Northampton County Council: How to Keep the Public Away

If you ever visit the judges' new palace in Easton, be prepared for a rude awakening. You'll circle the campus, searching in vain for a place to park. Eventually, you'll just run out of gas and abandon your car. That's when the real problem starts. You see, this modern fortress is perched atop a steep. forbidding hill strewn with the remains of those unlucky souls who have fallen along the way. Every now and then, you'll see the remains of some dead litigant or a lawyer who simply collapsed, still clutching his brief case. You can always tell the lawyers. Their bodies are better preserved than most because the buzzards leave them alone.

Professional courtesy.

Before climbing this Mount Everest, your best bet is to hire an Easton Sherpa, whose base camp is somewhere along the Delaware. They can get you up the hill and keep you safe from the Hoover Crips. They can also get you inside the building. Without them, you'll never find the secret entrance. You'll walk all over the place, trying thousands of locked doors, until you give up or eventually die of exposure after being battered by all those winds.

This secret entrance, as you may have guessed, is located at the inconvenient place possible, the rotunda, at the farthest distance possible from the parking lots. You see, the judges don't want you tracking in mud on their fancy new floors. Once you step inside this Taj Mahal to put out the fire in your lungs, you'll be funneled into a search center. There, as many as eight deputies have the thankless task of looking through your belongings to make sure you haven't come to kill anyone.

Now let's say you'd like to attend a County Council meeting, scheduled at 6:30 PM, long after a judge's usual noon quitting time. Guess what? County officials lock down the usual secret rotunda entrance, and now you have to scurry in to the employee's entrance, located in the bowels of this judicial tomb.

Assuming you can find your way in, the first thing you'll see when you get inside is a pair of deputy sheriffs. Some of them will just wave you ahead, while others insist on a complete search. It seems to depend on their mood.

Now last time I checked, this building is the property of the people, not deputy sheriffs or judges in black robes. While I can understand the need for security while court is actually in session, these intrusive searches and building lockdowns have a chilling effect on a citizen's interest in participating in his own government.

In the last year, I've wandered into public meetings in Nazareth, Bethlehem, Allentown, Bethlehem Township, and Lehigh County. No matter how controversial the issue on a given agenda, no one is searched. Frankly, Northampton County Council members have more to fear from each other than they do from the general public. Yet, they think nothing of subjecting the public to searches, with no legal authority.

Around two years ago, then President Judge Freedberg issued an edict, a court order, regulating how the building would be entered. It was thumb tacked to a few bulletin boards. No public hearing. Our judges are terrified of the commoners. They have reserved parking with a private entrance, closed dining room and their very own judicial potties. Their "chambers" (a classy word for office) are located on a locked floor, guarded by vicious wolves. (OK, I made up the part about wolves). They're isolated and out of touch, a paranoid bunch. Still, I wouldn't call Freedberg's manifesto illegal. They have a right to regulate security in and around their courtrooms.

But judges have no Godlike authority right to determine unilaterally how people enter the building for a County Council meeting. According to the Commonwealth Court, who outrank Northampton County jurists, that should come from Council. "[T]he County Code allows county commissioners to adopt ordinances regulating the affairs of a county. ... [T]he County Code allows county commissioners to prescribe fines and penalties for violations of a 'public safety' ordinance."

In Northampton County, this means county council. They are the body that adopts ordinances, but only after hearing from the public. They are also the residual power in the county and public access to their own meetings should be regulated by them. They are the only body with authority to impose penalties (in an ordinance) for persons who ignore requests to be searched.

Last Thursday, I complained about this denial of public access to County Council. Prez Ann McHale, still bitter over her loss to John Stoffa, responded with a slap aimed at him. "Why don't you take this up with our new Acting Sheriff?"

McHale, who dragged her feet for years about webcasting while simultaneously insisting she was working very hard on it, refuses to understand that Council has the obligation to regulate security at its own meetings. Council security was actually initiated by former Exec Glenn Reibman during controversial bond hearings. The Sheriff did it himself, but over time, it has gone to two deputies. It's a meal ticket for them. The only security they are interested in is job security.

In reality, violence during municipal meetings is rather rare. I think this security is overkill. But council members who disagree should at least conduct a hearing to determine if there is a rational basis for this privacy invasion. If persuaded that there is legitimate reason for concern, they can adopt an ordinance regulating how the people's building is accessed. Until that happens, usual entrances should remain open and no one should be humiliated by a search.