By Tim Karan
[McKeesport] Daily News

Munhall officials may have violated Pennsylvania's Sunshine Act when they opened and discussed sealed bids during a closed-door finance committee meeting on Feb. 10, according to a media law expert.

During that meeting, all three council members on the committee — chairman Rick Brennan, Joe Ballas and Bernie Shields — opened bids from four private lenders offering the borough a private tax anticipation note loan because the borough failed to obtain one from a bank.

At a public work session on Feb. 12, interim borough manager Harry Faulk said the committee had decided during the meeting to accept a $500,000 loan at 5.25 percent interest offered by a group led by Munhall resident Joe Leonello of Homestead-based Franjo Construction. Council is expected to officially accept the bid during a meeting on Wednesday evening.

Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel with the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, said it's irrelevant that no official vote occurred at the committee meeting and believes the members' actions could have been in violation of the Sunshine Act that calls for transparency among government agencies.

“Deliberation on the bids should have occurred at a public meeting,” Melewsky said. “There is no exception in the Sunshine Act that allows bids to be deliberated during an executive session.”

Borough Solicitor Greg Evashavik was not available for comment, but Nick Evashavik of his firm, Evashavik, DiLucente & Tetlow, LLC, said he spoke to a member of council and believes the committee did nothing wrong.

“It's my understanding that the three members of the finance committee were meeting just to open these bids — not to take any action, but to see if they were legitimate proposals,” Evashavik said. “They didn't take any action, they didn't deliberate on the bids, and they didn't vote on them. That will happen at the next meeting on Wednesday when all of council will be there.”

But Melewsky said simply opening and discussing the bids in private — even if the bid the committee informally agreed upon was clearly more favorable than the others — constitutes deliberation.

“The fact that there was no official vote doesn't matter because they still presumably talked about the bids after they opened them,” she said. “Talking about the bids creates the issue — not necessarily the vote.”

Brennan, who was elected to council in November and named chairman of the finance committee last month, said if the meeting violated the Sunshine Act, it was unintentional.

“I'm new and wasn't aware of all the rules,” Brennan said. “Maybe we were wrong. But if we were, it's something I didn't know we were wrong about.”

However, even if the committee's actions did violate the Sunshine Act, Melewsky said it would be difficult to enforce because council can “cure” the infraction by following through with the official vote at Wednesday's meeting.

“It's very difficult to enforce the law if there are stated plans to vote on the bids at the next meeting,” Melewsky said. “The cure remedy, which is nowhere in the Sunshine Act, is a court-made remedy that allows elected officials considerable discretion on whether or not to obey the law.”

Brennan said now that he's aware of the potential violation, it won't happen again.

“Once I know there's something I need to do, I do it,” he said. “I've got nothing to hide.”

But Melewsky said there's a larger issue at hand.

“Even if the Sunshine Act isn't applicable, that doesn't mean this is the way this is supposed to happen,” she said. “Many agencies make it their policy to have public meetings whenever possible — even if not required by law — because they realize public participation benefits not only the agency, but the democratic process.”