• Dirty deeds done with tax money

  • When elected officials consider the public a nuisance it's time for them to get out.
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    Pocono Township's Jane Cilurso knew it.
    Harold Werkheiser didn't.
    Leaving is what happened in Middle Smithfield Township, when the legal system caught up with its supervisors' arrogance.
    Yet what happened there doesn't begin to approach the level of abuse in Pocono Township.
    A recent auditor's report revealed that Pocono supervisors secretly bought a $159,000 truck in 2011 without a required public discussion and vote.
    It wasn't part of the budget, so when the bill arrived, supervisors had to borrow money.
    When current supervisors couldn't show the bank its purchase was proper, the whole mess became public.
    Why would supervisors circumvent a rudimentary rule of public disclosure?
    Harold Werkheiser said it was an oversight.
    Forgetting to zip your fly is an oversight. Forgetting to get authorization for a $159,000 purchase is, at minimum, a dereliction of duty.
    Cilurso wouldn't comment on the truck purchase last week, saying only: "The matter is cleared up. I don't think it's important anymore. It's finished. It's over."
    Neither Werkheiser nor Cilurso showed an ounce of remorse or regret over the decision to spend public money behind the backs of taxpayers.
    That's unexplainable and unforgivable. It's particularly confusing since Cilurso has long been a community volunteer with a good heart.
    Frank Hess, a member of the board in 2011, had a more believable explanation.
    He said his then fellow supervisors, Werkheiser and Cilurso, were tired of defending other capital purchases. Hess said he only learned about the truck purchase in 2012, after Cilurso had retired.
    "They stopped talking about it because of the heat they were taking because they were buying so many other things," Hess said.
    They were also probably tired of defending their decisions after the assistant police chief fiasco in 2011. That's when Werkheiser and Cilurso voted to appoint Werkheiser's brother as the assistant police chief, a decision that met with public outrage.
    Middle Smithfield Township, past poster-boy for townships-gone-wild, shirked the rules but did so in public, like when officials pushed for the supervisor-owned Werry's strip club.
    Pocono Township did its dirty deeds behind closed doors and stonewalled discussion until it was forced to disclose the illegal purchase.
    Some residents want Pocono to become a first-class township.
    The question is: First class in what? Thumbing its nose at the public?
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