Beth Ann Rosica: Chester County keeps choosing excuses over accountability

The Chester County Board of Elections’ meeting on Friday to certify the election went down exactly how I expected — lots of emotional public comments, an acknowledgement of the “serious error”, deflected by a statement that voter services staff are “fallible human beings”, culminating in a certification of the election along partisan lines with Democratic Commissioners Josh Maxwell and Marian Moskowitz voting yes and Republican Commissioner Eric Roe voting no.

Yet, just because it was what I anticipated does not mean I was happy about it — quite the contrary.

The tone of the meeting, and specifically the attitude of Commissioner Chair Maxwell, is precisely what is wrong with Chester County government. Despite his acknowledgement of the significant problem of leaving 75,000 registered voters off the pollbooks, he immediately pivoted to defending the voter services staff and even praised Director Karen Barsoum for her efforts.

Here are a few of his comments:

“Your work is respected, your team’s work is respected.”

“So I just want to say how incredibly proud I am to have a team that responded the way it did on Election Day.”

“We failed on election day but we do have the commitment and the right minds to make sure we’re in a good place moving forward.”

Maxwell’s approach is not surprising: sadly, it is par for the course. And it’s the reason why he should resign his role as Commissioner. 

Chester County pretends it wants to operate similar to a corporation. It is the only county of its size that employs a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Experience Officer (CXO). The CXO was just added this year at an annual cost of over $200,000 to taxpayers — and one of her responsibilities is to supervise voter services!

None of these expensive “corporate” positions apparently did anything to prevent such a momental error. Worse yet, these costly “executives” have not responded in a way consistent with corporate America.

A corporation has a board of directors and executives answer to them directly. When a massive mistake is made in a corporation, heads will roll — as they should.

Certainly, leaving 75,000 voters off the pollbooks is an enormous problem that should result in significant consequences, including termination.

If Chester County really wants to act like a corporation with our tax dollars, then it has to put on its big boy/girl pants and hold people accountable and fire staff when appropriate. 

There is no question that Voter Services Director Karen Barsoum should be fired — although she really should have resigned. This is not her first big mistake. During the last primary, her department left the position of Prothonotary off the ballot.

That, in and of itself, should have triggered serious consequences, if not termination.

But then, six months later, the same office “forgets” to include all independent and third-party voters and no one in the department realizes the problem immediately.

The Department of Voter Services has one job — to ensure our elections are run legally and smoothly.

It’s not really that complicated or difficult. Counties across Pennsylvania do it twice a year without incident. I’ve never heard of another county in our Commonwealth leaving independent voters off the pollbooks. 

In a corporation, an error of this magnitude would not only result in the termination of the Director, it would likely also include the supervisor, in this case, the new CXO. 

Josh Maxwell as the Commissioner Chair is not only unwilling to terminate those responsible, he took time to praise their efforts. This is not a kindergarten classroom where kids apologize for a minor infraction and then move on about their day. This is a county government allegedly run like a corporation that is responsible to the taxpayers who pay the bills.

The bottom line is that people must be held accountable for their mistakes. It is not enough to say you’re sorry or commission an costly “independent” investigation (I’ll get back to that in a moment) to determine what went wrong and what controls were not in place to catch the problem.

Voter services had one job to do and it failed — not once, but twice in the course of six months.

So, if Maxwell wants to praise their efforts, then it is time for him to step down.

In addition to the lack of consequences for the staff, there were other problematic statements during the meeting.

First, the concept of digital pollbooks was raised as a potential solution to prevent the same problem. Yet, on the very same election day, Fayette County had a problem with its digital pollbooks. 

Digital pollbooks are not the cure for an incompetent government.

Now back to this so-called “independent investigation.”

Chester County Chief Executive Officer David Beyerman gave an update about the investigation and said they hired a “law firm that we have no past history with.”

While this is technically true, it is not exactly truthful. 

The county hired a West Chester-based law firm, Fleck Eckert Klein McGarry, LLC (FEKM) to conduct the investigation. However, McGarry — now a partner with this firm  — was previously with the firm, Brown McGarry Nimeroff. Interestingly, Chester County contracted with that firm to conduct the investigation following another government boondoggle when it spent millions on Covid-19 tests that did not actually work.

Document obtained from an RTK request.

McGarry presented the findings of that investigation in January 2021; therefore, I don’t understand why Beyerman made a point of saying that the county has no history with this firm when one of the partners led a previous investigation. Whether it was intentional or not, it appears that he misrepresented the relationship and demonstrates a lack of full transparency.

Notably, no one at the county was terminated over that debacle either, and litigation is ongoing.

The common denominator in all these issues is the county’s recent history of poor decision making, lack of staff accountability, and deficient leadership.

If Chester County wants to function like a corporation, then it doesn’t get to pick only the expensive attributes, like a Chief Experience Officer; rather, it must also do the hard work and hold people accountable for doing the job they are paid to do. If Commissioner Chair Maxwell is unwilling or incapable of doing so, then he needs to step down.

Beth Ann Rosica resides in West Chester, has a Ph.D. in Education, and has dedicated her career to advocating on behalf of at-risk children and families. She covers education issues for Broad + Liberty. Contact her at barosica@broadandliberty.com.