CLEARFIELD – An alleged violation of the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act was cured at a special meeting of Clearfield Borough Council Thursday night.
The law, also known as the Pennsylvania Meetings Act, was called into question by Dawn Walls of GantDaily.com, Amanda Thompson of wOK!w and Kimberly Finnigan of The Courier-Express/Tri-County Sunday.
The reporters wrote a letter to the council following the Jan. 18 meeting when Fourth Ward Representative Barry Reddinger requested a closed meeting for personnel reasons with three officers of the borough fire department. Legal counsel with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association also wrote a letter on the reporters’ behalf.
In the letters, the reporters and PNA alleged that there was not enough information provided for the public to make an informed decision as to whether the meeting should have been closed. To compound the situation, when the council reconvened, it voted to sell both the Second Ward and Fourth Ward fire halls.
According to the Sunshine Act, an executive session, or closed meeting, may be called for personnel reasons, however, that session must happen for one borough representative at a time. In addition, an executive session cannot be called to discuss the sale of property.
Leitzinger addressed those who objected to the closed meeting when he said, “I want to apologize if there was any misunderstanding. We went into executive session because councilman Reddinger wanted to talk to the three fire chiefs. When we found out what he wanted to talk to them about, immediately that session was over with. It was terminated.”
Leitzinger said the reason Reddinger requested the session was not allowed under the Sunshine Act.
“At no time did we discuss the sale of the fire halls in executive session,” Leitzinger said. “We felt we forgot to bring it up in council before that. Probably we should have waited until this time to do it. Again, we didn’t intend to cover anything up or avoid the Sunshine Law.”
Clearfield Borugh Solicitor F. Cortez “Chip” Bell III suggested that to cure the problem, the council should vote to rescind the January vote and reject (without opening) the bids that were received for the fire halls.
With Reddinger the only council member absent from the meeting, only one dissenting vote was cast to rescind the vote and reject the bids.
After the meeting, Second Ward Councilman Mike Errigo said he voted against the motion to rescind and the motion to reject the bids because he did not believe the Sunshine Act had been violated.
“We did not discuss the fire company bids in that session so there was no need … as far as I was concerned there was no need to go through all this again. I mean, if we’d have done that, you’d have been right. One of us did not really understand how executive sessions work, and all of us are very happy that you brought that information to us and I’m sure every one of us would like to attend a session on [the Sunshine Act].”
Bell said that had the media representatives not brought up the alleged Sunshine Act violations before the companies were sold, problems could have cropped up at a later date.
“If we had proceeded based on the original vote and had gone ahead and sold the fire halls, and then at a later point someone had raised a claim that the original vote was improper, certainly that could create a problem as to the sale, as to the funds received, whether everything was done in a proper fashion,” Bell said after the meeting.
The council voted in favor of advertising the fire halls for sale once again, this time including a minimum bid for each equal to the appraised values. (Second Ward was valued at $45,000; Fourth Ward is worth $53,000, according to a recent appraisal.)
If each council member present at the Jan. 18 meeting had been found guilty of violating the Sunshine Act, they could have each been fined up to $100.