LOWER POTTSGROVE >> A Right to Know request has revealed that Zoning Hearing Board Chairman Keith Diener’s financial disclosure forms for the past two years are in fact on file with the township – but they only just arrived.
The “statement of financial interests” forms were filed June 15 – five days after The Mercury submitted its Right to Know Request to find out if they were there.
The Mercury’s request is just one of two sets of Right to Know requests connected to Diener that have raised a political ruckus recently.
Last week, North Coventry resident Dave Fisher appeared before the board of commissioners and presented the results of a Right to Know request filed with the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission.
Diener, who is also an elected constable, is required to have the forms filed with the ethics commission for his constable post and an identical set with the township for his zoning hearing board post.
A Right to Know request to the ethics commission was filed last month by Josh Stouch, a constable in Douglass (Mont.) and an unsuccessful opponent of Diener’s in the Lower Pottsgrove constable election of 2009.
Stouch asked the ethics commission for copies of Diener’s “statement of financial interest.”
On May 9, Robert P. Caruso, open records officer for the State Ethics Commission, replied to Stouch that Diener’s forms were not on file.
At the time, the same was true of Diener’s township financial disclosure forms.
But the fact that they were not on file until this week, never put at risk any previous decision with which Diener was associated as a member of the zoning board, said Township Solicitor Charles D. Garner Jr.
Fisher had posed that question, and questioned if Diener’s financial interest forms were on file with the township, during last week’s discussion.
In his response to The Mercury’s Right to Know request, Township Manager Ed Wagner, who is also the township’s Right to Know officer, pointed out the fact that the forms had been filed recently.
However, he not respond to a question asking if he had alerted Diener to The Mercury’s Right to Know request.
Diener could not be reached for comment Friday.
The financial disclosure forms ask no questions about taxes, unpaid or otherwise, and so Diener was not required to report the four open tax liens currently levied against him.
The largest of the open liens was filed April 28, 2014, by the U.S. Internal Revenue service and totals $71,317.76
The second largest, filed April 21, 2014, by the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, is for $1,782.49.
The other two liens, both filed by the Montgomery County Tax Bureau in July of 2013 are relatively small – one for $92 and the other for $586.
Garner said that the township commissioners do have the legal authority to remove a zoning board member, but said the language governing the rationale for that removal is vague.
A zoning board member “can be removed for malfeasance, misfeasance of non-feasance in office, or just cause by the majority of the governing body, which would be the board of commissioners, but the code does not define what any of those terms mean,” Garner said. “I presume someone could be removed if he or she never showed up for a meeting.”
The municipal code also says a member who is going to be removed must be given 15 days notice first and may request a hearing.
However, given the fact that the required forms are now filed, coupled with the vigorous defense Lower Pottsgrove Commissioners’ Vice Chairman mounted of Diener when Fisher spoke last week, a removal seems unlikely to happen.
