After Tioga hired Timothy Loehmann, long-simmering personal grudges and infighting exploded and brought local government to a halt.
TIOGA — Standing in a nondescript corner of the Tioga Borough Council Room, Mayor David Wilcox read from a printout of the Pennsylvania police oath and swore in his small town’s new police officer. A few feet away, a clean-shaven man raised his right hand and took the pledge.
“This situation has now further deteriorated with name calling, cursing and physical threats,” Jeff Loomis, who said he’s been the borough’s solicitor for 17 years, wrote in a scathing July 11 resignation letter. “Quite simply, as elected officials you should all be embarrassed by how your meetings and interactions with one another are being conducted.”
On the north side of town is Tyoga Container, which retains an older spelling of the Tioga River in its name and is one of the biggest employers in the county. In the evenings, regulars roll into the cozy Rosie’s diner or Lynns Pub for cheesesteaks. On Main Street, an annual light parade and Old Home Day celebrations break the pattern of sleepy small-town life.
That same month, the council questioned the mayor’s eligibility to hold office because they said the affidavit of residency he submitted wasn’t notarized, according to meeting minutes. But in June 2022, the firm, Larson, Kellett & Associates, invoiced the borough $14,454.62 for its work on the audit, according to documents obtained by Spotlight PA.
Also in June of this year, Joan Stone, borough secretary at the time, filed a formal grievance against Wilcox that alleged “ongoing bullying and harassment.” Wheeler had worked for the borough as the code enforcement and zoning officer since 2019, but said the learning curve when he became a council member was steep.
“I took this position on good faith, and you have shown me the error of my ways,” Northup wrote in his resignation. “There is a reason you are not able to keep police officers, and you are that reason.” A grand jury in Cuyahoga County, where the shooting happened, declined to indict Loehmann. Years later, the U.S. Department of Justice closed its investigation in December 2020, citing “insufficient evidence to support federal criminal charges.”
The council unanimously approved Loehmann’s probationary hiring during its June 6 meeting. Loehmann then completed a physical exam and a psychological exam, passed a standard but comprehensive criminal background check, had his fingerprints taken, and submitted a form for the borough to request an Act 57 database check from the Pennsylvania State Police’s Municipal Police Officers’ Education and Training Commission, or MPOETC.
Within days, Tioga borough became infamous as online commenters, who were convinced no background check had been conducted, called residents racist and the town backward. The mayor attributed the mixup to Wheeler and Hazlett but not Brooks, who also interviewed Loehmann as a part of the police committee. Brooks told Spotlight PA he didn’t know who Loehmann was until after the July 5 council meeting because of Wheeler’s misspelling.
A day later, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, now governor-elect, wrote a letter addressed to Hazlett alleging the council president’s failure to run an Act 57 check on Loehmann was “a violation of state law.” Municipal police officers are required to be Act 57 certified before they work as a police officer, specifically before they make arrests, carry a firearm, or conduct traffic stops, Myles Snyder, communications director for the Pennsylvania State Police, told Spotlight PA in an email. “They may be hired by a department at any time,” he wrote.
Spotlight PA shared its findings with Shapiro’s office and questioned the key points in Shapiro’s letter — including if an Act 57 check would have prevented Loehmann’s hiring and what exactly Tioga did wrong in the process. The July 12 special meeting, when Loehmann’s withdrawal from the police position was on the agenda, had to be moved outside to accommodate the crowd size.
“In a borough, the mayor is weak,” Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt, a professor emeritus at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and local government expert, told Spotlight PA in an email. “The mayor asked the police committee to resign and the members did. … Was he acting as the moral authority of the borough?”
“From the beginning, the grudges that have made their way into the elected officials’ agendas have not only hurt the community but will continue to have lasting effects on this once tight knit community,” Stone wrote in her resignation. At the special meeting July 12, Wilcox and Council Members Holly Irwin, Bill Preston, Brooks, and Wheeler sat around a folding table on the porch of the borough building in the summer heat. So many people showed up for the meeting that the leaders had to move it outside.The crowd of about 60 watched closely and cheered as Brooks amended the agenda to also accept the resignations of the Hazletts and Loomis, as well as code enforcer Andre Reed.
The council was left without a quorum and a solicitor to guide them, municipal legal experts told Spotlight PA. But Brooks incorrectly assumed at the time that “a quorum is half of all of the councilmen in office. To me a resignation is no longer in office. That makes the quorum two point five — three.”
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