It's been less than two months since Butler County taxpayers learned that the county commissioners failed to divulge a theft of $2,270 last August at the Alameda Park Pool.

On Monday, in a move reminiscent of that disregard for the taxpayers' right to know, Julie Graham, county solicitor, apparently with the concurrence of the three commissioners, said the public wasn't entitled to know the amount of a settlement the commissioners approved Monday in regard to the false arrest of a Mars woman in 2005. All that the taxpayers were told at Monday's commissioners meeting was that the county is paying the $25,000 deductible portion of the insurance that covers the county in regard to such circumstances.

However, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported Wednesday that Sara Reedy, 21, who was the victim of the false arrest, will receive $45,000 from Gemini Insurance Co., Butler County's law enforcement insurance carrier. The county will pay the $25,000 deductible.

The county's role in the woman's case involves the decisions and actions of then-District Attorney (and now Judge) Tim McCune and Assistant District Attorney William T. Fullerton linked to pursuing the woman's prosecution.

While the settlement with the county acknowledges no wrongdoing on the county's part, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh in August 2006 lists a number of constitutional violations, including false imprisonment, retaliation, malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Reedy's lawsuit claims that she was falsely arrested in January 2005 by Cranberry Township police for allegedly making false statements, theft and receiving stolen property in connection with a July 2004 robbery of the Route 19 gasoline station where she worked.

Reedy was accused of stealing more than $600 from her employer to pay rent for her trailer, and fabricating a story about being sexually assaulted by a robber.

While hospitalized after the robbery and assault, Reedy was accused by police of lying about the robbery and assault as a means for obtaining money to support a heroin addiction.

She spent five days in jail after her arrest.

However, authorities dropped the charges after an Ohio man, Wilbur C. Brown II of Oberlin, who also reportedly had a Dauphin County address in Pennsylvania, was arrested in Brookville, Jefferson County, while allegedly sexually assaulting a woman during a convenience store robbery.

During interrogation after his arrest, Brown admitted to a series of sexual assaults, including the assault on Reedy.

The case in relation to Cranberry Township still is in progress. One of Reedy's lawyers said he is preparing for the case to go to trial.

Meanwhile, Reedy has a lawsuit pending against UPMC regarding records that were disclosed by the hospital to police following Reedy's rape.

While the evidence proves that mistakes were made in regard to the investigation of the service station robbery, those errors should not have been the basis for another error — the county opting for secrecy regarding the sum of the county-related settlement.

At Monday's meeting, Graham, choosing secrecy, said the county only had to reveal its share of the settlement.

That might be so, but the commissioners should have acted in the taxpayers' best interests and overruled Graham. The commissioners employ Graham; Graham doesn't employ the commissioners.

The fact that they didn't resist secrecy is troubling from taxpayers' vantage point.

Prior to Monday's vote on the settlement, Graham said "it would be prudent" for the county leaders to follow Gemini's recommendation to approve the deal.

She probably was right.

But it also would have been prudent for Graham to guide the commissioners in the direction of openness toward the public, rather than toward a stance that would tarnish their image — especially during an election year.

Election year or not, Butler County government should operate on a constant commitment to transparency.

Transparency apparently is a pick-and-choose commodity at the Government Center — as implied by the Alameda case and confirmed by the Reedy case. This preference for secrecy should not be embraced by the people whose money funds county operations.

Those people don't need an election to deliver that message.