New comment about Residency of W Vincent Supervisor Barry DiLiberto

I received another comment today about my post:

Concerning the residency case in West Vincent Supervisor Barry DiLibero:
Married politicos share a residency problem
Published: Monday, July 20, 2009
http://coatesvilledems.blogspot.com/2009/07/concerning-residency-case-in-west.html


Also see:
Friday, July 31, 2009
I am posting this for District Attorney Joe Carroll.
For some reason his comment to did not go through. It is in reference to my posting "Concerning the residency case in West Vincent Supervisor Barry DiLibero"
Married politicos share a residency problem.
http://coatesvilledems.blogspot.com/2009/07/i-am-posting-this-for-district-attorney.html

Today I received this comment:

"Anonymous said...
Jim,
Next time you are talking to Joe Carroll...could you ask him how much this case is costing the taxpayers?

I find it hard to believe that it takes this long to determine residency. It seems that it should be easy to ascertain. Does he meet the residency requirement or not?

Should we really have expected Mr. Dilibero or Voters Services to do over a years worth of research and study case law to find a case from the 1950's to cite, that say's a man's residency is determined by his wife's. Are they asking us to believe that married people cannot live apart? I surely hope not!

So while you are at it, ask Joe why this is taking so long!"
August 5, 2009 8:37 AM

My answer:

Unless the person involved acquiesces, it is a near impossibility to successfully challenge residency for political purposes.

One example is the residency of James Clark. He ran and possibly still is running for District Justice in Coatesville’s District Court 15-1-03. The residency requirements for Coatesville’s District Court 15-1-03 is in part of Coatesville and South Coatesville. Mr. Clark lives in Thorndale. In a court document in Chester County President Judge Ott’s court Clark gives his address as 3401 Sylvan Dr., Thorndale, PA 19372. He claims a rental property in Coatesville as his address.

Below are my notes from a hearing in Judge Ott’s courtroom on Friday April 20, 2009:

“I thought that Democratic Attorney John Carnes presented overwhelming evidence including several court documents and Clark’s drivers license that Magistrate Judge candidate James Clark lives in Thorndale. Clark had two relatives that claimed he lived at the address in Coatesville’s Second Ward that he listed on his petition. Clark said that even though a court document from October has Thorndale as his residence and driver’s license residence as Thorndale, he lives in Coatesville.

I understood Clark to have said that his driver’s license and his court documents residence is really his business address and his real residence is in Coatesville. Hmmm.

Even at the place he said he lives in Coatesville, he was only there a few months. State Law says that candidates for Magistrate Judge needs to reside at least a year at the residence on the ballot. The proceedings concerning James Clark were a little confusing to me but I believe that one of Clark’s relatives who is a Republican collected most of his signatures on both Republican and Democratic sides. Clark might not be on the ticket for multiple reasons.

I wondered why Andrew Lehr was sitting right in front of me in the first spectator row. I found out when Lehr conferred with Clark and a woman named as his daughter, Shania London in the hallway. Is Clark a spoiler to Greg Hines? Lehr left when Clarks hearing was over.”
See Clark’s court document here:
http://www.box.net/shared/ahgxgq2hj3

Clark was not on the ticket but ran an extensive and expensive write in campaign. He got very few votes. But that is not the issue. I believe there are several people holding or that have held public offices in Coatesville that do not live here. No one challenges them because they understand the possibility of winning in court is almost non-existent. I believe that there are many people holding public offices all across Chester County that do not live where they claim to live.

Joe Carroll’s action could set a president for future efforts to remove persons that are allegedly illegally holding office. I believe that every instance of claiming to live where you do not is an instance of public corruption. It is very hard to set a price on that kind of public corruption but I believe the cost to the public is in the millions of dollars.