Westmoreland County commissioners need to be more forthright about what is happening in the elections bureau.

This is becoming a very familiar topic. We have discussed it as three people in the office’s leadership have left under largely undisclosed circumstances in the last year. We have revisited it three times since the suspension of JoAnn Sebastiani was confirmed.

Sebastiani was appointed as election bureau director in August 2020 after the resignation of Beth Lachman and before the firing of deputy director Scott Sistek, who had been the interim director until her hiring. Sebastiani, who came to the job from the county tax office with glowing praise from commissioners, was suspended June 8 with pay.

At every turn, the commissioners have been reluctant to discuss the specifics. They will not say why Sebastiani was suspended. They did not confirm that she was fired. On June 29, they announced the elections director position was vacant, but with no other information about Sebastiani’s relationship with the county.

When Commissioner Sean Kertes was asked, he said he was not aware that a decision had been made about her status.

Except that wasn’t true.

On June 25, all three commissioners signed an action form created by the county’s human resources department. According to that form, Sebastiani was fired retroactive to June 19.

“It’s a personnel issue, and we tried to make the best decision we can,” Kertes said Thursday.

That may very well be true. It’s hard to tell without more information, but let’s give them the benefit of the doubt as most personnel issues are shrouded in a layer of privacy protection.

There is, however, no excuse for such a misstatement when the county has gotten so very good at just shrugging and saying some things can’t be discussed.

Kertes says there wasn’t a lie — that he only meant that he didn’t know when an official announcement would be made.

That would be easier to accept if there had been a pattern of transparency on the elections employment issues leading up to that statement. There wasn’t.

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