Lebanon County DA defends bypassing purchasing dept. for office supplies, more

LebTown found stark differences in the way county-issued credit cards are used by personnel in two county departments, the district attorney’s and sheriff’s offices.

LebTown filed a right-to-know request for credit card records for the district attorney’s and sheriff’s offices from Jan. 1, 2022, through Nov. 30, 2024. The RTK request was made since personnel within those two departments have occasions that necessitate out-of-county travel to conduct business on behalf of their departments. Additionally, both row officers – Sheriff Jeffrie C. Marley Jr. and District Attorney Pier Hess Graf – are running for reelection this year.

Lebanon County administrator Jamie Wolgemuth said the county typically issues credit cards to various department directors so that they can coordinate their own travel and logistics. 

“Typically, what I have seen is, a department that has access to a county card uses it for registrations for conferences and mainly expenses related to that sort of thing if they’re out of town on a conference, or paying for an overnight stay or travel or something like that, or for the conference registration,” Wolgemuth said. “That way there’s control over the purchase if something has to be cancelled rather than mailing a check (to the county).” 

A LebTown comparison between the credit card statements for the two departments over that two-year period showed wide differences in how the cards are utilized.

The sheriff’s department typically had few invoices on a monthly basis, while the DA’s office used the cards heavily. Two department directors, recorder of deeds Dawn Blauch and Barb Smith of the prothonotary’s office, said they have never requested a county-issued credit card. 

Among the purchases on the credit card for the DA’s office were tickets to the 9/11 Memorial in New York City and frequent Amazon and Costco purchases. Other orders included Carhartt clothing, groceries, a dinosaur costume, and hot sauce. Some of these online orders were delivered to Graf’s home.

Additionally, some purchases may have violated a county policy requiring department directors to use the county’s purchasing department to order office supplies and “major equipment.”

Page 43 of the Lebanon County Employee Handbook states under the heading Purchases and Expenses that: 

“All supplies and major equipment shall be ordered by the Purchasing Office upon receipt of a purchase requisition from the requesting department. All invoices for goods and services received must be approved prior to payment by the County Commissioners… Employee shall be reimbursed for authorized and actual business-related expenses. In general, advance payment for expenses is not permitted by the County. All authorized business-related expenses are to be preapproved and verified by Employee’s Department Head/Elected Official. Final approval is granted by the County Controller and County Commissioners.”

Smith said that while she was unfamiliar with the county policy concerning the purchasing agent, she still ran everything through the purchasing department because it is “the right thing to do.” 

“First of all, I do not have a credit card for my office. I never did and I never will. If I am ordering supplies, and just most recently, I ordered a desk organizer for one of my employees,” Smith said. “I go through our purchasing agent, Danielle Emmerich. She sent me an email and said, ‘I’m going through Amazon, it’s cheaper.’ She will then put it on the credit card, she will send me the invoice, and I will code it to my office supplies line item. And that’s the end of it. She pays it. I do not take the credit card. I do not use it. She uses it in my place if she finds a better deal.” 

Graf told LebTown that her department is compliant with the county’s policy concerning use of the credit cards that are provided to various department directors. 

“I don’t believe we’re in violation and we do use the purchasing agent,” Graf said. “There are certain things that we pay for that the county does not and there are other things that we need in a timely fashion for trial, for victim services, and things like that. We’ve been doing this for quite some time and there’s never been any issue with it.”

The DA’s office does use the county purchaser to obtain paper supplies. Those purchases are not made with the DA’s county-issued credit card since they are ordered by the purchaser.

However, many items, including large-ticket purchases like a Roomba, a Bose stereo speaker and other electronics including laptops, were obtained by the DA’s office instead of the county’s purchasing department.

Wolgemuth said there are reasons to use the county’s purchasing department when there’s a need to purchase items, especially those that are expensive and have an insurable value. 

“One of which is, if any of the purchases are larger assets that belong to the county, they’re added to our fixed asset ledger or things that we own that have value or continue to have value,” Wolgemuth said. “So if we’re not following that procedure, that policy, then those things fall through the cracks and don’t end up being a fixed asset. So it’s for accounting, basically, and insuring those assets.”

Another reason is that the county doesn’t pay sales tax as a government agency, according to Wolgemuth. However, sales tax was charged across numerous purchases, including $186 in tax for two new laptops purchased on May 4, 2023, through Costco. That particular purchase was made on the county credit card through the DA’s office and the items were shipped to her home address. Other examples of purchases that showed sales tax being paid include an intercom system and police patch fasteners.

In response to a LebTown question about sales tax, Graf said of county administration that they “want a county-issued laptop to conduct as many county-issued programs as possible. From an investigative standpoint, there are certain things that we use on scene and to process what we get from the scene. That just requires very specific capabilities. And because of that, at times, we have to just do what we have to do to maintain operations.”

Wolgemuth said the county requires certain security protocols for its technology and is uncertain how ordering county-owned property through a big box store meets that requirement nor why a county department is paying sales tax. 

Graf told LebTown the Roomba is used to clean a secure room where trial prep is conducted. She noted the county’s cleaning crew is prohibited from entering that room due to the sensitive nature of court-related documents that are kept there.

On some occasions, items purchased through Amazon or Costco were shipped to Graf’s home address instead of the county’s municipal building, according to the credit card receipts. 

One such purchase totaling just over $447 was through Costco and was delivered by Instacart to Graf’s home address. The invoice for that purchase notes to “leave at my door if I am not around.”

Graf told LebTown her department has encountered problems with deliveries being made to the county building’s mail room, which is on the first floor of the municipal building.  

“We’ve had two issues in the past. Issue one is at times the mail room does not have staff and we get these emails saying the mail room isn’t running today, come collect your own mail,” Graf said.

“In cases of a large item, they don’t want to lift it, shift it, and move it down here, and I had to send people to, I guess, the mail room to go get it. We also had problems where Amazon and some of the other retailers were just leaving the packages outside of the building if it came on the weekend or if it came after hours.”

She said leaving items over the weekend when the municipal building is closed is problematic – even though shipping firms will deliver during business hours if specific instructions are provided to them when an order is placed. 

“So I’ve had instances where emails were coming through saying, ‘Your package was delivered.’ And it’s a question of where the heck is it,” she said. “And in terms of this building, with no disrespect to the general people that come and go from it, we do have a certain level of criminal (element) and I wasn’t really thrilled about on a Saturday they deliver something early and it’s just going to sit there. So it was the easiest way to make sure that nothing got lost and that nothing was stolen from us if it came outside of normal work hours.”

LebTown’s interview with Graf was prior to a September incident when an Amazon package delivered on the weekend was apparently the cause of a bomb scare at the municipal building. Graf said following the incident that the package contained personal items for a county worker.

Wolgemuth said he was not aware of any issues with deliveries to the DA’s office, any other county department or problems with items having gone missing after being delivered to the mail room. When asked, he told LebTown he’s had no conversations with Graf about delivery issues.

That particular home-delivered purchase from Costco included coffee pods, a variety of nuts including pistachios, peanut butter pretzels, several types of bottled drinking water, Coke Zero, and antacid tablets, among others. 

Graf told LebTown that these kinds of supplies are typically used for conferences and training events that are sponsored by her department. Supplies are also kept in-house for victims and their children who come to the DA’s office during a criminal investigation. 

“It’s all stuff for the office. So we have, for example, if we have kids come in and they’re hungry or they’re grouchy or they want something, we will offer them candy, we’ll offer them popcorn, if the family is allowing for it,” Graf said. “If they’re not allowing for it, then we abide by that. We like to have things like Band-aids, antacid tablets, allergy medicine, headache medicine.”

Supplies were also shared with members of the county’s SWAT team, she added.

“We try to have all of those things in the office, especially when the SWAT team was here, which back then they would brief here, and we still do large operation meetings here. So because of that, we like to keep stuff here so that if people aren’t feeling well, we at least have something to offer them within the office. So no, none of that (purchase) was for me personally,” Graf said. 

(The county’s SWAT team is now based at the Lebanon County Department of Emergency Services building.)

She also provided this additional explanation. 

“We’re just trying to get this job done in as efficient of a manner as humanly possible,” she said. “The frustration becomes – the insinuation or the question is that I’m somehow keeping things or profiting from this in some fashion, and that’s not the case. I want to get things to my office in the quickest, most streamlined way possible with the least inconvenience to anyone else.”

LebTown noted it was simply reviewing records and not accusing her of impropriety and asked whether having items shipped to her home address instead of the municipal building could raise questions in the minds of county taxpayers.

“I don’t think the average person would care whatsoever about that question or the answer. You’ve seen what the answer is, and I’m giving you the reason for it,” Graf said. “So I can tell you that every single thing that has ever been shipped has been brought directly into this office, unpacked, and distributed where it needs to go.”

LebTown also asked about two other items that were shipped directly to her home on Feb. 24, 2024, from Amazon: A woman’s large rain defender Carhartt insulated vest and a woman’s large blue Carhartt mock-neck sweatshirt, totaling nearly $150.

“We buy things for crime scenes, both men and women,” Graf said. “But those aren’t necessarily for victims if someone ran out of their own. But for things at a crime scene. We do take some things in there for, we have things to give to victims if the situation arises. I don’t want the public to think we don’t care about them. We obviously do. But sitting here right now, I don’t know.”

During that in-person interview, Graf said she would answer any questions LebTown had about specific items via a follow-up email. After those questions were sent, including enquiries about the Carhartt clothing and a business trip to New York City, she did not provide specific answers.  

The NYC expenditures included tickets to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum in October 2024. Graf said three staff members traveled to New York to interview three witnesses in the Eddie Williams retrial on first-degree murder charges. 

Graf added that at the retrial, two of the three witnesses interviewed while in NYC testified, including an injured individual that she said necessitated the trip to the Big Apple. As lead prosecutor, Graf was successful in having Williams re-convicted after federal appeals courts ruled that the judge at his first trial improperly admitted the confession of his absent co-defendant. Graf told LebTown previously that it was an extremely labor-intensive retrial involving terabytes of electronic information.

LebTown was told by county controller and row officer Robert Mettley that multiple purchases for the NYC trip were paid for through federal funds, and he referred LebTown to county solicitor Matt Bugli for more details.

Bugli told LebTown that, according to the DA’s office, the purchases were applied to the Drug Forfeiture Fund. In Lebanon County, the DA’s office maintains that account, meaning the itemized receipts are not submitted to the controller’s office.

Bugli said he believed Graf’s office was acting properly in its use of the drug forfeiture account. 

It was not immediately clear, however, how tickets to the 9/11 Memorial furthered the purpose of the Drug Forfeiture Fund to combat drug use. Multiple emails to the Pennsylvania State Attorney General’s office, which distributes drug forfeiture funds, seeking clarification for that specific question went unanswered.     

In a follow-up email to Graf, LebTown asked how many people traveled to NYC since four hotel rooms were invoiced on the county’s credit card statement. She replied as part of the general statement that, “Our Office traveled to New York this past October to interview multiple witnesses,” and added that, “We spent one (1) day there and returned home.”

During that trip, food purchases were made in neighboring Berks County at a Wawa based in Hamburg on Oct. 8, 2024, and dinner was bought at a theater district restaurant, Bocca Di Bacco, on Oct. 9 for nearly $240, with what she said during the in-person interview were four or five people. Another $116.16 was invoiced on Oct. 10 at the 3 West Restaurant in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Most dishes at Bocca, according to a menu on its website, range from a low of $16 to a high of $48 plus $10 per side dish. With food purchases on Oct. 8 and again on Oct. 10, it’s unclear how staff traveled one day and came home the next. LebTown asked if the New Jersey restaurant purchases were for another work-related trip during the in-person interview, but that question was not answered.

“We went up one day, we came back the next. I have no affinity for New York City. I didn’t frankly want to be there any longer than necessary,” Graf said. “I took the people that went to the 9/11 Memorial and I made a donation while we were there.”

Although LebTown had made a RTK request for all receipts and credit card statements for that department, an itemized list was not included for the NYC purchases. In fact, many itemized receipts for purchases totaling at times several hundred dollars through Costco and Amazon were not included with the documentation sent to LebTown.

Bugli said many of the costly purchases are not reported to the county controller since they are paid back to the county through funds in the drug forfeiture account.

LebTown asked Mettley how certain purchases were paid since they were not submitted as part of the RTK. LebTown specifically referenced two Costco purchases on Sept. 12, 2024, totaling over $814 and all of the receipts from that NYC trip.

“In reference to the first one, it was reimbursed out of the Drug Fund and those receipts would be part of the Audit that is done for the Attorney General,” Mettley wrote in an email to LebTown. “In the second case these expenses were part of a Federal Trial and reimbursed by the Federal Government and they would be part of the Federal Reimbursement submission.”

Although LebTown noted four rooms were invoiced, Hess Graf said only three DA staff members went there. When asked if one of the hotel rooms was for the victim who was interviewed as part of the upcoming retrial, Hess Graf said the fourth room was not for that person.

“The victim and his family reside in New York. He has substantial physical limitations. To get him here requires a car service, separate hotel rooms, an oxygenator for the hotel rooms, as well as some medical care. And the family at that time was not willing to even consider traveling here to prepare for trial, so we had no other choice, so we went,” Graf said.

After several additional requests via email for details concerning the NYC trip and other expenses that the DA promised to address, a reply concerning the NYC trip included a statement that “the taxpayers of Lebanon County felt no burden from our efforts.”

LebTown asked Mettley who is responsible for ensuring that purchases are filtered through the county’s purchasing agent. He said that the county’s treasurer’s office should stipulate what is and isn’t allowed since that agency handles disbursing credit cards to department directors that request them. 

Wolgemuth said the county controller’s office is responsible for ensuring that purchases are filtered through the county’s purchasing agent. “The word control is literally in the name of the office,” he said.

LebTown also asked all three Lebanon County Commissioners if they were aware of the purchasing department portion of the county policy. Jo Ellen Litz said she was shocked that Graf had purchases sent to her home address. Commission chairman Mike Kuhn said he would need to speak with both Wolgemuth and Bugli about it before making a statement to the press. Follow-up emails to Kuhn for additional comment went unanswered. 

Commissioner Bob Phillips said during an interview that he had a recollection of something happening with the county credit card involving one of the county’s offices. As part of a follow-up email from LebTown, Phillips responded by writing: “I believe that my recollection stemmed from a question asked during last year’s budget hearings by the County Treasurer regarding a DA’s credit card statement and related expenses. The question was asked of the DA, and I believe that her response was that forfeiture funds would be used to reimburse the county.”

County commissioners have little say in disciplinary policy over any row officer when enforcing the county handbook. That’s because all of those positions are elected by the voting public. Where they do have authority is setting departmental budgets of the row officers, added Bugli. 

“The courts recognize that the commissioners are independent of the row officers,” Bugli said. “The row officers, the district attorney, the sheriff, those are created – those are constitutionally created positions. And the recourse is held by the voters and by the electorate.”