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CLINTON TOWNSHIP, PA — An hour into an emergency meeting of the Clinton Township Board of Supervisors on Thursday, July 16, board chair Mark Lopatofsky had one thing to add before the meeting moved on. 

"Right now, I'm submitting my resignation for the board," Lopatofsky said. 

The decision came after members of the audience pressed the board of supervisors about potential conflicts of interest between township officials, consultants and Linde Corp, the developer behind a proposed 682-acre data center in the township. Audience members pressed Lopatofsky personally on the township's decision to hire Kiley Associates to review the data center application, a firm in which his son is involved. 

The audience applauded as Lopatofsky announced his resignation, and continued to interject as he made a statement, got up and left the meeting. This, Lopatofsky said, was part of the problem. 

"This is the kind of S-H that I take back home. I don't need to take it back home," he said. "The name calling is crazy, it is; it's crazy. This is not [the] Clinton Township I know."

Lopatofsky

The meeting included discussion throughout about Lopatofsky's potential links to Linde Corp. and Kiley Associates. 

Responding to a question from the audience, Lopatosky said, "I owned a business. Linde was a customer. Many years ago." He had disclosed this at a meeting earlier in the proceedings, he emphasized. 

Lopatofsky also disclosed that his son is an owner of Kiley Engineering, the firm the township hired to review the project. 

Town attorney Ronald Bujag said that Lopatofsky had asked his advice about hiring Kiley. "I didn't feel that it was any kind of conflict in this regard," he said. 

The discussion brought our jeers from the public, with attendees saying, "So that's how Kylie got hired," and, "You didn't feel like you needed to disclose that to the public?"

In response to a question later in the meeting, Lopatofsky said the township did not interview any other firm before hiring Kylie. 

"So you just thought it was [a] good idea to hire somebody that your son was involved in without questioning in on it?" asked the audience member. "That transparency issue here is a question; you don't feel that that's an issue, being a supervisor?”

"Yes, I don't," said Lopatofsky. "I checked with our lawyer." He said his son had no direct involvement in the project. 

Mark Lopatofsky resigns his position on the Clinton Township Board of Supervisors and leaves a meeting of Thursday, July 16.

RR photo by Liam Mayo

Resignation and public discourse

Lopatofsky announced his resignation after several minutes of further discussion. He said that his wife has had Parkinson's for seven years, as well as Functional Neurological Disorder, and that he did not need to take back the stress of the position to his family. 

He said that the discourse on the internet had poisoned the discussion. "The internet makes idiots, I call it; you get on there and you call names, everything, it is; you start up political violence, it is. This is a large project, and you're putting it on these gentlemen here. I'm out of it, it is, and I'm done for the evening."

Interjections continued as he said his piece and left. "You sold our township. You hurt families," called one resident from the back of the room. 

"My family is more important than this crap," he responded. 

Next steps

After Lopatofsky left, the two remaining supervisors convened with Bujag for an executive session. Following the executive session, they voted to set an emergency meeting for the following week, with the date to be determined. 

The supervisors initially indicated they would accept the resignation at the next week's emergency meeting. Bujag said that, with a week's time, cooler heads might prevail. However, when a member of the audience asked the supervisors why they hesitated to accept the resignation, they looked at one another and voted to accept it. They indicated they would select a new supervisor at that emergency meeting. 

Attendees wore yellow shirts to a Clinton Township Board of Supervisors meeting on Thursday, July 16, the shirts being a fundraiser for Save Browndale Mountain.

RR photo by Liam Mayo

Conflicts of interest

Discussion during the rest of the meeting included questioning of other potential conflicts of interest. 

Linde Corp., an international construction and energy corporation headquartered in Northeastern Pennsylvania, has submitted plans for a 682-acre data center in Clinton Township. The Clinton Township Board of Supervisors hired Hawley-based engineering firm Kiley Associates to review the project, the plans for which were accepted by the township planning commission at the start of July. At the July 16 meeting, the board of supervisors voted to hire Barry Isett and Associates, an engineering firm headquartered in Allentown with specific data center experience, for additional assistance. 

Audience members probed every link in that chain, asking about connections between all the different parties involved in the project. 

Representatives from Isett and from Kiley were asked if their companies ever had dealings with Linde Corp. An Isett representative said that Isett did the design work for another municipality's project, and that Linde Corp had afterwards been hired by the municipality as the lowest bidder to construct the project, but that both contracts in that project had been with the municipality; Isett had no contract with Linde itself. Kiley representatives made similar statements; they said there was nothing ongoing or in their memory with the company, and if there had been, it would have been the same situation as with Isett. 

A Browndale resident present questioned that representation. She said she had worked to construct a sidewalk project between Browndale and Forest City, and that Kiley was the engineering firm on that project. "I found Kiley Engineering because Linde Corporation recommended that that's who I get for the sidewalk project, and they had told me that Kiley did a lot of work with them in the past," she said. 

Supervisor Brian Non said that in his ten years on the board, Linde subsidiary Leeward Construction had supplied stone to the town for one year. "Other than that, there has never been an affiliation with Linde," he said. 

Attorney Ronald Bujag said he understood the issues of conflicts of interest. However, he said, Linde Corp. has done a lot of work across Northeast Pennsylvania. "None of these people that I know up here [that] sit up here at this table… have any conflict of interest with going forward and acting on this plan," he said. 

In his first meeting as interim solicitor on May 29, Bujag prepared a waiver of conflict of interest preventing him from sharing information with Linde Corp. head Scott Linde; that document was necessary due to "prior representation and involvement" with Linde Corp. and personal friendship with Scott Linde. He replaced Jeff Treat, who—according to the supervisors—had provided legal representation for Scott Linde without disclosing it to the supervisors.