Little bit of Lebanon down in Kyle

Looks like Lebanon County DA and Mount Gretna aren't the only government entities in the habit of abusing the government's powers of criminal prosecution to silence whistleblowers. Down in Texas, a police chief fathered a son with a doctor's wife and then the chief used the resources and powers of his office to organize a campaign of harassment against the doctor. That campaign included a trumped up charge of domestic violence against the doctor, for which he pleaded to a lesser charge. The doctor has now sued the town's employing the police chief, and that event allows the doctor to collect evidence from the towns and their departments and officials.

This abuse of power sounds excruciatingly familiar. In late 2007, I began researching the finances of the Borough of Mount Gretna by reading budget documents and financial reports, and by interviewing self-appointed "Queen of all things Gretna" and Lebanon County Republican Party "Boss" Kathleen Snavely. Snavely also has the ear of Republican-groomed county district attorney, David Arnold. Not long after his bankruptcy and failed marriage (which included confirmed allegations of violence that he perpetrated against his then-wife), local state politician Brightbill apparently handpicked Arnold to run against the current DA, who was allegedly not cow-towing enough to the Republican entrenchment.

Brightbill lost his re-election, but Arnold won, and has expressed a painful amount of deference to "his" local party ever since. Immediately upon taking office, Arnold also proceeded to get the county judiciary in his pocket by hiring a local judge's wife (Ann Kline) as a prosecutor, and proceeded to get partners in his campaign-finance real estate investment business (ASH Investments) on the county payroll as well. (Note that he failed to properly disclose his financial dealings in his ethics statements that he filed during those years) It also apparently didn't take him long to find other uses for his office furniture, as allegations of romantic trysts and infidelities percolated forth. And, he and his new wife, a county probation officer in charge of state/grant-funded juvenile probation programs, implemented a strategy that made her work "private" and paid through a lucrative services contract with the county (in addition to the grants that Arnold obtained from the State).

But, now back to late 2007, where my research efforts were open and obvious. After having several conversations with Snavely about the political mechanisms of Mount Gretna, Snavely "notified" her peeps about my queries and so at a January 2008 staff meeting, Arnold instructed his staff to strategize a path towards charging me (and my partner) with a crime.  Arnold's real estate business partners and County employees, Emily Scipioni and Tammy Hartman-Hankins routinely attended these meetings, and on that day, one of them left the meeting and repeated, nearly verbatim, Arnold's instructions to a number of people outside that meeting. But none of that ever reached me for quite some time...years, really, until certain members of his staff could brook no more of his "leadership" and left his employ.

By February of 2008, the research revealed some very disturbing things. One disturbing thing I learned is that the Borough consistently under-reported $250,000 to $300,000 a year to the public and that same amount of money could not be accounted for.  The second was that the 87 acre Borough--which has no public works infrastructure, had a full-time public works crew of 4 (at least) whom hardly ever could be witnessed performing work within the Borough. Yet, at the end of each pay period, each staff member submitted to the Borough a timesheet upon which that staff member stated that they performed 40 hours (or more!) of work for the residents of the Borough of Mount Gretna. Well, that simply was not happening. So, I reported the findings to the next person in the "chain of command", so to speak, and that was the local district attorney, whose response I knew would be to have to forward the information to a "non-conflicted" law enforcement/investigative entity--so, either the state police or the state attorney general. Imagine the confusion my innocence blossomed when his response--his immediate response, was that he was "not going to investigate that...that's never going to happen."

So, I started to put my research online in a blog, this blog, and within weeks, my partner and I were being charged with crimes that no evidence of would ever be submitted for and for which three of the persons I reported would provide known false testimony at my trial. Also, the judge (Samuel Kline) whose household was regularly receiving a paycheck from the prosecutor's office (and who was supposed to be recused from hearing criminal cases because of this) pulled our case and proceeded to "lose" recordings, to prohibit me from attending proceedings, and refused to let out the facts that the three Borough "character" witness' had been previously accused by me of financial improprieties, that a local news reporter published news stories (and meeting minutes existed) that showed the falsity of their testimony, and that the property upon which the alleged criminal activity took place was actually maintained by one of the witnesses--the public works director, William Care.

In the middle of the trial, I was threatened with abandonment by my attorney (Robert Keys) and to be jailed if I took the stand. My attorney also failed to notify me of the three Borough witnesses, and recommended, as my partner's attorney, a "friend" of his (Christopher Coyle) who would eventually convey ALL of our confidential information (and nearly all of his work product!) to the prosecutor--a former employee of his whom he would later describe as a "dear, family friend" that he has drinks with two or three times a week and visits regularly at his home, who would forge my partner's signature on a continuance request that neither of us knew of or would have approved of but which the prosecutor needed), who would later lie to the lawyer's conduct board by saying that he did actually get my partner's signature when in fact, he did not),  and who, we would later find out, had a long-standing services contract with the local judges. Both attorneys-and only those two attorneys, had these contracts.

The "complainant" (Scott Yoder)  had stalked us at our home for days, and, as we found out soon thereafter, was a "police officer" whom Snavely admits that she has known since he was a toddler, and who had recently, while off-duty, threatened to shoot a woman and her family because he didn't like the way she parked her car. (He was charged and convicted for that bad conduct.) The "responding" local police officer testified at trial that he had no evidence--and conducted no investigation, that in any way linked the alleged criminal activity to either myself or to my partner. Interestingly enough, the day that led to the trumped-up charges started with Yoder stalking us at our house and with him trespassing on our property and refusing to leave and threatening us after I told him to get off our property. (After seeing him lag by slowly and peering up at our house at least four times within one hour, I then witnessed him on our porch attempting to get into our home.)

Interestingly enough, since my publication of these financial issues, the Borough's budget that they publish to us, the public, has tripled with no real justification or explanation except that they were told to "report" things differently. They also admit that the auditors have made some critical comments to them. I'll take that. I'll take that as a corrupt organization's admission that I was correct and that they were doing something wrong. Still, though, the numbers show a gap between what comes in and what goes out, and no one has explained that. Nor has any one admitted, even when asked, who told them what and when  when it comes to auditors comments and the reporting changes demanded.

And, still, Care and his staff submit routine timesheets falsely stating that they worked for the Borough and so they have a right to compensation from the Borough, and to state-run retirement accounts. Where I come from, that's intentional deception--fraud, and the public officials that enable this activity are, at a minimum, committing theft of services.

And I hear that Arnold's has sabotaged his second marriage via extra-marital activities. I wonder what that will do to the "privatized" juvenile services programs that his wife runs and that he feeds juveniles to by prosecuting them and making attending her programs a mandatory part of their "sentence".

Down in Texas, reporters are repeating the police's characterization of the whistleblower-cop that is providing evidence to the civil suit against the town and the chief as "selling insider information". Insider information?!--have they lost their damn minds?! There is no "insider information" in a public entity. This is tragic, that a media outlet will repeat the mischaracterization of government activities in a way that down plays the responsibility of government entities to be transparent and for each citizen to hold government entities accountable for their action/inaction. And its tragic that my neighbors let the media and the government officials get away with these failings.

Its a tragedy because my neighbors' apathy has turned Mount Gretna, and the Chautauqua that mirrors it, into an intellectually and ethically vacuous community.  And the entrenched bullies (and "apathetics") deserve the quagmire of their current putrefaction--low summer programs attendance, persistent and growing"quality of life" complaints by residents, reduced music programs, precipitously-fallen property prices, and what I can only imagine must be the highest murder-rate in any Chautauqua or intellectual/arts community or in any 87 acre municipality.