Per state law, local governments are required to conduct the vast majority of their meetings before the public.

While municipalities are permitted to have executive sessions — meetings held outside of the public eye — the reasons for these meetings are restricted by the state Sunshine Act. Municipalities must also announce, at a public meeting preceding or following these executive convocations, the dates and purposes of the sessions.

But in Lancaster Township, supervisors have met in secret for much of this year and have failed to inform their residents when and why these executive sessions occur, according to information obtained by an open records request.

The Eagle filed this request Oct. 20, and received the responsive documents Wednesday.

Beginning in February and “ending recently,” according to secretary-treasurer Chrissy Senft's response to the request, the board of supervisors has held “a number of” these sessions, purportedly to discuss “personnel matters.”

Neither Senft nor the township's solicitor, Christopher Reese, responded to a request for comment.

Despite the dozens of closed-door meetings verified by the right-to-know request, they were only mentioned during three public meetings, on Feb. 17, April 20 and Nov. 16. The most recent mention included a reference to “several executive sessions ... over the past few months” to discuss personnel matters such as exit negotiations with former township manager Benjamin Kramer and the intended hiring of Danielle Rich as new township manager, but did not list specific dates of these meetings.

The state's Sunshine Act, however, requires local governments to announce the reason for the executive sessions at either the meeting preceding or the meeting following the session, something Lancaster did not do according to recordings of meetings and meeting minutes compiled by the township and approved by its supervisors.