Poor record-keeping could hamper analysis of Lower Southampton zoning records

Posted: August 3, 2018

Lower Southampton zoning records are in such disarray that it could be expensive to perform a deeper dive into department operations than a recent, two-year review that found “irregularities,” according to a township supervisor.

The potential cost is expected to be a talking point when supervisors meet Wednesday to discuss whether they will authorize further reviews of previous zoning permits and subdivision and land development projects.

Supervisor Kim Koutsouradis said that Keystone Municipal Services President Richard O’Brien has told him years of poor record keeping would “greatly” impact the cost of a further review, though O’Brien didn’t put a dollar figure on the cost.

This news organization was unsuccessful in reaching O’Brien for comment.

The township paid Keystone $5,000 to review a sample of subdivision and land development plan files and zoning permits following the February retirement of zoning officer Carol Drioli, who headed the department for 16 years. The supervisors stated at the time Drioli’s retirement presented an opportunity to verify compliance with state building codes and identify where improvements could be made.

Keystone randomly chose seven subdivision and land development applications and 19 zoning and building permit applications between 2015 and last year, and found many contained sloppy record-keeping, including the failure to keep all building, zoning and land development records associated with a property together. The consultant also said there were misplaced or missing land development plans, missing inspector signatures, missing inspection reports, missing permit applications and “numerous” projects improperly issued permits without going through the land development approval process, which adds time and expense to a project.

Koutsouradis said he’s concerned about the cost of further analysis, but he also wants to know if the mistakes revealed in the Keystone report are anomalies or represent a pattern that should be looked at further, and if the township could face any liability.

What we found

This news organization, in its ongoing review of past Lower Southampton zoning department files, found incidents of missing, inaccurate or incomplete records files for projects that have been completed or considered still active. A sample of what we found:

• Between 2013 and 2018, Eastern Dawn Mobile Home Park on Brownsville Road obtained approvals for 25 building permits for new mobile homes, but there were no permit applications in the property file. The file also contained documents showing 11 approved building permits for roof work, five approved mechanical permits and two approved plumbing permits, but the file only contained two applications: one in 2014 for a mechanical permit to replace a heat and oil storage tank and one in 2016 for a roof repair.
• St. George Georgian Church in the 400 block of Philmont Avenue had its building permit approved in February 2016 to add a new front and side porch that would be “larger than the existing porch,” according to the application filed with Lower Southampton, but the building permit application does not provide square footage of the project.
• A March 2018 demolition permit application for a two-story, 4,500-square-foot building in the 500 block of Bustleton Avenue was approved despite missing details of the project, signatures from the building inspector and zoning official, and notarization.
• The owner of a nail salon in the 500 block of Andrews Road had a building permit approved to add a wall and interior door to the storefront, but there was no application in the property file.
• A building permit application approved in January 2018 for repairs to a two-story office building in the 500 block of Bustleton Pike lists the existing building area as 16,752 square feet with 15 off-street parking spaces. That doesn’t match an application approved in April 2018 for the same building, which lists the existing building area as 3,000 square feet, the total building area as 1,410 square feet, and 12 off-street parking spaces.
• A second-story, 1,200-square-foot addition in the 1500 block of Front Street that received approvals in 2016 had all relevant applications in the property file, but was missing applications for a mechanical permit issued in 2016 for a central air system and an application for a fence permit approved in 2015.

“A big fear of mine is we may not ever know exactly what the damage was done to the township financially. But I do feel we just can’t sit on our hands and do absolutely nothing about it. We owe it to our residents to at least look into this further than what we already have,” he said.

Township Solicitor Francis Dillon declined to comment on if the township could be held legally liable for any deficiencies in the zoning department property files.

“I will not answer your questions. I answer to my client,” Dillon said.

Lower Southampton Supervisors Chairman Keith Westley also declined to answer questions, but he said a discussion is an agenda item for Wednesday’s supervisors meeting.

“I think most, if not all, of your questions will be answered at the meeting,” Westley added, in an email.

A half dozen residents last month called on the board to conduct a further review of previous zoning department records following a presentation on Keystone Municipal Services’ findings.

“Our fear is that while this exercise reviewed a sampling of applications there were many applications that were not reviewed that will contain similar irregularities,” Keystone Municipal President Richard O’Brien wrote in the report.

The township annually receives between 2,500 and 3,000 permit applications.

The state Municipal Planning Code, which guides local municipal subdivision and land development ordinances, requires townships to maintain records of all permits issued and land development plans.

Lower Southampton could find itself on the defense if it does not straighten out its property record files, according to Herman Slaybaugh, co-chairman of the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Education Institute and a former zoning officer and planner for State College.

Without complete and accurate records, the township could have difficulty defending itself if a lawsuit was brought contending that it didn’t comply with the Municipal Planning Code. It also could find itself unable to prove definitively if a zoning violation predates the enactment or changes involving local land development and zoning ordinances, which would make it a nonconforming use.

If a zoning permit is approved, the implication is that the township is confirming the work complies with state code requirements, Slaybaugh said. But without a record of needed inspections, there is no way to confirm that.

“Permits establish a record so a township knows what ... is going on,” Slaybaugh said. “If you can’t find out what you’ve done, that is pretty sloppy bookkeeping. The whole purpose of having permits is to verify a property was built in compliance. If you can’t index that and go back and find it, that was an exercise in futility.”

O’Brien told the board last month that the review didn’t find any “malfeasance.”

He described the mistakes found as common ones, though the volume of mistakes was “a little more than you want to see.”

Following the July board meeting, this news organization reviewed the permits and plans included in the Keystone report, as well as earlier projects that were not part of the report. The news organization also reviewed additional property files unrelated to the Keystone report.

The review found numerous instances of missing or incomplete documents involving permit applications, project statements and escrow documents, and as well as permit approvals with missing township or consultant signatures. Some files also contained documents associated with different projects.

Without a permit application, it cannot be accurately determined if permit fees were properly calculated since the size of a project, its estimated cost, and the amount of work proposed are used to calculate the fees owed the township, according to its fee schedule.

Also missing are physical copies of mechanical and plumbing permit inspections performed by the third-party firm the township contracts with for the plumbing, electric and mechanical work, said the township’s new zoning officer, William Oettinger.

Oettinger confirmed that the department only has physical copies of previous electric inspections, and those cards are stored in the building inspector’s office, not the property files. He added that his review of property files found “numerous” approved permits that were not properly signed.

The current state of the prior recordkeeping is “definitely” an impediment to conducting further reviews of past projects, Oettinger said. He added he does not have the staff available to correct years of property files. Currently, inactive and completed property, permit and plan files are stored together in one place and can be retrieved.

Oettinger added his office is now following the Keystone report recommendations regarding record keeping for new permit applicants, and that he handles the first review of all permit applications.

Archivist: Transfer of Bensalem Catholic saint remains a rare, delicate operation

Posted July 24, 2018

When St. Katharine Drexel is moved from the Bensalem motherhouse that she founded to the Philadelphia church she attended as a child, she will become the first American whose intact remains will be moved after achieving sainthood, according to one Catholic scholar.

“This does not happen every day,” said Patrick Hayes, archivist for the Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, whose office is across from the St. John Neumann Shrine in Philadelphia, where the 19th-century Redemptorist bishop is entombed.

The transfer of a saint’s remains is so rare that virtually no known protocols exist for how it should be done, said Hayes, with whom the Philadelphia Archdiocese consulted about the upcoming Drexel move.

“There is no manual. The prospect of moving St. Katharine Drexel into the basilica is kind of an ad hoc process,” he said Monday.

Details of how that process will take place will be revealed Tuesday when the Philadelphia Archdiocese unveils its plans for moving the founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament order to a newly constructed tomb at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Center City.

Hayes is familiar with the delicate handling of Catholic saint remains.

The body of St. John Neumann has changed locations about five times since his death in 1860, but always within St. Peter The Apostle Church on North Fifth Street where the Philadelphia native was buried, Hayes said.

Neumann was first exhumed in 1902 when he was under consideration for sainthood, which he achieved in 1977, he said. The casket was in bad shape after more than 40 years underneath the damp church basement floor, but Neumann himself had not deteriorated much, Hayes said. Among Roman Catholic beliefs is that divine intervention allows some human bodies, particularly those of saints, to avoid the normal decomposition process after death.

After Vatican officials confirmed his remains, Neumann was re-interred in the same place, below the church altar. On the eve of his beatification, he was exhumed again, but this time he was entombed in a glass encasement, which was turned into the shrine altar in 1964, Hayes said.

The only known rules for moving relics under Catholic canon law, which include the body or body parts of saints, is they cannot be moved if they are buried in an immovable altar, Hayes said. He added that to his knowledge Drexel’s tomb is not part of such an altar.

Typically, if a saint’s remains are moved at all, it takes place before the person is beatified, among the last steps toward achieving sainthood, Hayes said.

St. Marianne Cope is the only other American whose remains were transferred after achieving sainthood; Cope devoted her life to missionary work among leper colonies in Hawaii until her death in 1918.

She originally was buried in Hawaii but her remains were exhumed and transferred to a Syracuse, New York, motherhouse in 2005, after she was beatified. Her remains were returned to Honolulu in 2014 — two years after she was canonized — after her order announced plans to sell their motherhouse, which was in dangerously deteriorated condition.

But not all of Cope’s remains moved to Hawaii; some stayed with her religious order in New York for their new chapel.

Since Drexel’s body is intact, it is likely the crypt where she is buried will be moved as well. Hayes did not know if the tomb could be dismantled. He also did not know how Drexel was interred, but the order’s archives likely have those details. The Philadelphia Archdiocese now possesses those archives.

What is clear is that the process of moving Drexel will be a delicate one.

“Treating her body with anything but the utmost respect and reverence would fly in the face, (of the dignity accorded to saints)” Hayes said. “The sisters will want to see care given to their foundress.”

The Philadelphia-born heiress to the Drexel family fortune gave up her wealth to better the lives of the American Indians and African Americans in the western United States. She died at the Bensalem convent’s motherhouse at age 96 in 1955. The shrine officially closed to the public as of January 1.

The sisters of the Blessed Sacrament announced in May 2016 plans to reduce their financial burden by selling property including the 44-acre shrine property, which drew between 5,000 and 6,000 visitors to Bucks County each year. Havertown developer Aquinas has a tentative deal to purchase the land, but Bensalem council has yet to decide on a proposal to rezone the land from institutional to residential. Aquinas officials previously suggested building a 55-and-older housing development.

Drug treatment advocates worry about New Britain breast milk homicide case

Posted July 19. 2018

methadone and other drugs in his system when he died.

The recent arrest of a New Britain Township woman on homicide charges in the drug overdose death of her breastfed infant has local medical and drug treatment professionals concerned that the case will spread misinformation about medication-assisted drug treatment and breast feeding.

Samantha Jones

Amanda Johns, who runs a parenting group at Aldie Foundation Counseling Center in Doylestown Township, said some clients have worried about how they will be viewed following the July 13 arrest of Samantha Jones, 30, on homicide charges in the death of her 11-week old son.

“The assertion by those in the community, who through online comments have suggested that women who utilize methadone during pregnancy should have automatic removal of children, or that women who utilize methadone should not breastfeed, has caused hurt and upset among our moms who found sobriety through medication-assisted treatment,” said Johns, a clinical outreach worker.

Court documents allege that Remington Jones died April 2 as a result of a fatal combination of methadone, amphetamine and methamphetamine, which a medical examiner concluded was ingested through his mother’s breast milk. Court documents state that Jones, who also has a 2-year-old son, was prescribed methadone while pregnant with Remington and continued on the drug after she delivered, which is considered a common and effective treatment for opiate dependence. The document didn’t mention anything about Jones’ previous use of methamphetamine or amphetamine, which is a methamphetamine byproduct.

Bucks County prosecutor Kristin McElroy, who initially called the case “a sad and tragic example of the opiate crisis,” acknowledged in an email she is aware that women can take prescribed methadone and continue to breast feed, but “the cause of this (death) is the combination of methadone, methamphetamine and amphetamine.”

Child advocate Cathleen Palm, founder and executive the Center for Children’s Justice in Berks County, suggested that the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services put out immediate guidance to child welfare agencies to reinforce with clients when breastfeeding is appropriate for mothers taking opiate-replacement drugs.

“If I were a mom, I’d be in a panic at this time,” Palm said. “No mom wants to injure their own child.”

Available medical research suggests that methadone in any dose cannot accumulate in breast milk in concentrations that would be harmful for breastfeeding infants in the short term; long-term outcomes of infants breastfed by mothers taking opiate-replacement drugs has not been well studied.

A 2011 study found breastfed infants, even those born to mothers taking a high does of 200 milligrams of the drug a day, received a minuscule amount of methadone through breast milk, in amounts well below the doses typically given every 12 hours to treat opioid withdrawal symptoms in newborns. 

Other studies suggest abruptly weaning breastfed infants of women on methadone maintenance can trigger an increase in drug withdrawal symptoms in the child.

Medical organizations including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists support breast feeding with medically supervised opioid-dependent mothers because it offers advantages, including critical parent-child bonding and health benefits that are critical for infants with prenatal drug exposure, who are often born premature. 

A 2009 study showed a 50 percent reduction in the need for medical interventions for neonatal abstinence syndrome in methadone-exposed babies that breast fed for more than three days.

But it’s a risk that some mothers won’t take.

Most women prescribed methadone through the Penn Foundation, a Sellersville behavioral health treatment center, choose not to breast feed, said Gordon Horning, coordinator of the center’s Mobile Engagement Services program, which works with drug-dependent new parents.

“This basically was the fear — that they did not want to see their babies getting the drug through breastfeeding,” he said.

Amphetamine and methamphetamine are transferable in breast milk, but studies examining the effects on newborns as a result of this transfer has not been well studied. The prevailing medical recommendation is to discourage breastfeeding in women abusing either drug.

In the Jones case, court documents allege that she told authorities she had recently started Remington on infant formula because she was not producing enough breast milk.

The day of his death, Jones told police that she tried to feed him at 3 a.m., but she was not sure if he latched onto the breast and received milk. A few hours later, the baby was crying again and Jones said she asked her husband to make the baby a formula bottle, which he did. Jones fed the child the bottle and put him back in his bassinet.

An hour later Jones claims she woke to find Remington pale with bloody mucus coming out of his nose, police said. The infant was pronounced dead a short time later.

Lower Southampton supervisors urged to dig deeper into zoning, building department

Posted: July 11, 2018

Lower Southampton supervisors

A half-dozen residents Wednesday night urged Lower Southampton supervisors to take a “deeper dive” into its zoning and building department operations after a two-year look back found “irregularities,” but most board members said they first want to look at the cost of such an undertaking.

Supervisor Kim Koutsouradis offered a motion to authorize Keystone Municipal Services to conduct an analysis of project records going back to 2002 — the same year that now retired zoning officer Carol Drioli assumed the job — for any project more than $25,000. But the motion died for lack of a second.

“We owe it to our township to know what the hell is going on,” Koutsouradis said.

Newly appointed zoning officer William Oettinger estimated the township lost $37,000 in fees it would have otherwise collected if projects had gone through the proper land development approval process.

Township officials Wednesday night did not reveal how much it has cost taxpayers to hire a third-party consultant to do electric, plumbing, energy, mechanical and accessibility plan reviews and inspections or when the outside company was hired. The hiring was necessary because the current in-house building inspector is not certified in those areas as required under law.

Oettinger added that his office is now going “backwards” with applicants who received building permits improperly without first obtaining land development approval to require them to go through the process retroactively. His office is also taking steps to implement the recommendations in the Keystone report, but that it’s going to take a while.

“I will say this, it isn’t going to be corrected overnight,” he said.

Read more

Read Keystone Municipal Services’ report on Lower Southampton’s zoning and building department: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4571739-Keystone-Report.html

Earlier this year the supervisors authorized spending $5,000 for Keystone to review a sample of subdivision and land development plans and building and zoning permit applications. The review was ordered to examine the department’s processes and procedures, verify compliance with state codes and identify any improvements that could be made.

Chairman Keith Westley repeatedly reminded the audience of about 30 people that the supervisors were under no obligation to do the review, but did so to see where improvements could be made.

The company reviewed seven subdivision and land development applications and 19 zoning and building permit applications between 2015 and last year. Oettinger estimates the township receives 2,500 to 3,500 permit applications annually.

Keystone Municipal Services President Richard O’Brien attended the board meeting to provide an overview of the 12-page report, which found poor record-keeping, missing land development plans, missing inspector signatures and inconsistencies between documents in some project files.

O’Brien added that he did not see any “maleficence” that occurred, though the township did violate the state Municipal Planning Code when it approved permits in 2015 for the construction of a three-story office building in the 500 block of Bustleton Avenue without first requiring the applicant to get land development approval.

The report noted Keystone also discovered a second two-story office building currently under construction on the same property was also issued permits without the same applicant going through the land development approval process.

Drioli attended the meeting Wednesday and initially attempted to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting but was asked to hold her questions until the agenda item. She said that she had questions about the report findings and added she had not seen the report. She did not speak after O’Brien’s presentation and declined to comment after the meeting.

O’Brien said the main irregularity with the subdivision and land development plans was the lack of recorded plans located in the property file. After the meeting he said that applications and recorded plans were filed separately. Among Keystone’s recommendation is that those items be kept with the property file.

Westley asked O’Brien if the problems found in the records were considered common mistakes.

O’Brien replied the short answer was yes, but volume “were a little more than you want to see.”

The report’s main recommendation is the township should hire experienced support for Oettinger, who is also the township’s fire marshal. Westley acknowledged the board may have to hire a part-time or full-time employee in the zoning department.

Residents urged the supervisors to dig deeper into the department’s previous operations to see if there was any pattern to the irregularities. Westley said the issue will be discussed at the next supervisor workshop meeting.

Westley replied that there are things the board wants to address, but that it needed to look at costs of a deeper report. Supervisor Joe McFadden suggested an internal review might be possible rather than paying an outside consultant.

“We want to see how far it goes,” resident Scott Russell said. “The residents want you to go deeper.”

Report finds ‘irregularities’ in Lower Southampton Zoning and Building Department

Posted: July 5, 2018

An outside municipal consultant has found irregularities with Lower Southampton’s building and zoning department operations under its previous director, including “numerous” development projects issued permits without completing the required approval process, according to a copy of a report obtained by this news organization.

Lower Southampton Township Building

“Our fear is while this exercise reviewed a sampling of applications, there were many applications that were not reviewed that will contain similar irregularities,” wrote Keystone Municipal Services President Richard O’Brien in the June 11 report.

Earlier this year, Lower Southampton supervisors authorized Keystone to perform a two-year review of zoning and land development permit applications following the retirement of the department’s long-time director, Carol Drioli. The review was ordered to examine the department’s processes and procedures, verify compliance with state codes and identify any improvements that could be made.

A zoning officer generally serves as gatekeeper for applicants seeking to develop a property. The job duties may include determining if an applicant needs to seek formal subdivision and land development approval, which can be an expensive and lengthy process.

The report’s main recommendation is the township should hire “experienced” support for the current zoning officer to provide detailed reviews of subdivision and land development applications and zoning permits “while understanding and enforcing the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code requirements.”

The report examined seven subdivision and land development applications and files as well as 19 zoning and building permit applications between 2015 and last year. Keystone found multiple examples of poor record-keeping, lack of oversight, missing land development plans, missing signatures and inconsistencies between documents, according to the report.

The consultant also found the township’s in-house building inspector lacked the necessary certifications to perform key elements of inspection and plan reviews the job requires. It also found “numerous” files that indicated the inspector approved portions of construction using photos applicants submitted of the work and without on-site field inspections.

The township is paying an unidentified outside company to do plumbing, mechanical and accessibility plan reviews and inspections, according to the report, which also recommends the township hire an outside company to perform energy reviews and inspections that involve insulation and heating and cooling because the in-house inspector lacks that certification, too, though he had been performing the work.

The report cited the most “egregious” violation of the Pennsylvania Municipal Planning Code involved two office buildings in the 500 block of Bustleton Avenue. Both projects should have been required to obtain formal land development approvals, but instead were issued permits without them, according to the report.

One of the projects replaced a one-story concrete-block garage with a three-story office building in 2015, according to the report.

“This office cannot imagine that a zoning officer or building inspector with experience working in a community would have issued this approval without the project first obtaining land development approval,” the report said.

The second, two-story office building, which is currently under construction, was only discovered after the consultants visited the property to verify information about the parking area associated with a building permit issued for the three-story office building. The second office building is located in front of the three-story building on the same property.

The report recommended the township engineer discuss the second office project and site conditions to see if public improvements including parking, storm water regulations and site lighting were reviewed and approved. As of Monday, construction at the property was continuing.

The report mentioned that the property owner came into the zoning office with another building application while Keystone was conducting its evaluation. The report did not provide any information about that latest application.

When the owner was asked how the previous application for the three-story office building was approved without going through the land development process, he said he was told as long as the building stayed within the original footprint of the garage, no land development plan was required, the report said.

“This is obviously an incorrect statement,” the report added.

What the report’s findings could potentially mean for property owners of the completed — or underway — projects remain unknown.

Lower Southampton supervisors have not officially discussed or released the report. This news organization filed a right to know request seeking a copy last month and the township requested a 30-day extension, citing the need for legal review; in the meantime, a copy of the report was provided to this news organization by a source.

Township Manager John McMenamin declined to answer questions, as the report is undergoing a legal review, but said it is scheduled to be discussed at the July 11 supervisors meeting.

This news organization was unsuccessful in attempts to reach Drioli for comment as well as supervisors Joe McFadden and Ed Shannon after leaving voice and email messages. Supervisors Keith Wesley and Ray Weldie declined comment.

Supervisor Kim Koutsouradis said the board had not discussed the report as a group, but he read it and found the details troubling.

“I find many issues that are rather disturbing; there were many issues that were under the control of our former zoning officer,” he said. “I also have many questions I’d like answered with it as well.”

Wolf to sign bill to help protect opioid-dependent newborns

Posted: June 27, 2018

Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to sign legislation Thursday that would close a loophole in a 2015 state law and assure that newborns exposed in the womb to narcotics prescribed to their mothers do not fall through the safety net created to keep them safe after they go home.

Both the state House and Senate last week passed a bill that would fix exemptions in Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services Law and spell out new guidelines for handling referrals through child welfare and health care providers. It’s a move that child advocates have been urging for the last two years.

“Our goal is to make sure that everybody in our Commonwealth, in particular our infants who are born dependent on opioids, are given the best chance for a better life; that means that their mother receives treatment and the infant receives the treatment that may be required as well,” said Sen. Judy Schwank, D-Berks.

At least five newborns in the state have been diagnosed daily with signs of narcotics withdrawal, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, in the 162 days since Wolf declared a state of emergency in response to the opiate and opioid epidemic. The Jan. 10 declaration made NAS a temporary reportable health condition in the state.

Wolf on Thursday renewed the declaration for another 180 days.

The new legislation comes days before a June 30 deadline to comply with the federal Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act, or CAPTA, or risk losing $1 million in federal child welfare funding. The 2003 federal law requires states to develop policies to assure that all newborns with prenatal narcotics or alcohol exposure, or who show signs of withdrawal, have a plan of safe care in place before they are discharged from the hospital.

Pennsylvania’s law specifically exempts referrals for drug-dependent children up to age 1 who are born to mothers who took prescribed narcotics as directed under medical supervision. Those include opiate-replacement drugs commonly prescribed to heroin users during pregnancy, and can result in withdrawal symptoms in newborns.

The legislation was added as an amendment to a House bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Murt, R-152, of Hatboro, that requires Pennsylvania schools to prominently display a poster containing the statewide hotline number for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect.

The amendment requires health care workers report Pennsylvania children under age 1 who are identified as being affected by prenatal substance use or have withdrawal symptoms, and specify that the notification is “not deemed child abuse.” The change removes county child welfare agencies as the sole agency responsible for conducting immediate safety and risk assessments and developing safe care plans, though they will continue to handle referrals until new guidelines are released sometime later this year by the departments of Health and Drug and Alcohol Programs.

The delay in changing the law has centered on drafting protections that do not unintentionally punish the mother with a substance abuse disorder, which discourages those women from seeking prenatal care and drug treatment, according to advocates.

Cathleen Palm, founder and executive director of the Center for Children’s Justice in Berks County, is part of a state work group helping draft those protocols. She called the legislation creating a standardized protocol combined with a public health approach a huge step in the right direction to protecting babies and connecting their families with social and behavior services.

“The way the law works now, it’s child welfare or nowhere and that is the problem. We know one reason people were not putting infants and families on the radar is because it felt the only door that would open was the child welfare door and people so disliked that it was the child welfare door,” she said.

Montgomery County lawmaker wants only sex offenders on state sex offender registryPos

Posted: May 25, 2018

A veteran Montgomery County lawmaker plans to introduce legislation that would require only individuals convicted of sexually motivated crimes to register as sex offenders in the state.

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Upper Moreland, confirmed Friday that he is drafting a bill that would restrict so-called Megan’s Law registration obligations for four offenses that currently require individuals to register as a sex offender even if the crime was not sexually motivated. He cited data provided by the state’s Sexual Offender Assessment Board as supporting his proposed legislation.

Those findings show nearly half of the 23 cases the board assessed since Dec. 20, 2012, where individuals were convicted of false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, kidnapping of a minor or attempted kidnapping of a minor, and interference with custody of children, or some combination of those offenses were “clearly not sexual in nature.” The state’s current sex offender registration law, which includes those crimes, took effect on that date.

The board is responsible for determining if a convicted sex offender meets the definition of a sexually violent predator, which means they pose the highest risk for re-offending.

Since the current law took effect, the board has assessed 11 individuals convicted of false imprisonment, unlawful restraint, kidnapping of a minor or attempted kidnapping, and found in five cases there was no sexual motivation. Of 12 individuals convicted only of interference with custody of children, five of the cases involved no sexual motivation.

The state’s version of the federal Adam Walsh Act provides parents and legal guardians of victim children registration exemptions for three of the four offenses, but not for interference with custody of children. That changed earlier this year when it was included in amendment that tweaked Pennsylvania’s sex offender registration law. The state Supreme Court had found parts of the law were unconstitutional, and the changes were made to keep an estimated 12,000 ex-sex offenders on the registry who otherwise might have been removed.

Last year an investigation by this news organization revealed that at least 34 of 45 Pennsylvania residents convicted of interference with custody of children, a crime that carries a 15-year mandatory sex offender registration obligation, had no known record of committing a sexual crime; at least one quarter of those 34 offenders were noncustodial parents convicted of violating a court order or otherwise improperly taking their own children. Other offenders were convicted after committing crimes such as stealing a car with a child passenger.

Since Gov. Tom Wolf signed the stop-gap into law in February, the names of 28 of those 34 offenders convicted of interference with custody of children have been removed from the sex offender registry. Overall, the number of active sex offenders on the registry has dropped from more than 22,000 to 19,174.

Earlier this year at a hearing on a proposed bill to change the sex offender registration law, Greenleaf, who chairs of the Senate Judiciary Committee, expressed concerns about “unintended consequences” — such as individuals convicted of crimes with no sexual components being forced to register as sex offenders — as a result of expanding the number of offenses requiring registration under the federal Adam Walsh Act.

Greenleaf, who is retiring at the end of this year, expressed optimism that his fellow lawmakers would support with his proposed bill.

“I’m not going to give up on it,” he said. “They’ll have a hard time defending those four matters particularly.”