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Good morning, Happy Columbus Day, and welcome to Broad + Liberty's Weekly Reads.
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By Bradley Vasoli
When a township official rakes nearly $30,000 into his campaign coffers since his last election, he’s probably gearing up for a hard-hitting run next time. For Jeff Boraski, there was no next time.
While federal campaign funding records showed a labor union flooded his committee with $27,850 since 2020, the Democratic Falls Township supervisor chose not to run for reelection this year. And before this March, he failed to submit required finance reports for roughly five years.
These events raise three major questions: Why did the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Political Action Committee give a legislator in a township of only about 34,000 people so much money? Why did the Bucks County Board of Elections, chaired by County Commissioner (and former Falls Supervisor) Bob Harvie, not send Boraski any late-filing notices after 2020? And what did Boraski, an IBEW member, do with all that money?
Why It Matters. We’ve reported more than once about the campaign finance shenanigans among the Democrats of Falls Township. It might seem like an undue focus on the corruption of one small borough. But the problems there reflect a deeper countywide problem that truly requires action.
Campaign finance filings often represent the only window into the money fueling a candidate’s campaign — and a clue to where that candidate’s interests lie. That is why in normal circumstances, counties are very strict about fining campaigns for failing to file them, or even for filing them late. Nearly every campaign gets dinged for this a time or two and it ensures that the law is followed.
But Boraski never got a notice or a fine from the Bucks County Board of Elections despite not filing reports for years — while simultaneously accepting tens of thousands from the IBEW’s national PAC.
If that doesn’t suggest a deeper problem, nothing will. Boraski declined to comment for this story. So did every member of the Bucks County Board of Elections. No comment from Democrats Bob Harvie (now a congressional candidate in Pennsylvania’s First District) and Diane Ellis-Marseglia. None from Republican minority commissioner Gene DiGirolamo, either.
Broad + Liberty will keep asking.
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By Todd Shepherd
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.
Why It Matters. 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 county largely sidestepped those questions.
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. 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.
It’s a problem since, as Wally Nunn notes in a separate article this week, serious questions about the budget remain unanswered and have for months.
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.
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3. Exclusive interview
This week, managing editor Kyle Sammin talked with Stacy Garrity, Pennsylvania’s state treasurer and a leading candidate for governor in 2026. Meanwhile, Paul Davis caught up with local activist Frank Scales about his recent viral confrontation with DA Larry Krasner.
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6. What we're reading
They say “only Nixon could go to China,” but we might have to update that to “only Trump can go to Gaza” after the President brought the two warring sides together in what looks to be an end to the two-year Gaza War that has raged since Hamas’s horrific massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.
Shocking that Trump could succeed where Biden failed? National Review’s Rich Lowry doesn’t think so. “A lifetime of maneuvering for advantage in the real estate and media worlds in New York City — searching for and using every ounce of leverage — was better preparation for high-level international diplomacy than if Trump had spent a lifetime on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Maybe the folks at the State Department could learn a thing or two.
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7. Rough week
The Phillies fell apart in the playoffs and the Eagles lost to the once-laughable Giants. Where do they go from here? Grace Del Pizzo, Matthew De George, and Tim Kelly ask all the hard questions at On Pattison — a part of the Fideri News Network.
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8. Flashback
The governor’s race in California went crazy this week after a video of a train-wreck interview by Dem. gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter went viral because of Porter’s, uh,...bad behavior? sense of entitlement? After which, more stories began to surface suggesting Porter was just a not-fun person to work for.
We are not saying that this story is perfectly analogous to something here in Pennsylvania, but it feels like a good time to remind you that in 2022, B+L’s Todd Shepherd reported on allegations of bad behavior against PA State Senator Katie Muth, and the facts about incredibly high staffer turnover in her office.
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With gratitude,
— The Editors at Broad + Liberty
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