A sign welcoming visitors to Harveys Lake is seen recently. The borough has been under investigation by the FBI for over a year, Mayor Michael Rush has told colleagues and the Times Leader.
File photo
Manny Santayana addresses the crowd at the Harveys Lake Borough Council meeting on June 22, 2022 as members of the council look on.
File photo
HARVEYS LAKE — The borough has been under investigation by the FBI for over a year, Mayor Michael Rush has told colleagues and the Times Leader.
Rush said he spoke with agents himself, and that several other members of the borough’s administration had been subpoenaed for testimony. He did not elaborate on the nature of the conversations.
The announcement comes after more than a year of controversy surrounding Harveys Lake Zoning Officer Maureen Oremus, whom residents have accused at several council meetings of “dereliction of her duties” and creating a “conflict of interest” when she referred residents seeking zoning approval to use the services of her boyfriend, contractor Jerry Brown, for building projects.
One of the residents who had been at the forefront of those concerns, property owner Manny Santayana, confirmed to the Times Leader that he also spoke with FBI agents regarding the investigation.
Efforts to reach Oremus regarding the FBI investigation and this story were not immediately successful.
Borough Council President Tom Kehler declined to comment on the investigation.
When reached for comment, FBI Public Affairs Officer Carrie Adamowski would neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation, as is the FBI’s standard practice.
Rush first disclosed the investigation in a letter presented at an meeting of Republican minority councilmembers in August, where he said that an “outside agency” was investigating the borough. When asked about that letter by the Times Leader, Rush confirmed in a phone interview that it was the FBI.
In the letter, Rush said that the investigation was “needed for a long time,” and that transparency within the borough “has been overlooked.”
“I applaud the FBI … investigation of Harveys Lake Borough and support them 110% for all the work they have done in the last year,” Rush wrote in a follow-up statement to the Times Leader.
Zoning issues
Oremus has previously denied of all the allegations against her, and several residents have defended Oremus against the accusations at multiple council meetings.
Santayana, who has spoken out against Oremus numerous times, recently organized a “zoning solutions group,” made up of about 50 people who have claimed to have been treated unfairly by Oremus.
He also filed an ethics complaint against Oremus with the state Ethics Commission on May 31, 2022, in which he accused the Harveys Lake Zoning Officer of specifically preferencing Brown, who she lives with, as the “builder of choice” for Harveys Lake. In the complaint, Santayana alleged that Oremus has a clear conflict of interest in regards to Brown and that she has demonstrated a “dereliction of duty.”
The status of that complaint could not be immediately verified.
In August 2022 Brown was charged on allegations that he stole more than $47,000 worth of wood and other items from Santayana.
According to court documents, Santayana hired Brown in May 2021 to build a residential home, retaining wall and dock on his property. Brown’s work was deemed incorrect and unsatisfactory and when the contract expired, Brown was removed from the project, but he allegedly failed to return the building materials to Santayana by the agreed upon time.
Prosecutors dropped the charges against Brown in December 2022, however.
Lawsuit settlement
Santayana filed a lawsuit in December 2022 against Oremus as an individual, in which he alleged that she shut down a job site on his property, interfered with construction on an improper basis, and purposefully withheld a piling certification for personal reasons.
He said the lawsuit was recently settled by the borough’s insurance carrier, a fact that several members of the council minority — including Dave Delaney, and Mayor Rush — were not made aware of until Santayana brought it to their attention.
“I am just, as a councilman, I am taken aback by the fact of being left in the dark,” Delaney said.
“There should have been some transparency, that’s the problem,” Rush said. “No one got an email, no one got nothing.”
Santayana says that during an August council meeting, he asked council members who discussed settlement of the claim with the insurance company and that “nobody” would answer. Eventually, he said, councilman Bill Hilburt replied that borough secretary Irene Sankey handled the claim.
“There was clearly conversation in the office. Someone had to go to the secretary in order to make the phone call to the insurance company,” said Delaney. “The secretary couldn’t just do something like that without at least contacting the council president.”
Both Kehler and Hilburt declined to comment on the settlement and would not say whether or not they had knowledge of it when approached by the Times Leader.
Council solicitor William Watt said he also had no knowledge that the lawsuit was going to be settled by the insurance carrier, but he stressed that because the lawsuit wasn’t filed against the borough itself, council did not have to vote on whether or not to settle it.
“No official action needed to be taken,” he said, noting that the money used to settle the lawsuit did not come out of the Harveys Lake general fund and no tax dollars were used.
Watt also stated that since the insurance company covers all of the borough’s employees, they would have the final say in whether to settle any lawsuits levied against borough employees and do not need permission from the defendant to do so.
