Feb 6, 2020 3 min read

Jan. 6 was a banner day in Monessen.

The city’s absentee mayor made an appearance.

After missing 40-plus of the scheduled City Council meetings since he took office in January 2018 (he stopped coming to them five months into his four-year term), Matt Shorraw decided to participate in government business again.

So did council member Gil Coles, who’d only attended one meeting since February 2018.

What changed, you might wonder? Shorraw and Coles apparently did the math.

This past November marked municipal elections, and one of the newly elected council members seems to be a political ally to them.

That means Shorraw, Coles and council member Donald Gregor now have the majority over council members Lois Thomas and Tony Orzechowski.

They can, in short, control what happens in the city.

We level absolutely no criticism to being on the outside of votes. That’s how the system works. Voters put people into office hoping they elect enough of them so that their favored positions receive the majority support.

But what we won’t stand for – and no member of the public should – is the majority playing unfairly.

Three lawsuits have been filed against Shorraw since that Jan. 6 meeting contending he refused to allow public comment on agenda items. That’s because, the suits allege, Shorraw came to the meeting armed with his own agenda, and set the already-prepared one aside.

Shorraw proceeded to fire the city’s solicitor and administrator, hire new folks for those roles, change who has access to city security cameras, rescind a sewage authority appointment and advertise for a new board member. It appears he had the votes from Coles and Gregor to back up those actions (though there is some dispute about whether Shorraw had enough support to pass on one of the termination votes).

The problem is that all of those votes were undertaken without giving members of the public an opportunity to comment on them, according to the lawsuits.

The public wasn’t aware of what was on his agenda, so during public comment, they couldn’t reasonably offer comment on the proposed measures.

In Pennsylvania, the Sunshine Law requires that occur.

Before votes are taken, the public must know what’s on the agenda so they can decide whether they would like to offer their thoughts on the business that is about to occur.

Each of the suits, filed in Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court, asks a judge to vacate the votes because the public didn’t have a fair opportunity to comment.

We hope the judges who hear the cases force Monessen to rescind the votes taken on Jan. 6. It’s the right thing to do.

And we hope that if that happens, everyone understands that not a single thing stands in the paths of Shorraw, Coles and Gregor to make and pass those same motions again.

This time, however, they will be forced to listen to input from the public – a responsibility each must undertake if they wish to hold office.