Middletown board has gone off half-cocked in political attack The supervisors are pursuing an embarrassing crusade against a colleague.
By Bob Martin

Robert McMonagle woke up to a knock on his door on Dec. 5, 2001. Seeing a person standing in the dark, he grabbed his Glock 17, flung open the door, and pointed the handgun at his visitor. It turned out to be James Auchinleck, a local lawyer. McMonagle had been elected the month before to the Middletown Township Board of Supervisors in Bucks County, and Auchinleck was serving him with papers to attend a court hearing three hours later on a recount challenge.

McMonagle accepted the papers and ultimately prevailed in the challenge. Auchinleck pressed no charges on the gun matter but he did file an incident report with Middletown Township police.

End of the story? No, just the beginning.

Last month - 29 months later - the Middletown supervisors directed their solicitor to take the matter to the State Ethics Commission and the Attorney General's Office for further review. And now John J. Kelly 3d, the supervisors chairman, is saying that McMonagle should "absolutely" resign. "We're adults, not just schoolyard kids playing," he said Wednesday. "As an elected official, you can't be out doing those things. He [McMonagle] defintely has violent tendencies."

For all the attention they are focusing on McMonagle, I say let's shine the light on the four supervisors who are seeking the probe.

First, how can this be a crime now if it wasn't a crime 30 months ago? And how can you make your case when your only witness declines to proceed? Second, here was a guy living in a wooded area near a highway who got a house call at 6 a.m. He stayed inside and drew (but did not fire) the weapon when he believed it was a reasonable and necessary means of protecting himself and his property. But we don't even need to get into Second Amendment questions. Suffice it to say that even an elected official is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. That premise seems irrelevant to the four accusing supervisors - Kelly, Jasper Caro, Ray Mongillo and Lisa Pflaumer. But in their zeal to discredit him, they've consistently stubbed their toes.

The cornerstone of their case is the incident report. I tried to get it by filing a records request with Township Solicitor James A. Downey 3d.

Downey didn't just deny me. He confused me, too.

"What are classified as police investigations are not public records...," he wrote. "As to whether or not the police choose to classify it [the incident] as an ongoing investigation is within their discretion... ." So is it a police investigation? I asked in a telephone interview. "I don't know whether it is or isn't. I don't pretend to step into the shoes of the Police Department."

Police Chief Francis McKenna was no more helpful. He didn't return my phone calls.

So at the heart of the case is a report that the public can't even see.

In fact, there's some question as to whether the supervisors have seen it. What Caro read from on April 13 was not the actual report but an anonymous paper titled "McMonagle incident report" that is alleged to be a summary of the real report.
I couldn't reach Caro for comment, but he told the Bucks County Courier Times last month, "Somebody just put a copy of this report in front of me at the meeting. Seeing it in writing outraged me, and I just felt something had to be done." The outrage ought to be over an elected official reading a document of unknown origin and passing it off as some sort of smoking pistol. Still, the other three supervisors concurred that this was a case for Downey to ship off to Harrisburg. The accusers even wanted it to go to the Ethics Commission, although such probes are not within its duties. "We investigate financial matters, not alleged firearms violations," chief counsel Vince Dopko said.

Downey did send a summary of the incident report to the Attorney General's Office, he said. Deputy press secretary Kevin Harley said Wednesday, "The only way we can get a case on something like this is from the district attorney. The district attorney has original jurisdiction for allegations such as this, not the attorney general. And she can pass it on only because of a conflict of interest or lack of resources." In other words, the attorney general will do nothing with it.

With no authority to remove an elected official, the Middletown supervisors have tried to humiliate McMonagle out of office. Instead, they've created a smoldering heap that reeks as much from politics as it does from lying around for 30 months. The only ones they've embarrassed are themselves.