Everyone agrees on one thing: Roger Snyder used a West Donegal Township copying machine to reproduce his campaign literature.

After that, all bets are off.

That one act has generated a contentious lawsuit, pitted neighbor against neighbor, and brought notoriety to an otherwise quiet community in northwestern Lancaster County.

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 3, 2008, by township Supervisor Snyder and his campaign manager, Earl Kean, named former Northwest Regional Police Chief (and current Mount Joy Township manager) Charles "Casey" Kraus and Officers Kenneth Henry and Randall Aument as defendants.

It claimed they conspired to publicize Snyder's use of the copier to thwart his re-election bid. Snyder won re-election by beating his opponent, Keith Murphy, by 205 votes.

An amended complaint filed March 30 added township supervisors Nancy Garber, Charlie Tupper and Steven Speers as defendants.

Snyder and Kean filed the amended complaint after the supervisors did not reappoint Snyder to the police commission and two other boards.

The complaint charged that Tupper, Garber and Speers met in secret in violation of the state's Sunshine Law and decided to not reappoint him to his posts.

All five supervisors are Republicans. Supervisor Tupper, who also serves as the Republican chairman for the Greater Elizabethtown Area, said, "The party plays no part in this."

A second lawsuit filed Feb. 9 by Kean, a retired state trooper, and his wife, Linda, further roils the waters.

Named as defendants are Lancaster County; the Northwest Regional and Elizabethtown Borough police departments; Northwest Regional Officer Kenneth Henry and former Chief Kraus; Elizabethtown Borough Police Officers Michael Lyons and Gordon Berlin; West Donegal Township; Mount Joy Township; and, the lawsuit states, "John Does, 1-10 ... persons, entities, or municipalities unknown at present."

The Keans claim they "suffer harassment, intimidation, and other misconduct" because Mr. Kean publicly opposed the creation of the regional police force and continues to criticize the force at West Donegal supervisors meetings.

The Northwest Regional Police Department was formed in October 2003 through a merger of the West Donegal and Mount Joy Township police departments.

Kean has had traffic-related run-ins with police, two of which (in August 2004 and February 2007) are detailed in his lawsuit.

According to Northwest Regional police, the August 2004 incident remains under investigation. Kean was cited in the February 2007 incident, but the citation was discharged by Magisterial District Judge Robert Herman of Columbia, who heard the case after Elizabetown Judge Jayne Duncan recused herself.

According to the judge's disposition sheet, the citation was discharged after Officer Henry requested to amend the wording in the citation to more specifically identify the alleged offense.

Kean, however, objected and argued that the wording in the citation was not specific enough to "give him notice of violation" and Judge Herman agreed.

The Sunday News filed right-to-know requests to obtain police reports about the incidents. The request regarding the report for the August 2004 incident was denied, Northwest Regional Chief Sam Gatchell said, because the Pennsylvania Open Records Act "prohibits dissemination of investigative information to a noncriminal justice agency."

Requests regarding the February 2007 incident were approved by both the Northwest Regional and Elizabethtown Borough police departments and are available at Lancasteronline.com, keyword "West Donegal controversy."

Kean, who retired from the state police after 20 years of service, was also employed by the School District of Lancaster as the district's coordinator of safety from February to August 2008.

Kean did not return phone messages placed on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday of last week.

His attorney, Matthew Weisberg, of Prochniak Weisberg P.C. in Morton, called Friday. He specified that the lawsuit involves violations of Kean's First Amendment rights through "unlawful stops and retaliatory actions taken against him" because of Kean's public criticism of the Northwest Regional force.

Now that he has received the defendants' motion to dismiss the complaint, Weisberg said he plans to "file an amended lawsuit that will be more specific about the details of this case."

Weisberg said he will also ask the judge "to add a party, Elizabethtown Borough, and [drop] the County of Lancaster from the case."

Tense meetings
The lawsuits have impacted the tenor of supervisor meetings.

Both the April and May meetings began with verbal sparring over minutes of past meetings.

In April, Snyder brought four pages of corrections for the minutes of the March meeting. He said the minutes are the "historic record" and must be accurate.

Some of his suggestions involved incidents in which supervisors made motions and seconded them.

Supervisors spent 20 minutes of the April meeting debating the proposed changes, approving some and denying others.

Prior to the vote, Supervisor Clair Hilsher, not named in the Snyder-Kean lawsuit and who has said he feels stuck in the middle, conceded, "I think we're getting fussy about a lot of nothing."

Snyder then began Monday's meeting by suggesting changes to the minutes of the supervisors workshop on April 20. One of those changes involved stipulating that Supervisor Chair Nancy Garber did not arrive at the 7 p.m. meeting until 7:12 p.m.

Garber countered that she accepted the change, but noted she wanted the minutes to say she was late because she had been attending a conference of the Pennsylvania Association of Township Supervisors, on which Garber serves as West Donegal's representative, in Harrisburg.

Snyder was the lone dissenter against approving those minutes, as well as the minutes from the March and April meetings.

In the public comment at Monday's meeting, Kean said his neighbor is doing construction work on his property and Northwest Regional police officers had been called there three times for reports of noise violations.

Kean said he was "identified as the complainant" to his neighbor and said he believed it "was done for one reason and one reason only ... retaliation for my involvement in the litigation and for my public comments" about the force.

Kean then presented Northwest Chief Sam Gatchell with a letter demanding an investigation and demanded the officers be identified and "disciplined for lying to my neighbor." He also demanded a written apology be delivered to both he and his neighbor.

Gatchell said he would investigate.

Rasing a second issue, Kean echoed Snyder's concerns about the minutes and stated:

"When you go about creating these minutes, you need to make sure they are accurate. There were statements attributed to me that were inaccurate.

"They are riddled with inaccuracies."

Must-see meetings
Supervisors' meetings, according to observers, were attended by a dozen people in the past, unless some controversial item was on the agenda.

Twenty-five people attended the April and May meetings. Some said they were there for the show and people continue to flock to the unusually lively controversy.

During meetings, residents sit in pro- or anti-Kean/Snyder clusters and react to remarks by looking at each other and rolling their eyes, whispering comments, and shaking or nodding their heads.

Few residents will speak on the record. They say they are afraid of being included in the lawsuits. Or they don't want neighbors reading their comments in the newspapers.

 Township employees will not speak about the lawsuits or any situation related to them for fear of losing their jobs.

Approached by a reporter after last week's meeting, Snyder refused to offer any comments, saying, "I'm not going to talk about that" to a number of questions.

Anonymously, people mention the ill will, the tension, and the hindrance to effective government the lawsuits create.

But in the end, they worry about the same thing: the bottom line.

Win or lose, township taxpayers will pay for the lawsuits.

"Every lawsuit, even the most baseless and frivolous ones, cost money," said township solicitor Josele Cleary, of the Lancaster firm Morgan, Hallgren, Crosswell & Kane.

She and her staff review the lawsuits before they are passed on to the township's insurance carrier, which appoints a defense attorney.

In addition to her staff, she said, "Any moment township staff spends time working on a lawsuit, that is time they are not spending on township work," particularly if a trial is held.

The lawsuits might also impact future insurance rates.

Weisberg, Kean's attorney, disputed this argument.

"I would suggest that their premiums will go up only if they are found liable," he said. "To claim this costs taxpayers money is a knee-jerk response to this case.

"This [Earl and Linda Kean's lawsuit] is a civil rights case alleging that police officers are persecuting someone who spoke out against them politically," Weisberg said.

"The best use of taxpayers money is to control police departments that are out of control. Regardless of whether we win or lose, it is clear that they are not acting appropriately."

One resident, Ralph Horne, was vocal during the public comment portion of April's meeting, asking if the township's liability policy contained a "consent to settle" clause that would allow the insurance carrier to settle the lawsuit out of court.

After the meeting, Horne explained, "I brought this up because it is my preference that the township forces this lawsuit to a judgment. In the best possible world, this lawsuit would just go away. But if that's not going to happen, the next best [scenario] would be for it to have a judge or jury rule against it."

Horne, running for the supervisor seat being vacated by Steven Speers, said his comments are not political.

"I have been making these same comments long before I decided to run for office," Horne said. "I already asked Roger to resign. I first asked him to withdraw his suit and he refused, so I asked him to resign.

"Besides," Horne said, "I'm not running against Roger, I'm running for the vacant seat."

Speers said his decision not to seek re-election was made long before he was included as a defendant in the lawsuit. He has since retired from his job.

"I didn't want to get into a term and then halfway through go to the powers-that-be and tell them we were moving," he said.

He said the lawsuits have altered meeting dynamics, but "in terms of work getting done," the lawsuit is not affecting the supervisors.

Taking a philosophical approach to the lawsuit, he said, "I have to keep my thoughts to myself. But it's America and you do what you want to do."

Supervisor Hilsher, a lifelong township resident said of the situation: "There are some things I don't understand. It's a no-win situation."

He said tension among board members "is getting worse almost every meeting. Now it's like people are almost scared to talk."

"I don't understand it," Hilsher said. "I'm just trying to do what's right. I have an obligation to the taxpayers."

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Chip Smedley is a staff writer for the Sunday News. E-mail him at csmedley@lnpnews.com.