Delaware County conceals budget details for year, refuses transparency before election

Delaware County and its five members of the county council are continuing a year-long campaign of concealing elements of the budget and the budget process from the view of citizens and the media in the wake of last year’s 23.7 percent tax increase that sparked widespread outcry.

Most importantly to those who will vote in a week, the county is being coy about whether it will publicly produce the first draft of the budget before Election Day, a move that would deny voters an understanding of just how large the next tax increase could be. One council member has already conceded taxes will increase for the third straight year.

Last week, the county answered — for the first time since the question was originally posed ten months ago — where a surprise $7.6 million in funding for the 2025 budget came from. The $7.6 million allowed the county to keep the tax increase four percentage points lower, from a 28 percent increase to 24. 

Additionally, the county has divulged little about its Budget Task Force (BTF), a citizen-led commission meant to study expenses, revenues, and anything else that could help it keep the belt tight. The all-Democrat council refused to answer questions about the matter until confronted with unscheduled interviews on camera, then quickly produced information within an hour of those interviews.

Yet even with that limited release of information, the county then turned around and kept silent on follow-up questions, such as why the BTF was never formally authorized by a vote of the full council or whether the BTF should be subject to the commonwealth’s Sunshine Laws. 

For calendar year 2024, the council raised taxes by five percent. For 2025, it raised taxes 24 percent. In 2026, taxes will likely go up again, the only question is: by how much?

Out of view: The Budget Task Force

When the county council approved the 24 percent tax increase, Councilman Richard Womack — the only one of the five-member board who would be running for re-election in 2025 — said the county was facing a “crisis.”

To surmount it, Womack called for the county to create a budget task force composed of citizens and other community pillars like union and business leaders, academics, and faith leaders. Womack was so confident in the idea of a budget task force, he cast the lone “no” vote on the tax increase.

Responding to a citizen who had emailed concerns about the tax increase days after it was approved, Womack complained about his Democratic colleagues. 

“I thank you for your comments and concerns regarding the tax increase. I have some ideas I really believe would work if I could just get my colleagues to listen. I’m only one voice on Council but with the support of the public makes me a loud voice on Council which they may hear,” Womack said.

Earlier this month, Broad + Liberty approached the county to request a number of items related to the BTF, and the county did not provide any of the documentation requested, nor did it provide substantive answers to the questions posed.

This outlet then approached the county two more times — on Tuesday Oct. 14 and Thursday, Oct. 16 — asking for only the names of the BTF participants and a list of meeting dates and times. In both of those cases, the county was given more than a day to respond.

Given the county’s repeated denials of this basic information, this reporter attempted to speak with members of council directly after a council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 21. 

Executive Director O’Malley declined to comment. Councilwoman Christine Reuther suggested the request for all participants was faulty because it should have requested all persons who applied. Council Chairwoman Monica Taylor said it was the first time she was hearing of the request. And Council Vicechair Womack said the county would need to consult with attorneys before releasing that information.

The county released the information less than one hour later. 

County spokesperson Michael Connolly apologized for missing the deadline by more than a full day, saying he intended to transmit it.

Additionally, document metadata shows Connolly created the documents less than 15 minutes after those unscheduled interviews, which happened when the council meeting concluded around 2 p.m.

“That’s mildly interesting, regarding the timing of the documents. I had been working on my email response to you and put it all together to send to you shortly before you received it,” Connolly said.

The list of meetings also raised questions about the BTF’s priorities. A subcommittee called “budget presentation” which looks into how the county can better convey information about the budget, has met at least thirteen times — more than twice as often as the “cost containment” subcommittee.

With the county’s release of the initial information, Broad + Liberty then requested additional information such as whether the meetings of the BTF had complied with Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Law, and explaining why the BTF wasn’t formally authorized by a vote of council. In ignoring that request for comment, the council also declined to provide the dates and times of any future meetings of the BTF so that the public — including journalists — could attend, other than a closeout report to the council on Nov. 10.

State law seems clear that even if the BTF was never formally created by a vote of the full council, it should have been subject to the Sunshine Law.

The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, which advises on matters related to the Sunshine Law, gave training to Penn State officials recently as part of the settlement of a Sunshine Law complaint. One of the slides from that training, available online and pictured below, says, “Committees that take official action or provide advice on agency matters are subject to all provisions of the Sunshine Act.” That perfectly aligns with the statute that says all committees authorized by the government “to… render advice on matters of agency business” are subject to the law and its requirements (emphasis added).

As Broad + Liberty previously reported, although Womack and his fellow Democrats are campaigning on the creation of the BTF, there exists virtually no information about it on the county website beyond a lone press release from January asking for applicants.

In a council meeting on Oct. 8, Womack said, “Moving forward, we want to be more transparent and open, and we’re not hiding anything.” Yet the council is declining to offer the public information about past or future BTF meetings.

The mystery $7.6 million in ‘transfers’

The county charter requires that its executive director deliver a budget proposal to the county at least 60 days prior to the beginning of the fiscal year, which usually translates into the first of November.

In 2024, Broad + Liberty obtained copies of Executive Director Barbara O’Malley’s draft budget from government offices because the council did not make it available online. 

The first draft showed the county needed to boost revenue from $183 million to $235.2 million — an increase of 28.4 percent, as reported by Broad + Liberty on Nov. 25 last year.

Yet, the subsequent budget proposed days later in early December 2024 showed a steep drop in the revenue needed. That drop was exclusively thanks to a $7.6 million increase in a budget line called “transfers.” Almost all other line items remained unchanged.

The net result was that the county would be asking for a 23.7 percent increase in revenue. Although still a dramatic increase, it wouldn’t be scraping 30 percent.

Days after the tax increase was passed, this outlet reported that the county refused to answer where the $7.6 million had come from.

Weeks later, Broad + Liberty further reported that the county could not point to a single document that mentioned the source of the $7.6 million. For the second time in as many months, the county did not say where the money was sourced.

The questions were not just mathematical nitpicking. If the $7.6 million came from sources that couldn’t be relied upon again, it likely meant that was another severe budget hole the county would have to fix in the 2026 budget.

Last Wednesday, O’Malley finally gave a substantive answer, saying the “transfers” line was made up of three types of funds. One was a transfer from a tourism hotel tax, which O’Malley said always contributes a bit to the annual general fund.

The other two sources were new, however: surplus revenues from Fair Acres, the county-run nursing home, as well as funds from opioid settlements. O’Malley said these opioid funds were “Wave Two” tranches of money after a previous tranche had already been received.

“Much of that money is distributed to the community to support programs such as the one we heard this evening. The Wave Two [money] just came online last year, so that’s the first time we received funding. The first initial payments [of Wave Two] are a bit higher than what we’ll receive in later years, and we are using the Wave Two funding to recover as much of our internal county costs as possible,” O’Malley said. 

“So those might be things attributed to the correctional facility staff that work on these issues, the Medical Examiner’s office. We are looking at every single possible opportunity to use the opioid funding to support and reduce the cost that the county bears for those costs related to opioid use.”

Despite being asked twice for the source of the transfers dollars and ignoring those questions, the county only provided two emails dated November 2024 that backed up their claims after the unscheduled interviews about the BTF. These emails, however, show only preliminary discussions and do not document specific dollar amounts or final decisions.

The Coming Tax Increase

At last week’s meeting, Councilwoman Reuther conceded taxes would increase for the third straight year in 2026.

“I think if people are wondering, ‘Are taxes going up?’ you haven’t been paying attention,” she said. “But I will say that how much they’re going to go up — and in my view, taxes are going to go up — but how much they’re going to go up, there’s a lot to be decided. There’s five people up here and a majority of us have to agree.”

The council has faced pressure in recent weeks to begin previewing the budget before election day. Reuther chaffed at that idea, noting that release of the executive director’s budget was providing the public with an unfinalized draft, and that the current council was likely providing more budget information than years past.

“The more information you give people, the more they want. And that’s okay, and it’s certainly fair for people to ask. I just want you to know that when I was one of the people who was a member of a party that hadn’t been represented on council since the home rule charter went in, I routinely filed many, many Right to Know requests, not to get the budget that had yet to even be proposed in a final form to council, but to get the budget that was enacted,” Reuther said. 

“I’m not a hundred percent sure what the [council’s] decision is about posting on the website the executive director’s proposal, but that’s the executive director’s proposal. It’s a pre-deliberation document that will be nothing more than a draft,” she added later. 

Former Delaware County Council Chair Andy Reilly responded to Councilwoman Reuther’s claim that the county budget was previously only available by Right to Know Request. 

“Councilwoman Reuther is gaslighting the taxpayers of Delaware County to cover for her own mismanagement. Pursuant to Home Rule Charter, the executive director would provide her preliminary budget to county council — 60 days prior to Jan 1,” said Reilly, who served on council from 2000-08. “Once we had it, it was always made available to the press and for public review.” 

For the upcoming election, Womack and Controller Joanne Phillips are running on the Democratic ticket. Brian Burke and Liz Piazza are the Republican candidates. Current council member Kevin Madden is leaving the council because of term limits.

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