Budget Task Force? County claims months of meetings, but almost nothing on the public record

Against the backdrop of a steep and shocking 24 percent tax increase for Delaware County residents enacted last December, Council Vice Chairman Richard Womack offered his vision for a way forward.

“I had to take a step back like, ‘What can I actually do?’ Or, ‘What can I do for the residents to lessen this burden?’ And so what I kind of came up with is: I really want to see the county put together a budget commission composed of a diverse group of community leaders, faith leaders, union leaders, business leaders and academics,” said Womack, a Democrat up for re-election this year, and the only ‘No’ vote on last year’s proposed tax increase. The commission would report back to the county in six months, he said.

The county now says the commission — since renamed as the “Budget Task Force” — has completed its work (except for delivery of a final recommendation to council), but the task force is unheralded in the public record — no appearance on council agendas, no posted minutes, and no roster of members.

Despite county promises to “make additional information available to the public throughout 2025,” the Budget Task Force has left almost no public footprint.

For example, the county’s website for the task force defines four subcommittees: Capital Investments, Revenue Enhancements, Budget Presentation, and Cost Containment. Yet when a user clicks any of those categories, the site only says “Description coming soon.”

The county isn’t volunteering information, either.

Broad + Liberty sent a detailed list of questions to the county last week, giving it two-and-a-half business days to respond. The questions included a request for the county to list all participating members of the task force — none of whom are listed on the county’s task force webpage — and the dates of various meetings over the last year.

The core of the county’s response was three sentences and sidestepped those questions.

“The task force has been meeting throughout the year, and every member of the public who applied to join the task force was accepted. Each of the sub-committees is chaired by a member of the County staff and co-chaired by a member of the public,” the county’s communications director, Michael Connolly, said by email. “Each of the sub-committees presented their preliminary findings to Council and the rest of the task force in two meetings held on September 8th. We are working on scheduling a meeting for the task force to make a public presentation on their work, but do not have a date to announce at this time.”

Although the task force website says “Each subcommittee meets monthly, with the entire Budget Task Force meeting bi-monthly throughout 2025,” the county would not voluntarily provide a list of meeting dates. A webpage the county cites for its listing of “Boards, Commissions, & Appointments” does not contain any information about the Budget Task Force.

The county’s list of press releases for calendar year 2025 shows a single release for the budget task force, a January call for interested persons to apply for membership to the task force. Out of 67 press releases issued so far by Delaware County in 2025, no other releases announced the appointment of key members or any progress or conclusions from the Budget Task Force.

Just as important to those citizens who will begin casting ballots soon on two county council seats to be decided on November 4, the county is not offering any preview of what may lie ahead for any potential tax increase. Broad + Liberty asked if the county could share if taxes were likely to be increased again, and if so, provide some kind of estimate. The county did not answer those questions.

The same set of questions — including those questions about previewing any potential tax increases — was sent to the county’s controller, Joanne Phillips, a Democrat running for a council seat this November. She acknowledged receipt of the questions but then did not provide a response.

Additionally, the request for comment asked for individualized responses from each county council member, given the weight and accountability of the topics — a request that was not honored.

It’s possible that if the task force did meet as the county says, those meetings might have been in violation of Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Law which places certain requirements on government meetings so that any particular government may not convene or make decisions completely out of the public eye.

For example, Broad + Liberty provided the county with copies of county council meeting agendas from December 2024, when Womack proposed the “commission,” through March of 2025, several weeks after the task force was announced in the press release.

None of those agenda documents mentions a task force.

Likewise, meetings of the task force most likely should have been executed in accordance with the Sunshine Law, which requires the government to provide advance notice to the public of the meetings, agenda items, and more.

Although not speaking directly to the matter at hand, Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, says even most ad hoc committees or task forces are held to Sunshine Law standards when they render advice or make decisions on agency business, although there are some exceptions. If they were not, it would create a loophole in which governments could routinely move decisionmaking to darker corners by simply delegating those decisions to subcommittees.

And in those instances where an ad hoc committee or task force is not subject to the Sunshine Law, Melewsky says governments are always free to adopt the law voluntarily as a best practice — in essence holding themselves to the highest standard.

The county sidestepped direct questions about the Sunshine Act, whether the task force needed to comply, whether the task force’s meetings were advertised or open to the public, and when the county council voted to approve it. 

“The idea for the task force came from Vice-Chair Womack. The execution of the idea fell to Executive Director O’Malley to implement, which began at the start of 2025 and has occurred throughout the year,” Connolly said. “We create task forces to work on ongoing projects and strategic initiatives as needed to assist in the administration of county business and to help fulfill the duties of the executive director as described in our County Code.”

Two seats on the five-member council are up for election this November. Council Vice Chair Womack is running for re-election, while Controller Phillips is running for a seat being vacated by Kevin Madden. All five members of the council are Democrats. Council members Christine Reuther, Elaine Paul Schaefer, and Council Chair Dr. Monica Taylor, are not up for election this year.

Last year’s 24 percent tax increase stunned the public, with Womack calling it a “crisis.” In presentations to the public, County Executive Director Barbara O’Malley said the county’s rainy day fund on-hand had dwindled to about five percent of the overall budget — about half of the target.

When approving the tax increase, council members blamed inflation but also previous Republican administrations, saying those GOP-led majorities on council had deferred maintenance on a number of projects the county could no longer overlook.

At the same time, Democrats who own the majority on council campaigned on promises of creating a countywide health department and deprivatizing the county prison, both of which have now been converted into reality. 

But those ambitions were costly. As Broad + Liberty reported during the tax increase debate, “In 2022, the first year the county managed the prison, the total outlay was $47.3 million. That number stretched to $53.3 then $56.6 million in 2023 and 2024 respectively. According to the latest proposed budget, the prison will cost taxpayers $59.3 million” in 2025. The county’s spending on outside attorneys in 2024 was $4.7 million, a far cry from the $400,000 in the last year of Republican governance, but also a far cry from neighboring counties which usually spend around $2 million per year on outside legal help.

Broad + Liberty also reported this year that during the budget controversy, the county supplied $7.6 million to a line item marked “transfers” in last year’s budget — a move that allowed the county to lower the tax increase from 28 percent to 24. The county, however, has never answered questions about where that $7.6 million came from.

(Editor’s note: Previous reporting on the county budget references a 23 percent tax increase. The exact percentage was 23.7 percent, and as such, has been rounded up.)

Todd Shepherd is Broad + Liberty’s chief investigative reporter. Send him tips at tshepherd@broadandliberty.com, or use his encrypted email at shepherdreports@protonmail.com. @shepherdreports