According to published reports along with other sources, on July 16, our President Judge, Kenneth Seamans ruled that Minority County Commissioner Michael Giangrieco, Esq., is disqualified from the Assessment Appeals Board, regarding matters of Clean and Green. The ruling was the result of Raymond Davis, Esq., filing a lawsuit on behalf of Rosemary, Todd and James Greenwood, in part requesting that Giangrieco be disqualified due to his involvement in multiple lawsuits against Cabot Oil and Gas, in which he is attempting on behalf of his clients to have gas leases voided.
Congratulations to Attorney Davis for stepping up to the plate and calling foul.
If representing an individual or entity is a conflict of interest as determined by this ruling, how about all the other representations this Commissioner and his firm represent? Do they not represent various municipalities and authorities? How about being a first cousin to the Coroner?It seems that there are all sorts of potential conflicts of interest. So what is the resolution to these conflicts? How will the minority be represented if due to these conflicts, the minority Commissioner cannot or should not enter the discussion or cast a vote?Maybe he should decide to either be an attorney and resign as Commissioner, or decide to be a Commissioner and resign from the law firm until his term ends.
Ray Davis has now received his reward for “stepping up to the plate and calling foul.” The word is that the County Solicitor has filed an injunction against Attorney Davis seeking to prohibit him from entering the Commissioner’s Office and the Assessment Office. According to one source, there is a hearing scheduled for Friday, August 1, 2008, at 11:00 A.M. The injunction was filed based upon the assertion that Attorney Davis harassed an assessment employee — and that the injunction is necessary to protect the county employees from his aggressive behavior.
Attorney Davis has been practicing law in Susquehanna County for over 30 years — and now, only a week after pointing out the existence of a conflict and prevailing in that court action — he is being sued by the county in an effort to prevent him from entering various offices in a public courthouse. Does this smell like retaliation to anyone else? For those who seek to cross these Commissioners, watch your backs. You may not even get a chance to yell out that the Emperor has no clothes before you are served with an injunction as well! The best part for us — the taxpayers — is we are paying for this circus — from the solicitor’s salary, the judge’s salary, the court staff’s salary — the only person paying his own way will be Attorney Davis, who will have to cough up his personal funds to hire his own attorney to protect his right to enter the courthouse!
Hopefully, after Attorney Davis prevails, he will hire a good civil rights attorney to represent him — but, then again, you and I will be paying for the settlement that he receives from the County for violating his rights.
For those who wish to congratulate Attorney Davis, it might be better to appear at the heaing on Friday to provide moral support for his situation as well as to demonstrate to the Commissioners that our community will not stand for these intimidating tactics.
Thank goodness for two sides to every story, please let me communicate what I know.It has been stated that former solicitor Raymond Davis has repeatedly overstepped his bounds with Commissioner Warren, always waiting for her to be alone to attack her sincerity regarding the clean and green program and claiming that Commissioner Giangeico is only there to take her down. It’s been stated that Mr. Davis’ behavior was questionable a few weeks ago when he confronted Commissioner Warren. His out of control actions lead to the chief clerk stepping between Mr. Davis and Ms. Warren. I understand that Commissioner Warren was encouraged to file suit against Mr. Davis at that time and was reluctant to do so based on her posture as a public official. When this county employee was verbally attacked, harassed and felt threatened by Mr. Davis, it was said that Commisioner Warren then declared something needed to be done to protect county employees. Kudos to Commissioner Warren! I beleive that just the day before, another resident needed to be escorted from the assessment office by the Sheriff’s department. I also ask you to attend the hearing this Friday. The facts are if Attorney Davis had behaved in a professional manner it would not have come to this. Even if he is found innocent of the charges, the truth has been brought to the attention of the public and sometimes that’s justice enough.As a frequent flyer in the courthouse I find this administration working for all the residents in the county, not their friends or political parties. How can we ask for more?
I believe Friday’s hearing could prove interesting. I have heard Attorney Davis described many ways but never as “out of control” as taxpayerpayingattention did in a previous post.
Some further things to think about at the hearing… are the county employees under subpoena to testify going to be paid by taxpayer dollars while in court? And are these same courthouse EMPLOYEES expected to give testimony that supports the position of the commissioners? And if their testimony doesn’t support their bosses’ story, how secure is their job future with the county?
In response to “taxpayer paying attention” I would make the following points:
1. Who has stated that “former solicitor Raymond Davis has repeatedly overstepped his bounds with Commissioner Warren.” More interesting, I wonder what the “bounds” are, and who set the “bounds” that have been overstepped. Does any person who questions a public official repeatedly without getting an answer “overstep their bounds?” Does a public official suddenly have the power to banish a questioner when they deem that the “bounds” have been crossed? How should a citizen know what line they cannot cross before being sued by the Commissioner? I would suggest that if a person cannot handle a constituent, even if the person is angry and demanding, then the person should consider another line of work. The solution should not be a lawsuit.
2. It is incredulous to suggest that Attorney Davis has been “always waiting for her to be alone to attack her sincerity.” First, I would suspect that Attorney Davis has better things to do than simply “always wait” for Commissioner Warren to be alone — this assertion is ridiculous on its face. Moreover, the suggestion that he intends to question Commissioner’s Warren’s “sincerity” is likewise absurd. What does “sincerity” have to do with anything — who cares is an elected official is sincere or not — the question is actions — not intentions.
3. The suggestion that Attorney Davis was “out of control” is ludicruous. If this were true, then the police would have been called. Of course, they were not called - nor did the Commissioner deem it appropriate to take any action, apparently despite being encouraged to “file suit, whatever that means. What type of suit would have been filed? It was not until the Commissioners had egg on their face that suddenly the conduct was “out of control.” A sad testament to the current administration.
As I was typing this, I just received the news that the County has withdrawn its suit — another indication of just how ugly it was going to be for them at the hearing — they do not want the truth to come out — although this vindicates Attorney Davis - we can all hope that he will not let this go so easily - someone has to stand up to these people.
4.
Wow, beat her up because she tried to protect an employee that has now changed her story.Perhaps the employee and co-workers need to be asked what Attorney Davis said to them earlier this week. Why don’t you ask Commissioner Warren, I bet she’ll tell you what happened, or you can assume forever.
slander
A type of defamation. Slander is an untruthful oral (spoken) statement about a person that harms the person’s reputation or standing in the community. Because slander is a tort (a civil wrong), the injured person can bring a lawsuit against the person who made the false statement.
– taken from http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/85BAB88B-0660-4AB6-A2F5C32E716A6D52/alpha/S/
Careful there… unless you were present at all times, accusing the employee may bring you into a lawsuit of your own. You might be better off waiting for the facts on this one. That is, if the county continues with the suit and lets the truth be known in court!
To suscoresident, the questions you now raise are the same ones MANY people, the local bar members and this blog site included, tried to get the voters to think about BEFORE last November’s election. What we are seeing here is just the tip of the iceberg…the minority commissioner will have many conflict allegations shadowing him for the next three and a half years, if he lasts that long. And in the meantime his supposed vigorous representation of the residents of Susquehanna County will be forgotten. Being a commissioner was always all about HIM and his limitless ego, not about you or other residents. Now you see it coming home to roost. We really did try to warn you.
What’s more, the Independent today reported that the county is going to appeal Giangrieco’s removal from assessment cases involving Cabot. WHY in God’s name is the COUNTY appealing Giangrieco’s removal from assessment cases involving Cabot O & G when the conflict that caused his removal arose not from his county position but from the lawsuits filed by his PRIVATE LAW PRACTICE; are we the taxpayers supposed to pay for what is essentially HIS appeal of a conflict blatantly obvious to all but himself??!! This is an outrage…HE should be footing the bill for the appeal, which I can assure you is not cheap, NOT the taxpayers! Mr. Giangrieco after all is the one who chose to walk on the thin ice of conflict by wearing two hats at the same time. Having made his choice, the financial consequences should be HIS, not the county’s!
I’m with PoorRichard. The withdrawal of the petition seems to indicate the commissioners realized the hearing would not go in their favor. Perhaps if the Commissioners thought Attorney Davis said anything to the employee or co-workers earlier this week that was improper they would NOT have withdrawn the petition. Two sides to every story, right? It is this poster’s thought that Attorney Davis probably had some very good witnesses on his subpoena list. But will the real story ever really come out?
What are the taxpayers of the county getting from all of this? Can anyone point out ONE original project for the betterment of the county (and/or its taxpayers) this administration has proposed?
The county employee did not change any story — the Commissioners made it up. The alleged incident in the assessment office was investigated by the Montrose Borough Police. From what I heard, the police officer interviewed the employee - and there were no allegations of any shouting, threats, or intimidating behavior whatsoever. The employee was upset because Attorney Davis had indicated that he was going to obtain a subpoena for certain information after he had been told that he could not have what he was asking for. The prospect of a subpoena apparently upset the county employee. There were other employees obvioulsy in the Assessment Office — and they confirmed that there was no shouting, vulgarity, threats or anything disorderly. The police officer took the report — and did nothing because Attorney Davis did nothing wrong!
The County had not subpoenaed the police officer to testify at friday’s hearing — but Attorney Davis had. The truth was going to come out — and hopefully it will come out somewhere beyond this blog. The press ran a story this week which contained the baseless allegations that the County made against Attorney Davis. I certainly hope the the reporter does an investigative report next week outlining the County’s egregious behavior.
I also agree with justabumpkin — why should the taxpayers pay for an appeal on behalf of Commissioner Giangrieco based upon his disqualification from the Assessment Board because of his interests in his private law practice? Why are they even appealing it in the first place — so he cannot vote on some of the assessment appeals — there are still two Commissioners on the board who can vote - and get the job done - and, if they do not like the result, they can still appeal any individual case - so why is the County spending the money on an appeal of this issue created by the private business interests of the disqualified commissioner?
If you are looking for an answer to this question - Be careful who you ask and how you ask it — you do not want to be slapped with an injunction. I would suggest that you have many witnesses with you before you approach any particular commissioner with this question — at least then you will be provided with some protection against false accusations.
I have been following these posts and read the story in the paper. What I have not read is when the Board of Commissioners voted to take all these actions. Did the minority Commissioner vote on these actions which would openly be a conflict as the actions involve him directly?Was the vote unanimous? Was the meeting advertised? If there was a meeting, was it one of those nine minute meetings?How about some transparency here! Maybe if there was more of that there would be less conflict behind closed doors that seems to bubble out in public creating these problems that could be solved with common sense and civility.I thought the Kelly administration was the group of constant turmoil.The Warren administration seems heading in the same direction. Let’s hope not!
It certainly would be interesting to find out which Commissioners ordered the county solicitor to file the injunction against Attorney Davis. You would think that all three would discuss the matter before embarking on such a perilous courst of action in suing a local attorney who has worked in Susquehanna Coutny for 30-plus years. If this were the case, then the minority commissiner’s position would not be relevant - the majority would prevail.
While the Kelly Administration had its problems — it never attempted to subvert the judicial system to its will or abuse civil process to violate a citizen’s rights. These actions of the Warren Administration have gone in a direction that Susquehanna County has never known — a much darker place where criticism is met with retaliation and censorship.