a number of raises to complete a department “realignment.” Many of those raises, the director said, would be offset by grant funding.
But then the director said, “I think they [employees in other departments] too should consider the opportunity to get paid better.”
Reuther jumped in.
“But the problem is [the other employees are] not grant funded and we’re looking at a sizable tax increase just to keep things where they are for next year. So I mean, that’s the reality. I’m hoping it’s not going to be as sizable as some people think it will be, but there is going to be a…,” and Reuther then cut herself off.
Reuther’s forecast of a “sizable tax increase” was underscored by comments made earlier in the meeting from Delaware County Controller Joanne Phillips, who questioned some of the raises that were up for approval.
As an independently elected official, Phillips is tasked with being the taxpayer’s watchdog. She is not, however, a member of the personnel board, and as such, addressed the board during the public comment portion of the meeting.
“I just wanted to make it clear that the costs that you’re considering today are just the salaries, not any other benefits, and the cost of our benefits that go into our budget,” Phillips began, (video, minute 1:10).
“Two, I wanted to make note that there’s an impact on our pension ultimately, which hasn’t really been determined as we accelerate our salaries. If that’s the case, our salaries have really gone up in the last couple years. We’ve gone from about $167 million after Covid after the prison came online to looking at really, almost $188 million about two years later. So we are incrementally raising this a great deal.”
In an email to Broad + Liberty, Phillips clarified that her 2022 payroll figure should have been $162 million, and she estimates $187 million for 2024 — in other words, an increase of $25 million in two years. The 2022 baseline payroll number already includes all of the employees added by the county taking over the prison and creating the health department.
Phillips also submitted a memo to the personnel board, which was just as stern in its warnings.
“The [Government Finance Officers Association] warns against excessive labor costs, noting that labor costs comprise a high proportion of most local governments’ budgets,” Phillips wrote.
“Excessive compensation costs can severely damage a government’s financial position.”
“After the grant funding ends, the County will be left with the entire cost of the program, especially compensation increases. That is the situation we see here in a few of the agenda items,” she added later in the memo.
A spokesperson for the county provided little additional information. “The [fiscal year] budget will be presented and voted on later this year. The County doesn’t have any additional comments to add,” said Adrienne Marofsky.
Phillips’ comments that each dollar in salary has other sidebar costs is accurate and apropos.
Broad + Liberty asked the county in 2022 how much it spent in these “parallel” costs on things such as the county’s obligation to make Social Security contributions for every employee, and the cost of fringe benefits like health insurance, etc.
The county gave an estimate of 70 percent. When Broad + Liberty double-checked to see if that meant that the county spent an additional 70 cents for every dollar of employee salary in other obligatory costs, the county did not respond.
Screenshot of email between Broad + Liberty reporter and Delaware County spokesperson, July, 2022
Broad + Liberty presented the same figures to the county again for the purposes of this report, and once again, the county did not respond to the core question.
If the county does have a parallel cost of 70 cents for every dollar of payroll, then the $25 million in payroll increases forecast by Controller Phillips means the county has incurred another $17.5 million in additional payroll obligations, like benefits, because of the raises.
Putting the two figures together means the county’s comprehensive cost of payroll increases from 2022 to 2024 will be around $42.5 million.
After Democrats won control of the county council in the wake of the 2019 elections, enacting many of the reforms they promised such as the creation of a county health department and de-privatizing the prison have put constant pressure on the budget. Some of that budgetary pressure was temporarily papered over by funds received from the federal government to help with the 2020 pandemic. But now, four years later, most of that pandemic money is gone.
When the county hired a consultant to estimate how much the county would spend if it operated the prison itself as opposed to the private contractor, the consultant’s top-end projection was $49.9 million.
In the current budget, the county is spending $56.6 million, even as the prison’s overall population has been drastically reduced by twenty percent or more.
In addition, the county is also now seeing the first waveof lawsuits from the prison now that it is the liable party for most of the prison activity, as opposed to the private contractor holding that liability.
Under Democratic control, the county has also spent millions more on outside legal help.
Previous analysis of the budget by Broad + Liberty estimated that even after passing the $5 million tax increase last year, the county was still facing an annual structural deficit of $65 million.
