News
Board meets at Phillies ballpark
Four members of the Kulpmont-Marion Heights Municipal Authority enjoyed a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on Saturday, Aug. 9, as guests in a corporate suite owned by the authority’s engineering firm.
BY ROB WHEARY
STAFF WRITER
rob_w@newsitem
Four members of the Kulpmont-Marion Heights Municipal Authority enjoyed a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on Saturday, Aug. 9, as guests in a corporate suite owned by the authority’s engineering firm.
Figuring they might discuss authority business, the members also scheduled a special public meeting for 7 p.m. that night and conducted the meeting at the suite. First pitch of the ball game was 7:05.
The authority had a meeting notice published, as required, advertising the meeting. It ran Aug. 6 in The News-Item, at a cost of $20.05, and read: “The Kulpmont-Marion Heights Joint Municipal Authority will hold a special meeting for general purposes on August 9, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. at Citizens Bank Park, 1 Citizens Bank Way, Philadelphia PA 19148. Bruno Varano, Chairman.”
Authority members were questioned about why they would conduct a public meeting at a baseball game 2 1/2 hours and 120 miles away, and if they thought it was proper to accept such an invitation from a company, Brinjac Engineering, headquartered in Harrisburg, which is contracted to perform services for the authority.
Varano said he doesn’t see a problem with having accepted the invitation. Authority members aren’t paid anything for their service, not even a meeting stipend, he said, and no taxpayer money was used. The cost of the advertisement was the only cost incurred, he said.
In fact, Varano said, calling the meeting as part of the trip was done to avoid any violation of the state’s Sunshine Law.
“We knew that four of us were going to be in attendance and in case any kind of business was discussed among the members, our solicitor thought we should advertise the meeting,” Varano said.
Varano said the meeting was called to order, roll call was taken and the group then went into executive session to discuss pending litigation.
The authority’s solicitor is William Cole, Kulpmont. Contacted Thursday for comment, a phone recording said his law office was closed until Monday.
Later calls to Varano, seeking details on what the litigation involved and how long the meeting, executive session included, lasted, went unreturned.
‘Missed the point’
Melissa Melusky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said that while the authority’s intentions to advertise the meeting were good, the meeting and where it was held were not.
“If they advertised the meeting in order to get around the (Sunshine) act, then they’ve missed the point of the act,” she said when asked for comment on the situation. “There are other requirements to a public meeting other than just having a quorum or advertising it; they have to allow the public to attend.”
She declined to weigh in on the ethics of the matter, but did cite a recent case in which a PennDOT official accepted sporting event tickets from construction companies he was evaluating for department grants and contracts, and failed to report them to the commission. He was fined the value of the tickets, which totaled more than $3,000, in a ruling by the state Ethics Commission.
While the Kulpmont-Marion Heights case doesn’t involve a direct conflict of interest as with the PennDOT official accepting tickets from the same company which he was evaluating, the point of accepting an invitation to a baseball stadium suite from a company with which a public authority does business is made nonetheless, Melusky said.
“It is safe to say that the Ethics Commission has ruled that the receipt of sporting event tickets by public officials, while appointed or elected, could constitute a conflict of interest,” she said.
Varano: No issue
Varano, who is also a member of Kulpmont Borough Council, told a reporter he thought The News-Item was making an issue out of nothing.
“Whenever we have a regular monthly meeting, no member of the public attends and no press coverage is given,” he said. “There has never been any problem before and there isn’t one here.”
In addition to Varano, Joe Winhofer, Ron Coroniti and Nicholas Goretski also attended the ballpark meeting.
Winhofer, who is Kulpmont Borough Council president, said only that it was a brief meeting.
Coroniti said he attended the meeting with his father, and that the meeting was called to order inside the suite. He said any other information would have to come from Varano.
Goretski, contacted by phone Thursday, said he wasn’t going to comment for the story because he was on vacation at the time of the phone call.
Antionette Bach said she was attending a relative’s wedding in New York and couldn’t go to the meeting and game, but that she would have gone if not for the wedding. She said she didn’t want to comment any further on the issue.
The other two members who did not attend the game are Dennis Lentini and Anthony Greco. Two messages were left for Lentini seeking his thoughts on the situation; he did not return the calls as of Friday. There is no phone number published for Greco. A secretary at the sewer authority office said she would not provide a telephone number for Greco.
Varano said Brinjac offers its suite to the Mount Carmel Municipal Authority as well, and that he was aware of a recent visit by that board. Chairman Lawrence Czeponis, contacted Thursday for confirmation of Varano’s information, said he did not want to comment on the matter until speaking with an attorney.
Calls to Brinjac’s Harrisburg office on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for comment about this story went unreturned.
Brinjac has been criticized this spring and summer by residents in Mount Carmel whose homes have been flooded by sewage and storm water in backups caused by realignment of the piping to conform with the federally mandated combined-sewer overflow project, in which storm drains and sewer lines must be separated.
Figuring they might discuss authority business, the members also scheduled a special public meeting for 7 p.m. that night and conducted the meeting at the suite. First pitch of the ball game was 7:05.
The authority had a meeting notice published, as required, advertising the meeting. It ran Aug. 6 in The News-Item, at a cost of $20.05, and read: “The Kulpmont-Marion Heights Joint Municipal Authority will hold a special meeting for general purposes on August 9, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. at Citizens Bank Park, 1 Citizens Bank Way, Philadelphia PA 19148. Bruno Varano, Chairman.”
Authority members were questioned about why they would conduct a public meeting at a baseball game 2 1/2 hours and 120 miles away, and if they thought it was proper to accept such an invitation from a company, Brinjac Engineering, headquartered in Harrisburg, which is contracted to perform services for the authority.
Varano said he doesn’t see a problem with having accepted the invitation. Authority members aren’t paid anything for their service, not even a meeting stipend, he said, and no taxpayer money was used. The cost of the advertisement was the only cost incurred, he said.
In fact, Varano said, calling the meeting as part of the trip was done to avoid any violation of the state’s Sunshine Law.
“We knew that four of us were going to be in attendance and in case any kind of business was discussed among the members, our solicitor thought we should advertise the meeting,” Varano said.
Varano said the meeting was called to order, roll call was taken and the group then went into executive session to discuss pending litigation.
The authority’s solicitor is William Cole, Kulpmont. Contacted Thursday for comment, a phone recording said his law office was closed until Monday.
Later calls to Varano, seeking details on what the litigation involved and how long the meeting, executive session included, lasted, went unreturned.
‘Missed the point’
Melissa Melusky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said that while the authority’s intentions to advertise the meeting were good, the meeting and where it was held were not.
“If they advertised the meeting in order to get around the (Sunshine) act, then they’ve missed the point of the act,” she said when asked for comment on the situation. “There are other requirements to a public meeting other than just having a quorum or advertising it; they have to allow the public to attend.”
She declined to weigh in on the ethics of the matter, but did cite a recent case in which a PennDOT official accepted sporting event tickets from construction companies he was evaluating for department grants and contracts, and failed to report them to the commission. He was fined the value of the tickets, which totaled more than $3,000, in a ruling by the state Ethics Commission.
While the Kulpmont-Marion Heights case doesn’t involve a direct conflict of interest as with the PennDOT official accepting tickets from the same company which he was evaluating, the point of accepting an invitation to a baseball stadium suite from a company with which a public authority does business is made nonetheless, Melusky said.
“It is safe to say that the Ethics Commission has ruled that the receipt of sporting event tickets by public officials, while appointed or elected, could constitute a conflict of interest,” she said.
Varano: No issue
Varano, who is also a member of Kulpmont Borough Council, told a reporter he thought The News-Item was making an issue out of nothing.
“Whenever we have a regular monthly meeting, no member of the public attends and no press coverage is given,” he said. “There has never been any problem before and there isn’t one here.”
In addition to Varano, Joe Winhofer, Ron Coroniti and Nicholas Goretski also attended the ballpark meeting.
Winhofer, who is Kulpmont Borough Council president, said only that it was a brief meeting.
Coroniti said he attended the meeting with his father, and that the meeting was called to order inside the suite. He said any other information would have to come from Varano.
Goretski, contacted by phone Thursday, said he wasn’t going to comment for the story because he was on vacation at the time of the phone call.
Antionette Bach said she was attending a relative’s wedding in New York and couldn’t go to the meeting and game, but that she would have gone if not for the wedding. She said she didn’t want to comment any further on the issue.
The other two members who did not attend the game are Dennis Lentini and Anthony Greco. Two messages were left for Lentini seeking his thoughts on the situation; he did not return the calls as of Friday. There is no phone number published for Greco. A secretary at the sewer authority office said she would not provide a telephone number for Greco.
Varano said Brinjac offers its suite to the Mount Carmel Municipal Authority as well, and that he was aware of a recent visit by that board. Chairman Lawrence Czeponis, contacted Thursday for confirmation of Varano’s information, said he did not want to comment on the matter until speaking with an attorney.
Calls to Brinjac’s Harrisburg office on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for comment about this story went unreturned.
Brinjac has been criticized this spring and summer by residents in Mount Carmel whose homes have been flooded by sewage and storm water in backups caused by realignment of the piping to conform with the federally mandated combined-sewer overflow project, in which storm drains and sewer lines must be separated.
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