By The Columbia Chronicle Editorial Board
On Monday, a long-serving Columbia Borough employee resigned. She worked in the codes department, served as the borough’s Right-to-Know officer and trained new employees. By every account, she did the work of three people. Council President Eric Kauffman confirmed to the Chronicle by text message that her resignation came with a non-disclosure agreement.
The Chronicle has learned that several members of Borough Council did not know she had resigned. No executive session was held to discuss it.
Her departure came less than two weeks after Borough Manager Jack Brommer’s resignation was announced at the Oct. 13 council meeting. We do not know whether the two are connected. Residents deserve to know, and so far no one at Borough Hall is saying.
This is not an isolated question. It is the latest in a pattern the borough’s own records describe.
The comp time no contract allowed. When Brommer became Chief of Police in 2011, his contract called him an exempt employee “not entitled to any overtime compensation or compensatory time.” Yet his timesheets, released to the Chronicle under the Right-to-Know Law, track a comp-time balance that rose from 107.5 hours in July 2024 to 178.5 hours that December. One timesheet logs 12.5 hours of overtime at time-and-a-half, with the supervisor and manager approval lines blank. A 2023 pay stub shows comp time paid at $51.78 an hour. Nothing the borough has released explains what authorized it. Four of his timesheets, the borough says, cannot be located.
The leave payout. In February, council signed an agreement naming Brommer Borough Manager at $110,000 a year, effective back to September 2025. That agreement limits leave carryover to five days a year. The same agreement carries his entire leave bank forward and pays it out: $22,549.90 in May 2026, another $22,549.90 in May 2027, and the remainder in 2028. For eight months he served as both Police Chief and Interim Borough Manager, collecting an extra $2,000 a month and, in effect, supervising himself.
The evidence room. Chief Holly Arndt has described a department in need of “foundational rebuilding.” She told the Chronicle that 21 bags of parking-enforcement coins sat in the evidence room as unprocessed borough revenue. (Our earlier editorial reported 19, based on her remarks at a public meeting.) She also inherited a police bank account with no record of its purpose or history. Records she released show broken radios, license-plate readers shut off over a lapsed subscription and camera storage 92 percent full. She wrote to the Chronicle that the signed copy of her own contract was held by the Borough Manager and never given to her.
The finance office. The Finance Manager hired in August 2025 was gone by December. In June, council voted 5-2 to hire a replacement. She never started. In an email to the Chronicle, she wrote that in July, the borough’s outside accounting firm was still finishing March’s bank reconciliations, and that month-end closings were far behind. About ten months on, the position is still empty.
None of this proves anyone broke the law. We said so when we released the Jack Files, and we say it again. But it shows public money and public records that no one outside Borough Hall has checked. The people who would normally check them are the same people who approved these agreements.
Council cannot investigate itself. We call on Borough Council to:
- Hire an independent forensic auditor with no prior work for the borough to review payroll, comp time, leave payouts, police accounts and whether the books are reconciled and current, from 2020 to the present.
- Refer the evidence-room coins and the police bank account to the Lancaster County District Attorney for an independent count and review.
- Hold the 2027 and 2028 leave payments until the audit confirms those figures.
- Release the codes employee’s separation agreement, any payment under it and the name of the person who signed it, and bring it before council for a public vote.
- Tell residents who is now answering Right-to-Know requests, now that the borough’s Right-to-Know officer is gone.
- Preserve every record tied to these questions, starting now.
- Answer our published questions in writing within 30 days.
Under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law, a separation agreement involving public money is a public record. An NDA can limit what a former employee says. It cannot hide the deal from the people who paid for it. The Chronicle has requested that agreement, and we will publish what we receive.
If council will not act, residents can file complaints with the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission and the Lancaster County District Attorney.
Columbia has good people working for it. They deserve a government that can show its work.
