Controller’s audit bugs ‘Bunny’; sheriff fires back
WEST CHESTER » An attorney for the Chester County Sheriff’s Office has pushed back against an assertion by the county controller that the office had not fully complied with a subpoena of financial records for the sheriff’s K-9 Unit, asserting that the comments smacked of partisanship.
“It is entirely inappropriate for the controller to leak certain things to the press in piecemeal fashion,” stated attorney Dawson R. Muth, the Sheriff’s Office solicitor and partner with the law firm of Lamb McErlane in West Chester, responding to a story in the Daily Local News in which Controller Margaret Reif said that her office was “not at all satisfied with the compliance of the subpoena” issued against Sheriff Carolyn “Bunny” Welsh earlier this month.
“That is a clear indication that this exercise is merely a personal political attack on the sheriff,” Muth wrote in an e-mail. “To say the sheriff has not been cooperating with the controller is disingenuous. The controller’s staff has been in the sheriff’s office for days, tying up both controller’s personnel and sheriff’s office personnel.
“Reams of paper have been used copying records that have been provided to the controller,” Muth said. “They copied every deposit slip, every check, every receipt and every spreadsheet provided. They went through these records with a fine-toothed comb. Dozens of hours of work auditing accounts containing no county funds.”
But officials with the Controller’s Office maintained that it had received less than half of the records that Welsh had been asked to produce — only three years of receipts and disbursements from the K-9 fund, which both sides acknowledge involved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Reif has previously dismissed charges of partisanship.
Muth’s response comes as the two elected officials are in a confrontation over the Controller’s Office attempt to review financial records concerning the sheriff’s 10-member K-9 Unit. Reif and her staff of professional auditors consider the money that was raised with the help of the county’s website to be under her authority to audit as the county’s financial watchdog. Welsh has asserted, to the contrary, that the money is a private account not subject to review by the controller.
The accusation of partisanship arises from the fact that Reif is a Democrat, the first woman elected from that party to the important position of controller, while Welsh is a Republican, a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and the longest serving row officer in the county’s history, with 17 years as sheriff.
In June, Reif’s office sent a letter to Welsh informing her of its intention to conduct an audit of the records involving the K-9 Unit, which is fully supported by private donations and fundraising efforts like golf outings and “wild game” dinners. The county does not budget money for the care, upkeep, or training of the K-9 officers, popular icons of the Sheriff’s Office with names like Luke and Nero and Dexter and Murphy.
According to Reif, Welsh refused to permit the audit, maintaining that the funds were not under her control but that of a nonprofit organization that had been formed in February, the Friends of the Chester County Sheriff’s K-9 Unit. In response, Reif issued a subpoena requiring Welsh to appear for an examination under oath, and production of financial records involving the K-9 unit.
Reif and her office’s solicitor, attorney Anthony Verwey of the West Chester law firm of Gawthrop Greenwood, on Aug. 17 gave specific details of what records had been sought in the subpoena, and which had been made available to the auditors for copying and inspection.
According to Verwey, the subpoena demanded bank account records and other items – records of stocks and mutual funds, receipts and expenditures, tax filings and donor acknowledgment letters – connected with the Chester County Sheriff K9 account at the Bryn Mawr Trust bank from 2009, when the unit was formed, until the present. Fewer than half the years of the account’s existence were provided, he said.
“On Monday and Tuesday [Aug. 13 and 14] of this week, the sheriff and an employee, who maintained some or all of the requested records, permitted the controller’s staff to copy approximately three years of records (2015-2017),” he wrote in an email. “On Wednesday [Aug. 15] of this week, signature cards for one of the bank accounts, at Bryn Mawr Trust, were received for the years 2013 through 2018. However, the controller’s auditor is still working through the documentation provided. Documents for years 2009 through 2014 and 2018 have not yet been produced.
The questions that Welsh was asked under oath included issues related to the auditing and documentation of the K-9 Unit. Verwey declined to summarize Welsh’s responses to those questions, but said that a transcript of the questioning was being prepared for review. The session was overseen by Reif, who administered the oath, and lasted about one hour, he said.
“I believe (the Sheriff’s Office) is trying to gather the additional bank records,” he said. “In my experience, generally those documents should be available somewhere. But I am not sure how keeping those records was managed or overseen by whoever was in charge of those records.”
Asked to characterized the response, Verwey was circumspect. “I think it is fair to say that it has been slow, the sheriff’s response has been very slow,” he said in an interview Aug. 17.
Reif also expanded on her earlier statement that the sheriff had not fully complied with her subpoena.
“While we are still in the preliminary stages of the audit, and we only have some of the records required by the subpoena, I can confirm that we are looking at several hundred thousands of dollars in income raised and spent using county assets without any oversight,” she said Aug. 17.
“I am hopeful that the sheriff will fully comply with the subpoena by providing my office with all of the documents required by the end of next week,” said Reif.
Also on Aug. 17, the county commissioners office issued a statement distancing itself from the matter. The county has never formally funded the K-9s.
“The Chester County Sheriff is an independent elected official,” it read. “The K-9 Unit is managed by the Sheriff’s Office. As an independent official the sheriff can make her own policy decisions about how programs are operated and managed. All independent elected officials’ policy decisions are subject to the county code and other state and federal laws.”
The statement also mentioned the sheriff’s K-9 Academy, in which members of the staff, including K-9 Unit supervisor Lt. Harry McKinney, contract with other law enforcement agencies to train and certify K-9 officers, and the unit’s use of the Chester County Public Safety Training Campus.
“It is, and has been, the commissioners’ understanding that the K-9 unit and training academy were to be supported by funds raised by the sheriff,” it stated. “The Public Safety Training Campus has been used by the K-9 unit for training and, similar to other Chester County public safety agencies, was not charged a fee. The Sheriff’s K-9 Program helps to protect the courts and county buildings and is also called upon by many municipalities, schools, first responder, civic and community organizations.
In his comments, Muth referenced the fact that the Sheriff’s Office had already undergone its annual audit, and had received a relatively clean appraisal.
“The Sheriff’s Office undergoes an audit each year,” he said. “The 2017 audit was finalized earlier this year by the controller. The Sheriff’s Office position is that the controller has no right or authority to reopen a finalized audit. However, in the spirit of cooperation and transparency several prior years of records of the private fundraising efforts in support of the K-9 Unit were provided to the controller for her review. The K-9 unit would not exist without these private fundraising efforts.
‘The sheriff is very proud of the work the deputies and civilians have done in support of this nationally recognized unit that provides great service to the citizens of Chester County at little cost to the taxpayers,” Muth said.
Reif and Verwey, however, have stated that the records sought in the subpoena concern not the audit of the Sheriff’s Office itself, but rather the money that was raised over nine years through outreach efforts on the office’s pages on www. chesco.org, the county’s official website.