Concord First wants Hugh Donaghue out as Concord Township solicitor, and the group may file a formal complaint with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. Members cite his involvement in what they characterize as a “fraud” and “abuse of office” by misrepresenting interested parties in a brief filed with the state Supreme Court.
The citizens’ group also named attorney J. Michael Sheridan for his involvement in the matter. Sheridan filed a petition to intervene with the court on behalf of Concord’s Government Study Commission without commission members’ being aware of the filing and a week before the commission officially existed.
The brief was filed in response to Concord First’s appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn two lower court opinions that denied the group getting a question on the November ballot. The question they wanted would have asked voters whether or not Concord should change from a township of the second class to a township of the first class.
The move to have Donaghue resign has led to an online petition that can be found here.
According to the petition: “Donaghue used his position as Concord Township [s]olicitor to disguise the positions and interests of his private law practice clients as those of GSC members. We believe that this is not only misrepresentation of the interested parties, but it is an abuse of his office and a violation of his responsibility to serve the interests of the residents of Concord Township.”
The petition references township Supervisors Chairman Dominic Pileggi and Supervisor Kevin O’Donoghue as Donaghue’s private clients in the same case.
In addition to the call for Donaghue’s resignation, Concord First filed an “Appellants' Application for Leave to File Post-Submission Communication” with the court on Dec. 24.
“We asked the court to remove Mr. Sheridan as counsel of record and, if the evidence supports it, to motion for sanctions against Mr. Donaghue and Mr. Sheridan for attempting to perpetrate a fraud on the court,” according to Concord First’s Colette Brown.
Donaghue, who is also the solicitor for Chadds For Township, said he had no comment on the matter.
Brown later acknowledged that the push to remove Donaghue is a long shot at best.
“We understand that regardless of the number of signatures we get on a petition, the supervisors are likely to continue to disregard the opinions, needs or interests of those they were elected to serve. We don't have any reason to believe this will change,” she said.
However, she hopes people will attend the reorganization meeting on Jan. 5 to voice their disapproval of Donaghue.
She also said her group is considering filing a complaint with the Supreme Court’s Disciplinary Board.
Controversy began this summer when Concord First held a petition drive for signatures so the group could get its question on the ballot. The group needed 582 signatures, but gathered more than 900.
Township supervisors, in an attempt to “head off” that petition — according to Pileggi — passed an ordinance to get their own question on the ballot. That question asked voters whether they wanted a government study commission to explore various ways of possibly changing the township government.
Supervisors and the Delaware County Board of Elections then challenged Concord First’s petition. Common Pleas Court ruled in favor of the supervisors, and Commonwealth Court later upheld that decision. Concord First then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the appeal.
The supervisors’ question asking for the Government Study Commission passed in November, and seven people were elected to that body.
Donaghue, speaking at the Study Commission’s meeting in December, said the petition to intervene had to be filed by the state Supreme Court’s Nov. 17 deadline for filing briefs in the case.
However, the study commission did not officially exist on Nov. 17 because the election was not certified until Nov. 24, and the commissioners were not sworn in until Nov. 25.
During the exchange with Donaghue, commission member Matt Houtmann moved to ratify the brief but, after a lengthy discussion, members tabled the motion to ratify until they could retain a solicitor of their own. Members said they weren’t even aware that such a brief had been filed, let alone in their name.
Sheridan was not the commission solicitor at the time of his filing, nor does the commission yet have a solicitor.
Concord First called Donaghue’s request to have the brief approved retroactively an attempt to “re-write history and conceal what we believe is unethical (if not illegal) conduct,” according to the group’s Facebook page.
Pileggi did not return a phone call asking for comment.
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
(15 votes, average: 4.47 out of 5)
Loading...
Exceptional reporting by Chadds Ford Live on an important issue to Concord residents. Sadly, our supervisors have demonstrated time and time again that they are acting in their own self-interests and not those of the residents. Mr. Donaghue’s most recent conduct demonstrates that even the law can be bent if it suits the supervisors’ interests. Residents are urged to attend the annual township “reorganization meeting” on Jan 5 at 7 p.m. to voice their concerns and are urged to visit http://www.concordfirstclass.org to learn more about residents’ efforts to make a change in our local government. We want to stop the rezoning and high density building that our supervisors continue to approve and push through.
There is seldom enough transparency with solicitors regardless of whether they serve the municipalities or the school districts. The job is always the result of back room political cronyism. It is almost impossible to dump a poor solicitor or get a new one because they all dwell in the same fetid swamp of cronyism. In U-CFSD, the solicitor calls nearly all the shots so the taxpayer must pay solicitor fees in addition to the bloated salary of the superintendent. The superintendent always has cover for any decision and the solicitor always has cover because his advice is always just that predicated on enough caveats that he is always in the clear.