Judge hears election candidate challenges
With whom and exactly where should a candidate file a statement of financial interest, commonly known as an “ethics form”?
Senior Judge John C. Reed heard 90 minutes of testimony Wednesday before tossing a challenge to the nominating petition filed by Jack Levy, chairman of the Buffalo Township Board of Supervisors.
Levy contended that handing his statement of financial interest, required of all candidates seeking public office, to his colleague Timothy Doman, secretary-treasurer of the board of supervisors, before the March 7 deadline constituted a filing.
The matter was before Reed because Bob Krut, a Buffalo Township auditor, who is a Democrat, brought objections to Levy’s candidacy to court. The original complaint identified Levy as a Democrat, but Krut’s attorney, Chris Furman, amended the document to reflect Levy’s correct political party, Republican.
Just the day before, Reed dismissed an attempt by a Democratic candidate for Union Township supervisor to have two would-be GOP rivals’ names stricken from the May 16 primary ballot.
Levy told the judge, “I did, in fact, file with the secretary of the township Saturday, March 4, well in advance of the deadline,” identifying Doman as the recipient. In testimony, Doman corroborated this, but under cross-examination by Furman, he said he did not apply a date and time stamp.
Levy, who works for Mylan pharmaceuticals, said he was working outside the Washington area and therefore did not file his own nominating petitions. He added he was unaware the ethics form “needs to be filed at a particular location.”
Furman called to the witness stand Andrea Lee White, administrative assistant for Buffalo Township, who said Levy had filed an ethics form as required by officeholders in 2016, but that the latest version did not arrive until Tuesday, March 14. Doman said he was at the township office to work on the payroll on Monday, March 13, but turning in Levy’s ethics form “kind of slipped my mind.”
When Levy’s attorney, Donald Saxton, tried to question White about her position as an at-will employee, the judge said, “Now you’re putting pressure on her because she is an employee at will. I don’t think you want to go down that road.”
At-will employees are those who do not work under the terms of an employment contract, and the employer does not need what is known as “good cause” to terminate the person’s employment.
Buffalo supervisors last week filed a separate case against the township board of auditors, who at one point set the supervisors’ compensation for work outside of meeting attendance at zero.
Levy, a 10-year resident of the community, said he sees the election case as an outgrowth of that dispute, which he views “not as auditor-supervisor conflicts, but personal issues that are rooted in a host of things.”
Saxton successfully argued neither Krut nor any other Democrat has standing to challenge the candidacy of someone outside the Democratic Party and vice versa.
In his first election-related case of the day, Reed ruled Brian Spicer, a Democrat and North Strabane Township supervisor hopeful, had an inadequate number of signatures on his petition. Neither Spicer nor his attorney came to court Wednesday morning. Attorney Sean Logue, representing North Strabane resident Rita Polansky, said afterward, “The ruling today sends a message to the Democratic Committee that the rules apply to them, as well.”
Incumbent District Judge Jay Weller, a Democrat, and his wife, Christine, a Republican, also had a court date to challenge the nominating petitions of Lawrence Fowler of Eighty Four. Fowler did not appear at the hearing, so Reed ordered late Wednesday his name to be stricken from the Republican and Democratic ballots. Weller is now running unopposed.