Butler County is close to picking a buyer for the Sunnyview Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

The three county commissioners spent Tuesday and Wednesday in New York looking at five health care facilities owned by two of the interested companies.

County Commissioner Bill McCarrier, board chairman, said on Thursday that the facility sites are at Yonkers, Manhattan and Long Island.

McCarrier said he is prepared to select one of the two finalists.

“In my mind, one was far superior to the other,” he said.

Commissioner Dale Pinkerton also is prepared to choose.

“That’s where I am, too,” Pinkerton said.

Commissioner Jim Eckstein agreed the trip was instrumental in making an eventual choice.

“It went well,” Eckstein said.

Although Eckstein opposes a sale, his lone vote cannot stop it.

Expecting a sale, Eckstein said he wants to be sure the buyer is an appropriate choice.

“I’m voting no on the sale, but I want to be an integral part of the selection process,” he said.

However, Eckstein isn’t ready to pick a buyer until he meets with Sue Murray, Sunnyview administrator, and Heidi Coyle, director of Sunnyview nursing. Both accompanied the commissioners to New York.

He said the women’s input would be essential to his decision.

“I don’t want to make a decision yet,” Eckstein said.

He said he would meet with Murray and Coyle as soon as possible.

The commissioners were expected to discuss the pending sale at their meeting this morning. They could put a decision to negotiate with a specific company on the agenda for their meeting Wednesday.

McCarrier said there were eight companies that submitted quotes to buy Sunnyview. Those eight were narrowed to five, then to two.

“We felt two were outstanding,” McCarrier said.

As of this morning, the county had not released the names of the eight companies and what prices they quoted.

The county required a minimum quote of $13.5 million to buy Sunnyview.

McCarrier said he wasn’t sure why the initial eight names weren’t released, but explained that divulging which ones were eliminated from contention would have been premature.

He said any companies selected for further consideration could have backed out, leaving the county without the option of pursuing others that were initially ruled out.

Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association, said the names of the companies and what they quoted is public information.

Beaver County followed the same clandestine process in 2013 when selling the Friendship Ridge nursing home.

After Beaver County officials refused to divulge details about companies seeking to buy the facility, a newspaper appealed the denial to the state Office of Open Records.

The open records office determined Beaver County was in violation of the state Right-to-Know law.

McCarrier said he didn’t have knowledge of that situation.

“I wasn’t aware of it,” he said.

County solicitor Mike English said the distinction between Butler and Beaver is that Beaver was further along in the process, having already selected a buyer.

Melewsky also said the commissioners should have had public discussion about their New York trip before scheduling it.

“The discussions have to be in public,” she said. “That’s an expenditure of public funds. You can’t intentionally circumvent the Sunshine Act.”

McCarrier said he didn’t think scheduling the trip was an issue.

English defended how the commissioners have conducted the process.

“They did not talk amongst themselves,” he said. “They independently came to the same conclusion.”