Township mulls Megan’s law rules

BY BERNIE HORNICK
The Tribune-Democrat

ARMAGH October 03, 2008 11:49 pm

— East Wheatfield Township solicitor Tim Burns is walking a fine line and he knows it.
Burns has drafted what he believes to be the state’s toughest residency requirements for Megan’s law designees – but not so tough that it will not survive a court challenge.
Residents of East Wheatfield and neighboring Armagh became stirred up after sexually violent predator Richard Vavro of Butler moved to the borough last month.
East Wheatfield supervisors will consider the residency rules for sex offenders at a meeting at 4 p.m. Oct. 24. Armagh is expected to pass its own rules within weeks.
“We’ve done as much as we can possibly do (legally),” Burns told about 50 residents at a township meeting Friday.
The ordinance would require that the state Board of Probation and Parole notify the township board before a predator moves in so a public hearing could be held.
If it doesn’t, the state could be subject to a $1,000 fine.
“We are not going to be blindsided by this anymore,” supervisors Chairman Ken Umholtz said. “These people are next to impossible to completely cure.”
Sherry Tate – director of the parole board’s Office of Policy, Legislative Affairs and Communications – said she hadn’t heard of the notification proposal and wouldn’t comment on it.
But in an interview from Harrisburg, she said parole agents have the primary responsibility for supervising their parolees.
“Our agents do have the authority to conduct searches of the parolee and the residence approved for him or her to live at,” Tate said.
“In general, the parole agents work with local law enforcement often and, depending on circumstances, may or may not be working on a particular offender,” Tate said. “The board is not required, but we do try to establish relationships with local police.”
She encouraged residents to take a broader view of the problem, suggesting that criminals who are unknown in an area are more dangerous than those who are.
Tate said some terms of parole are public information and other terms are not, depending on who imposes them; whether, for instance, they were imposed by a parole board member as a condition of release or imposed later by a parole agent.
She said her computer couldn’t access Vavro’s file Friday afternoon, and so she couldn’t give terms of his release.
Also Friday, the East Wheatfield board said:
• It would advertise for a code enforcement officer to enforce the soon-to-be-enacted ordinance.
“We need a code enforcement officer, folks,” Umholtz said, “or this (ordinance) isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
•n Plans for a community Crime Watch are proceeding.
Board member Roberta Naugle noted that legislators in Harrisburg could stiffen prison sentences and make those released from prison wear GPS bracelets.
“What you can do is write letters to representatives saying you want these bills passed,” she told the crowd.
In addition, residents from the Charles area were concerned that the same landlady who brought Vavro in would bring a sex offender to their town. They circulated a petition against such a move.
“I never thought that somebody in our community would sell our community down the tube,” Umholtz said.
Predators, Burns said, can’t be totally banned from a municipality.
He said he crafted the ordinance to withstand challenge. “I don’t want to have an ordinance that will cause ordinances across the state of Pennsylvania to be struck down,” he said.
“I would hope that the state doesn’t challenge us in court. If they do, I’m confident that it will be upheld,” Burns said.
Umholtz said after the meeting that he is more concerned by a potential challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union than from the state. State officials, he said, are constrained by public opinion.
Vavro, 54, a former medical technician, lives on disability at his Armagh trailer. He served about six years in prison on his sentence of five to 10 years. Even if Armagh passes residency restrictions, Vavro – a convicted child molester – wouldn’t be affected since he already is settled.