Who authored Bucks County's COVID guidelines? What you need to know about 'smoking gun'

Accusations that Bucks County colluded with state health officials to cut its top health official out of COVID-19 guidelines for schools last summer saw renewed focus this week, fueled by what some called a "smoking gun" revelation on who authored the year-old release.

A small group of county residents have contended since last year that the county commissioners worked with the state to strongarm schools into requiring masks at the start of last school year, before then-Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam would issue a statewide mask requirement for all schools in Pennsylvania.

Jamie Walker, Megan Brock and Josh Hogan told the National Review last week they found metadata naming Eric Nagy, the county’s head of policy and communications, as the author of the county’s Aug. 23, 2021 pandemic recommendations for school districts.

Metadata is information stored on a digital file that typically contains details about the file's creation, such as the name of the person using the computer the file was created on and when the file was made.

The document properties found on the Aug. 23 file list Nagy as the author of the document, created just after 9:30 that night.

The three said the metadata was "the smoking gun" evidence that Bucks County Health Department Director Dr. David Damsker was not involved with the county’s changing recommendations during a surge of coronavirus cases late last summer.

The story in the conservative media outlet also prompted calls for Nagy’s resignation by Bucks County Republican Committee Chair Pat Poprik on Friday.

“If this is true, as the evidence presented suggests, it represents a significant overreach by a political operative, and a violation of the trust voters have in our county government. Parents rightfully expect these kinds of decisions to be made by public health professionals, not former campaign staffers,” Poprik said.

Nagy headed campaigns of several prominent Democrats in recent years and was once the executive director of the Bucks County Democratic Committee. He also ran the 2019 campaigns for County Commissioner Chair Bob Harvie and Vice Chair Diane Ellis-Marseglia before being hired as the head of policy and planning for the county on Jan. 8, 2020, for $83,000.

“We do not believe it is appropriate for Mr. Nagy to continue in his role with the County of Bucks. The Democrat Commissioners’ refusal to address this issue, and their continued lawsuits seeking to silence concerned parents, are unacceptable,” Poprik added.

Brock and Walker have filed many Right to Know Law requests for communications involving county and state officials for over a year now. The county is currently fighting recent records appeals the two won with the state's Office of Open Records in Bucks County Court of Common Pleas. Judicial Watch is now helping Brock fund her legal fight.

The current controversy is rooted in the school guidance ahead of the 2021-22 school year.

Many school districts in Bucks County were planning to start that academic year with mask-optional health and safety plans, but a surge in new coronavirus cases brought a deluge of demands to the county for some kind of policy to force schools to require masks.

The county commissioners said then that they couldn’t force any school district to follow any guidance, but the county did release a broad set of recommendations on Aug. 15.

Those guidelines didn’t recommend schools require masks, but a call with area hospital officials and Damsker led to an updated plan on Aug. 17 that recommended masks be required.

The hospitals told the county they were concerned that the surge in cases could quickly overwhelm capacity, but Brock and Walker said at a commissioners’ meeting soon after that the county was kowtowing to health care administrators and not following Damsker’s original guidance.

On Aug. 23, the Bucks County guidance was updated once again after a state Department of Health letter from then-Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam rebuked the county's Aug. 15 guidelines, including testing and quarantining recommendations.

The county effectively told school districts to follow recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a suspicious change, according to Brock, Walker and, soon after, a growing number of school officials.

County challenges RTK wins over emails:Bucks County's year-old COVID policy fuels open records lawsuits

Since then, Brock and Walker filed a series of Right to Know Law requests for communications between the commissioners and other state officials in an attempt to prove Damsker was silenced, and the county was refusing to follow its own public health leader.

Nagy’s name as the author on a copy of the Aug. 23 document posted on the county’s website supports their claims that Damsker was pushed aside, according to their statements in the Review article.

A review of health department COVID guideline documents on the website found that Damsker was not credited as an "author" on any of them. The county said Nagy and other employees routinely create and post documents to the website as part of their administrative function. The author field does not reflect who wrote the document or signed off on it.

Dr. Damsker weighs in

The county hasn’t granted an interview with Damsker since last August, with Nagy telling this news organization it wouldn’t “dignify these conspiracy theories” by acknowledging them.

On Tuesday, however, as allegations of political collusion gained support from the county’s Republican Party, Damsker, through the county, issued his first, and likely last statement on what happened last year exclusively to this news organization after we asked to interview the director.

“No one in County administration, including the Commissioners, was happy with changing our school reopening guidance last-minute. However, a very publicly distributed letter from then-Secretary Alison Beam, the top health official in the state, simply could not be ignored,” Damsker wrote.

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Beam’s letter said the state’s Department of Health, Department of Education and “the entire Wolf Administration” was recommending schools follow CDC guidelines for returning to in-person education that year.

According to Brock, Walker and Hogan, Beam’s letter started a timeline of events documented through emails they obtained through multiple Right to Know Law requests since last year.

At about 10 a.m. on Aug. 23, a state health official reached out to Marseglia shortly before Beam’s letter was sent to the county. Marseglia then forwarded the emails to Chief Operating Officer Margaret McKevitt two hours later.

McKevitt sent an email with Beam’s letter to Damsker at around 2 p.m., and McKevitt would later send Nagy a link to CDC school guidance at around 4 p.m., the National Review article states.

Brock told the National Review there were no records showing Damsker had weighed in on the possible changes, insisting instead the records show he was left out of the process.

In his statement this week, Damsker said there was a “complete lack of effort by (Beam) to communicate with (him) directly” and the letter was instead sent to the commissioners and to reporters.

“Obviously, the Secretary’s letter put the County in an impossible and very public position where no decision was going to please everyone,” Damsker added.

“Between the Secretary’s letter and the similar request made by local hospitals a few days prior, the County had to make a change. Without those two factors, our August 15th guidance would have stood.”

Damsker also reiterated that the guidelines were not mandates or rules that the school districts had to follow, and which “many schools chose to ignore … throughout the pandemic, which was their right.”

With masks often the central point of contention among a divided county, Damsker said the issue was ultimately rendered moot with the Beam’s statewide order requiring masks in schools that followed the Aug. 23 guidance.

“Government — at every level local, county, state, federal — is a collaborative effort where no decision is made in a vacuum, and while we don’t always agree, we do always act with the best interest of our community in mind … we’re proud to have done exactly that throughout this pandemic,” said Damsker.

While the claims made in the National Review story pits Damsker against the county, Damsker’s statement suggests the county as a whole was reacting to the state and the information from local hospitals.

During a phone interview Wednesday, Brock told this news organization that the statement only supporters their claims of outside influence but she also isn't convinced the emailed statement actually came from Damsker himself.

"How can you know it's from him if he didn't talk to you? ... that's kind of the whole question we're asking here right now and I absolutely have emails previously that show Dr. Dasmker wasn't writing his public statements," Brock said.

Brock clarified that she was referring to past emails she had obtained that showed reporters asking for a statement from Damsker but getting a response from Nagy instead.

Less than an hour after this story initially published online, Damsker sent email directly to this news organization stating he did in fact write the statement.

Her argument seems to mirror that of the county's about the metadata in that it only shows who administratively created a document, and not who wrote its content.

The county public information office routinely sends out statements on behalf of the commissioners and department heads and includes statements in their press releases, as well.

Brock added that the statement didn't seem to indicate whether Damsker was involved with the recommendations and doesn't solve the underlying claim that county health guidance was written by someone other than a health care professional.

The county's former communications director Larry King told this news organization in an email last August that Damsker was involved in developing the Aug. 23 guidance.

Bucks County political parties enter the fray over masking policy

Bucks County Democratic Committee Chair Steve Santarsiero, also a state senator for the 10th District in Bucks, chided Poprik and the GOP for “still fighting over outdated” pandemic recommendations.

“If Ms. Poprik wants someone to resign, she should focus her energies on one of the members of her own committee, Dawn Bancroft, who was convicted of crimes relating to the January 6, 2021, attack on the United State Capitol,” Santarsiero said, referring to the recently elected committeewoman from Doylestown Borough.

More on Dawn Bancroft:Bucks County Dems want Doylestown committee woman to resign after her Jan. 6 sentencing

Bancroft pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges for entering the Capitol Building in Washington during the riots last winter and was sentenced to 60 days in a minimum-security facility in July. Bancroft was elected to the Republican committee on May 17.

“I think it’s time we start focusing on very real threats to our democracy and personal freedoms rather than manufactured issues intended to distract us from that work,” Santarsiero added.

Accusations about last year’s policies have largely been targeted at Democrat officials like Harvie and Marseglia, who herself has faced the brunt of the accusations from Brock and Walker at public meetings.

Until Friday, the county GOP had never issued a statement on the masking policies or Nagy's position in county government related to the pandemic. The county government, under both parties, have included appointees and employees who have worked on campaigns and for the parties.

Poprik did question Nagy's initial employment with the county after he was hired in 2020, similarly accusing the county of using a "political operative" to fill a government role.

The county, and Damsker's recent statement specifically, seem ready to move on from last year’s guidance.

“Schools are opening next week normally, per the County’s guidance issued in May 2022. Our sole focus now, as it should be, is on the 2022-23 school year,” said in his statement this week.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Doubt over Bucks County COVID guidelines continue amid metadata