Dec 31, 2023 By the Herald-Standard 12 min read

1. Election challenges, ballot errors cause difficulties in Fayette and Greene counties

Officials in Fayette and Greene counties faced a number of difficulties during the municipal election cycle.

In Fayette, the results of May’s primary election were challenged by county commissioner candidate and current Recorder of Deeds Jon Marietta Jr.

Marietta, who lost the GOP nomination for county commissioner by 121 votes to incumbent Scott Dunn, claimed that bleed-through on the paper ballots from pen markings could have caused tabulating issues with the scanning equipment.

In August, a judge signed a consent order to mandate a hand recount of six precincts’ worth of primary ballots along with the digital “cast vote record” showing the tally of the votes.

Following the two-day recount, one discrepancy was found, and it didn’t favor Marietta, who went on to file a request for injunctive relief against the election board. That request was denied by a county judge.

In Greene County, mail-in and absentee ballots contained mistakes.

County officials first had to recall those ballots after they instructed everyone who received them to cast a vote for district judge races. The races were only meant to be voted on in specific municipalities.

Then, on Oct. 28, a second error instructing voters to cast a ballot for three commissioner candidates was discovered.

WIth no time to recall those ballots and send out new ones, elections officials attempted to inform voters who already used mail-in ballots about the situation.

Leading up to the Nov. 7 election, the county’s elections office held later hours on weekdays and was open over the weekend so that those who voted for three candidates could come in and cast a new ballot. Those who voted for three were also able to head to their polling place and cast a provisional ballot.

Those who selected three candidates for the commissioners’ post had their votes in that race discarded.

Of the 1,484 mail-in ballots cast, it was found there were 548 in which people voted for three candidates in the commissioners race; however, the overvotes weren’t large enough to affect the final results.

2. Community action prompts withdrawal of injection well application in Nicholson Township

After the company G2 STEM LLC applied for a permit to dispose of fluids associated with oil and gas production into the Balltown Sandstone Formation about 3,400 feet underground in Nicholson Township, residents, an environmental protection organization and local, county and state elected officials rallied against it.

An injection well is used for the disposal of fluids into a repurposed conventional gas well. The process disposes of toxic wastewater (also called brine) produced by fracking with fluids.

Opponents of the proposal, including the Mountain Watershed Association (MWA) and the Nicholson Township Supervisors, raised concerns that the waste could contain heavy metals, man-made chemicals and radioactive materials that can spread through underground waterways to other parts of the township, county and possibly beyond.

The Fayette County commissioners unanimously voted to have the county department of planning, zoning and community development and the Fayette County Planning Commission develop an ordinance to limit potential sites for injection wells, and state Rep.Charity Grimm Krupa, R-Smithfield, circulated a co-sponsorship memorandum seeking a statewide ban of toxic oil and gas wastewater injection wells.

Before the MWA held a public meeting in August about the issue, the company withdrew their application for the injection well.

3. Additional theft-related charges filed against outgoing Uniontown treasurer

In May, Uniontown Treasurer Antoinette L. Hodge was charged by the Fayette County District Attorney’s office for allegedly stealing more than $112,000 from the Youghiogheny Western Baptist Association (YWBA), a collective of 27 area churches, when she was a chairwoman of the board of trustees.

Hodge allegedly forged checks and withdrew money from the YWBA’s money market account without approval. She faces 39 total charges, including 33 counts of forgery.

Police said the alleged thefts started in July 2018. The board voted to remove Hodge from her volunteer post last December, and contacted police about the missing funds in February.

In December 2022, Hodge faced her first set of charges when prosecutors alleged she stole nearly $107,000 in taxes paid to her as Uniontown’s elected treasurer. That investigation was launched in 2021, after several taxpayers received delinquent notices but had already paid their taxes.

Over a three-year period, police alleged Hodge spent $144,328 gambling at a local casino, and would frequent convenience stores to buy lottery tickets, often spending more than $1,000 on them daily.

Although Hodge did not resign from her position as treasurer, she lost in theMay primary to Francis Joby Palumbo on the Democratic ticket.

Hodge is currently awaiting trial on the cases in the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas.

4. Fayette County Jail opening delayed

Supply-chain issues have held up the official opening of the new Fayette County Jail.

County officials began laying the groundwork for the 114,500 square-foot facility in 2016, and officially started construction in March 2021 with a ribbon cutting held in May.

Located in Uniontown, the $44 million jail will replace the facility next to the courthouse where county inmates have been housed for more than 130 years.

In August, it was announced that the jail will be open for tours to the public by appointment only and officials initially said they hoped to have the facility fully operational by October.

However, that was pushed back due to a delay in delivering a manual smoke override system.

At their November business meeting, the commissioners said that the new jail is close to completion as the contractors were finalizing all the details and going through the final tests of all the systems.

Once all internal aspects are ready in the jail, the jail’s warden will coordinate moving inmates from the current facility to the new facility.

The move is expected to happen early 2024, but will not be announced to the public for safety and security reasons.

5. East Dunkard water problems hit boiling point with lengthy outage

Things appeared to be looking up this summer for customers in Greene County who rely on the much-maligned East Dunkard Water Authority after it was announced in June that Pennsylvania American Water Co. would be purchasing its assets for $5 million and taking over operations in 2024.

But then an issue at the authority’s water treatment plant in late October turned into an outright fiasco that left the 4,200 people in the network without water for four days.

The plant’s turbidity levels spiked Oct. 22, prompting a boil water advisory the following day. A conservation notice was eventually sent out to customers, but by Oct. 25, the system was depleted and all 1,800 homes and businesses were without water. It took three days for EDWA and the state Department of Environmental Protection to get the plant operating again and pump water back to customers.

In the aftermath of the incident, the DEP has asked for an emergency receivership be granted by the state Commonwealth Court to immediately hand over all operations to PAWC ahead of the sale.

Meanwhile, a dozen East Dunkard customers filed a lawsuit in Greene County Court of Common Pleas in October alleging that negligence by the water authority caused various health problems for them. More residents have signed onto the lawsuit following the water outage.

6. Newspapers get docket unsealed in Rostraver homicide case

For more than three months, the only information the public knew about the Rostraver Township strip mall shooting was that a suspect named Keven Van Lam was jailed in connection with the killing.

In a highly-unusual step, the public docket that lists the charges against a defendant and other information about a suspect’s home address, bail and upcoming hearing dates, was inexplicably withheld from public view.

That changed Feb. 8 when the state Superior Court sided with three newspapers – including the Observer-Reporter and Herald-Standard – and required the public docket to be made available while keeping investigative details in the affidavit sealed. While it was widely believed Lam had been charged with criminal homicide, the release of the docket a day after the court’s ruling was the first confirmation of his alleged ties to the killing of local businessman Boyke Budiarachman on Nov. 5, 2022.

A preliminary hearing held Oct. 18 – nearly a year after the shooting- shed more light on the mysterious killing of Budiarachman as he walked to his parked car outside the Rostraver strip mall. Investigators accused Lam of hiring a hitman and paying him $65,000 to kill Budiarachman after the two apparently had a falling out over their business dealings. Lam, who was living in North Strabane at the time of the killing, is jailed without bond while he awaits trial.

The state Superior Court is expected to publish a more robust opinion soon on the sealing of public dockets at the request of the newspapers and their attorneys with the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Washington, D.C.

7. Locals charged in Jan. 6 attack plead guilty, sentenced to prison

The dark chapter of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol came to a close locally when the federal court cases for several southwestern Pennsylvania people were adjudicated. Out of the eight people with ties to Washington and Fayette counties and the South Hills of Pittsburgh, all were convicted and most were sentenced to serve time in prison.

Shelley Stallings of Uniontown, who pleaded guilty in August 2022, was sentenced in April to serve two years in prison. Her estranged husband, Peter Schwartz, was convicted by a federal jury in December 2022 and sentenced in May to more than 14 years in prison, which at the time was the longest term for any J6 defendant.

Kenneth Grayson of Bridgeville completed his two-month prison term after being sentenced in December 2022 for trespassing inside the crypt area of the Capitol.

Jordan Mink of South Fayette, who used a baseball bat to smash windows at the Capitol, pleaded guilty to two federal charges in January and was sentenced in the summer to serve more than four years in a federal prison.

Dale “DJ” Shalvey was sentenced to serve 41 months in prison, while his wife, Tara Stottlemyer, was sentenced to serve eight months. The former Bentleyville couple was sentenced in May after pleading guilty in October 2022 to going onto the floor of the Senate and rummaging through official paperwork.

Philip “Flip” Vogel II and Debra J. Maimone pleaded guilty in June to stealing government-issued gas masks while inside the Capitol. Vogel, who is originally from Houston, Pa., was ordered to serve 30 days in prison followed by one year on supervised release. Maimone, who has ties to the Burgettstown area, was sentenced to spend two years on probation.

8. Greene DA charges commissioner, solicitor before AG throws out case

An error in the casting of lots to pick the order for how candidates would appear on the primary election ballot in Greene County turned a political fight into a legal battle.

The process had to be conducted twice after the first scheduled event on March 15 was not properly advertised to the public, which then raised questions about how the second casting of the lots was handled. With only Commission Chairman Mike Belding on the elections board, he and county solicitor Robert “Gene” Grimm conducted the second casting of lots March 23. Several candidates refused to draw lots, prompting them to be erroneously dropped to the bottom of the ballot order rather than election officials drawing for them to determine their positions.

Instead of filing a civil legal challenge with the Greene County Court of Common Pleas in an attempt to have the ballot selection process overturned, District Attorney David Russo, who was a Republican candidate running for re-election and adversely affected by the process, filed charges against Belding and Grimm on April 4. He referred the case to the state Attorney General’s office, which reviewed the facts and then dismissed the case a month later.

Russo lost his re-election bid to Brianna Vanata in the Republican primary. He’s now under investigation by the Attorney General for his handling of the situation after President Judge Lou Dayich determined he “committed gross negligence in performance of his duties” in filing the charges.

9. Towers come down at Hatfield’s Ferry

A number of structures at the shuttered Hatfield’s Ferry Power Plant at the border of Fayette and Greene counties were imploded this year.

The plant’s tall emission stacks came down in March, and two cooling towers were demolished in June.

In November, the boiler house was the last major structure to be brought down at the plant off of Route 21.

FirstEnergy owns the plant, which ceased operations in 2013 after more than 40 years of generating electricity. The company decided to remove the plant’s structures to pave the way for future development and eliminate the potential public safety risk posed by the vacant facility.

All of the minor demolition work is expected to be completed by early 2024, with topsoil brought in and grass planted in the spring. So far, no plans have been made for the 236-acre site. FirstEnergy will continue to retain ownership of the property, which will be maintained primarily as an open, grassy area.

10. New district attorney, coroner and controller elected in Fayette

The November election brought change to some row offices in Fayette County.

Republican Mike Aubele will take the helm as the county’s new district attorney. He defeated incumbent Rich Bower, who served in the post since his election in 2015, in the primary election and went on to best Democrat Jack Connor in November.

Both men campaigned on the need for change in the prosecutor’s office.

Voters also elected a new county coroner. Dr. Bob Baker, a Republican, ousted eight-term coroner Dr. Phillip Reilly.

A new controller will also enter office in 2024, after Republican Robb Rhodes beat Democrat Scott Abraham, who was first elected in 2015.