Apr 11, 2014 4 min read

A dispute about who is eligible to serve on Canonsburg Borough Council has again landed in Washington County Court.

An attorney representing council members John Severine, Timothy Bilsky and Paul Sharkady on Thursday asked that council’s actions at the Jan. 6 organizational meeting be voided and that the meeting be reconvened.

Pittsburgh attorney William Bresnahan first filed a petition last month on behalf of the three, protesting the process by which council President John Bevec and Vice President Rich Russo were appointed to the board during January’s reorganization meeting.

Canonsburg council has six members elected by ward and one elected at large. The first was dismissed a few weeks ago by a Washington County judge.

The results of the 2013 election showed Severine was elected to both the four-year and two-year terms from the 1st Ward and that Sharkady was elected to both the four-year term for the 3rd Ward and the at-large term.

At the Jan. 6 meeting, newly elected council members were to be sworn in and a president and vice president were to be chosen.

The mayor’s role was to be limited to presiding over the meeting until a president was elected, vote if a quorum was needed and vote if necessary to break a tie to elect officers.

At the meeting, Severine was called first and asked to choose between the two-year and four-year terms. He picked the four-year term and was then asked to provide an affidavit of residency to show he had lived in the borough at least a year before the election. On the advice of the solicitor, Severine was not allowed to be sworn into office or take his seat at the meeting.

Sharkady was also called upon, and he informed council that he did not have his affidavit of residency. The solicitor gave an opinion that because Sharkady was re-elected, rather than newly elected, that he was not required to provide the affidavit. Sharkardy chose the four-year term from Ward 3, was sworn in and took his seat.

The petition Bresnahan filed Thursday in Washington County Court claims neither Severine nor Sharkady should have been sworn in, and with just three council members sitting, a quorum was lacking because four are needed.

At this point, the mayor would have counted as part of the quorum for reorganization.

“Proper procedure would have been to call a vote of the sitting council members Joseph McGarry, Fran Coleman and Timothy Bilsky, and not the mayor to determine the president and vice president. What occurred instead of voting for officers was the filling of the vacancy in Ward 1 an the filling of the vacancy for the at-large seat.

Both votes were tied 2-2 and Mayor David Rhome “improperly broke the tie on each,” the petition asserts.

Then, with six sitting council members, the vote for president and vice president took place.

The reorganization meeting violated the Pennsylvania Borough Code, the petition claims. No hearing date has been scheduled.

A few weeks ago, President Judge Debbie O’Dell Seneca ordered that a “legally deficient” petition be dismissed. The court said language in the first petition was vague and did “not expressly set forth any named council member which the petitioners are seeking to have removed, nor does it indicate any facts substantiating which, if any, council members are illegally serving.”

However, the court’s response acknowledged that Sharkady should not have been sworn in without a certificate of residency, yet “there is no legal reason for him to not serve as a council member at the present time.”

Both District Attorney Eugene Vittone and Attorney General Kathleen Kane declined to consider the case.