HARRISBURG — Following months of controversy and legal disagreements, Pennsylvania taxpayers appear poised to pay for more than $1 million in security upgrades to Gov. Josh Shapiro's private home in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The state Office of Attorney General said in a statement Friday it had approved a settlement stemming from the Pennsylvania Treasury Department’s refusal to pay those bills. Republican Stacy Garrity — who leads the agency that oversees the payment of state dollars to employees, contractors, and others — had blocked the $1 million payment, saying state procurement rules barred her from using public money to pay for work at a non-state-owned property like Shapiro’s house.
The work, carried out last year following an attack at the state-owned governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, included a new security system and tens of thousands of dollars in landscaping and other maintenance work on the home’s exterior grounds.
Garrity’s decision set the stage for an uncomfortable showdown over the matter between her and the Democratic governor she is challenging in November’s election.
Earlier this year, Garrity said the governor had options to resolve the $1 million in outstanding bills, including seeking an out-of-court settlement through the Office of Attorney General — a path Shapiro’s office followed.
Still, in a statement Friday, Garrity stopped short of confirming she will pay the settlement, saying she will “carefully review” that paperwork to determine if it is “lawful and correct.”
“Safety and security matter to everyone, but good intentions can never excuse ignoring the law,” Garrity wrote.
Top lawyers for Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office said Garrity’s initial decision to deny paying the bills under current law was correct on legal grounds. They pointed out that their approval of the settlement to pay contractors should not be viewed as an endorsement of the “wisdom” of using public money to carry out the security upgrades, but rather a recognition that litigation over the matter would have ended up costing taxpayers more.
“In this case, the dilemma created by these expenditures is that there was an absence of proper procurement procedures, yet the contractors performed the work in good faith and deserve to be paid,” the lawyers wrote in a letter sent to Shapiro administration officials. The contractors likely would have prevailed in court, they said.
They stressed that going forward, the legislature should look to update state laws to account for the rise in political violence and the subsequent need for elected officials to protect themselves.
“Current procurement law does not account for the increasing reality of threats to public officers and their families,” the lawyers, Ronald Eisenberg and Amy M. Elliot, wrote, adding: “There are many difficult policy questions that must be answered in order to reach a solution that is fair to both public officials and the taxpayers who fund them. Only the legislative process can properly resolve the issue.’
Spotlight PA earlier this year first revealed the dispute over using public money to pay for the security upgrades at Shapiro’s private home based on records the news organization had obtained. At the time, a spokesperson for State Police, the agency that hired the contractors, defended the spending. The spokesperson said that while the state-owned residence was being restored, the Shapiros had to live at their personal home on a full-time basis — a move that required “serious security enhancements” to the governor’s private house.
The upgrades to Shapiro’s Abington property were recommended by State Police officials after the middle-of-the-night arson attack and attempted murder last year at the state-owned governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, where Shapiro and his family stay when in the capital. The Democratic governor and his family and friends were asleep inside, having just finished celebrating Passover the evening before, when a man broke in and set several rooms on fire.
Though no one was injured, the man who carried out the attack — Cody Balmer of Harrisburg — told law enforcement that had he encountered the governor during the break-in, he would have beaten him with a hammer. Balmer pleaded guilty to attempted murder and other charges.
The state’s procurement handbook defines emergency construction as “the process of building, altering, improving, or demolishing any public structure or building or other public improvements of any kind to any public real property to remove or correct the basis for the emergency.”
It is silent on whether private property qualifies for publicly funded emergency construction.
The dispute over using public dollars for upgrades at a private property is not the only conflict prompted by the security upgrades. The work at the governor’s private residence has led to heated litigation between the Shapiros and one of their neighbors, as Spotlight PA has previously reported.