Dec 2, 2016 3 min read

The lawyer for a woman whose memorial to her father was removed from Cecil Township Park in July filed a second lawsuit Friday alleging township officials broke the state open-meetings law.

Jesse White, who represents Jennifer Andreis Moninger, wrote in a civil complaint that the latest alleged illegal gathering of three supervisors excluded “duly elected officials, as well as the public and the media, from the sacred process of representative democracy.”

In March, supervisors approved a memorial stone for Gary Andreis, who was a Democratic candidate for township supervisor when he died last year, but township employees removed it in July.

In the first suit filed on behalf of Moninger, White alleged that the decision to remove the memorial violated the Sunshine Act, which requires governing bodies to deliberate and make decisions in public. The township’s attorneys have contended the memorial that was installed didn’t match what officials approved.

Shortly afterward, according to the latest lawsuit, construction began at the park on a pavilion memorializing township coal miners – a project of the Cecil Township Historical Society. White wrote the Andreis stone sat between the pavilion and the spot where supervisors plan to move the old township jail building.

The lawsuit, which names the board as the defendant, alleges three of its five members – Chairman Thomas Casciola, Elizabeth Cowden and Eric Sivavec – met at the park to discuss a new location for the 110-year-old former jail building, which now sits near CIC Drive.

White’s lawsuit draws on comments Supervisor Cindy Fisher made during a Nov. 7 meeting. Fisher said she’d seen Casciola, Cowden and Sivavec meeting at the park three days earlier to discuss the new location of the building without inviting her.

White alleges the three supervisors discussed the project at an “illegal meeting.”

Fisher questioned whether supervisors had ever approved the new location for the jail. Cowden, who also is president of the township historical society, said the historical society had approved the new location last year. Fisher called the group an “auxiliary board” that isn’t responsible for the park.

Cowden said in an interview that a private donor was paying for the relocation of the jail.

Asked about the meeting at the park, Casciola previously told the Observer-Reporter he was at the park to help the historical society decide on an exact location for the building. Cowden said she didn’t get out of the car while she was there that day.

Among the demands in the lawsuit are an injunction against the movement of the jail until a judge decides on the legality of the alleged Nov. 4 meeting, as well as civil costs and attorney fees for Moninger.

Township solicitor Christopher Voltz could not be reached Friday afternoon.