Legal experts not surprised by lack of criminal charges in Penn Hills schools probe
An Allegheny County grand jury spent two years digging into the underpinnings of the Penn Hills School District’s financial problems. It heard from witnesses and various financial experts, and obtained tens of thousands of documents through subpoenas to people, businesses and government agencies.
Residents and officials wondered who, if anyone, would be held accountable for the district’s financial meltdown. But in a 75page report released this week, the grand jury said it was unable to recommend what some observers had long anticipated: criminal charges.
That outcome did not surprise two Pennsylvania legal experts who examined the report. Although the findings present detailed accounts of mismanagement, financial ineptitude and failed oversight, they do not appear to depict any prosecutable wrongdoing, the experts said.
“It’s not hammering away at individuals nearly as much as it’s looking at the entire systematic process by which this was all done,” said Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor and law professor at Saint Vincent College. “The report really never seeks to go beyond that to say, ‘It was the responsibility of an individual and they used illegal influence.’”
Penn Hills School District has been driven to the brink of financial collapse through its borrowing to build two schools with state-of-the-art features nearly a decade ago. It is now about $172 million in debt and in the beginnings of state-ordered financial recovery status.
The grand jury recommended various legislative reforms, such as requiring a referendum when a school district hits 50 percent of its borrowing base limit; holding public officials liable if students are deprived of their right to a public education; and extending statutes of limitation for Ethics Act violations.
Mr. Antkowiak said he found the latter recommendation puzzling given what appeared to be a lack of evidence that would prove any ethics violations.
“The report is a thorough condemnation of the judgments made by the individuals over the course of a considerable amount of time,” he said. “But it does not get into any sort of specifics, any allusion to a quid quo pro for anything that was done.”
He added: “There is just nothing I read in this report that even comes close to making those specific allegations against anyone.”
Mike Manko, a spokesman for District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr., said that his office generally does not comment beyond the language in grand jury reports. But in general, he said, those types of reports “should be viewed in the macro sense, as well as a lesson to other [similar] entities that this is how you avoid getting into this situation.”
In 2016, Mr. Zappala’s office released another highprofile, school-related grand jury report that did not recommend charges.
Jurors examined whether Plum Borough School District administrators “ignored warning signs and allowed a child predator to continue his employment in the high school.” Although the report found years of “systematic failures” that allowed sex abuse to go unchecked, it recommended no charges because of technicalities in the law.
But others argue that the release of such a report without recommending charges oversteps the intended purpose of a grand jury and violates the due process rights of those accused of wrongdoing.
“The grand jury is not an instrument for social commentary,” said former U.S. attorney Peter Vaira of Philadelphia. “It’s for 23 laymen to decide whether or not there has been a crime. But as for making all these other assertions, that’s not the job of 23 laymen.”
Had they seen evidence of a crime, he said, “you can be sure” they would have recommended charges.
In December, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled on similar due process questions in its decision not to release the identities of 11 Roman Catholic clergymen named in a high-profile grand jury investigation of child sexual abuse. The state’s constitution protects a person’s reputation as “fundamental individual human right,” it noted.
Still, some Penn Hills residents and officials have critical of the report after state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale’s 2016 audit, which prompted the grand jury investigation and raised the specter of criminal charges.
“I think this was the biggest waste of taxpayer money I’ve ever seen, with no results,” current board president Erin Vecchio said Tuesday.
Ms. Vecchio, who served on the school board from 1988 to 2009, and was elected again in 2016, is named in the report but was out of office during much of the period covered. She has denied any wrongdoing in her role in the construction projects and has repeatedly called for criminal charges for others involved.
In her formal response to the grand jury report, Ms. Vecchio blamed the origins of the district’s financial free fall on what she claimed was part of a larger pay-to-play scheme involving state Rep. Anthony DeLuca, D-Penn Hills. Mr. DeLuca this week denied those accusations.
The grand jury tried to access materials from a previous statewide grand jury probe to determine if the conduct that Ms. Vecchio described was depicted. The county grand jury was unable to access that information, per the report.
“It was undoubtedly a reasonable attempt on the part of that grand jury to see if there was anything in those materials that may have been relevant,” Mr. Antkowiak said. “The bottom line is you don’t know.”
But based on the report, Penn Hills residents — who currently have the thirdhighest property tax rate in Allegheny County — likely have limited recourse moving forward, he said.
“Quite frankly, there are just times when public officials make bad judgments that cost the people whom they’re representing opportunities and tax dollars,” Mr. Antkowiak said. “And the classic remedy that’s always available is to vote those people out and vote others in.”