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Township Workers At Center Of Thorny Dispute Over How Federal COVID-19 Funds Allocated In Upper Darby

UPPER DARBY, Pa. (CBS) -- Where did more than $6 million go? That's the question many asked Monday night in Upper Darby. At stake, Friday's payroll checks for township workers, including fire and police.

The township building was standing room only at an emergency meeting. Many came to find out if they will get paid at the end of the week after Upper Darby's treasurer flagged the missing money last week.

Tensions flared during an emergency meeting to figure out if and how more than $6 million in American Rescue Plan funding paid out to Upper Darby couldn't be accounted for.

"My administration has nothing to hide from the public or council," Mayor Barbara Ann Keffer said.

The money is meant to fund some of the payroll for township employees including police, fire and public works.

"I'm sure a lot of guys here, especially with the pandemic and all that, live paycheck to paycheck. I know I do," one worker said.

While city leaders promised workers their paychecks will clear, many were left to wonder how this could happen. Some were not shy to put politics on blast.

"Please put your political ambitions aside so that our township employee can feed their families," a man said.

"All of this political nonsense is just that. It's nonsense," a woman said.

Money was running bare in township coffers, and last week Council was asked to appropriate $6 million in federal COVID-19 funds to cover payroll for police, fire and sanitation workers.

It would be an appropriate use of federal money, and then, David Haman, the township's elected treasurer announced that he discovered a glitch.

"I don't know where $6.3 million of this money went," Haman said. "Again, I'm not suggesting there's any problem here. I just need to find out what's going on."

The treasurer revealed a fund balance that township leaders on both sides of the issue contend did not add up. The meeting took an angry turn.

In the end, a bipartisan group of six councilmembers refused to appropriate the money.

"I got to tell you, you're telling me there's some confusion about where $20 million was put? That is unacceptable," Upper Darby Township Councilmember Meaghan Wagner said.

On Monday, township chief administrative officer Vincent Rongione said the report that ignited a firestorm was incomplete. He said the report shown at the meeting was not correct and $6 million is not missing.

Rongione showed Eyewitness News a ledger. Across a number of entries, he says there is no missing $6 million chunks of money, but he acknowledges seeds of mistrust are sown with councilmembers demanding a full account of federal COVID-19 funds.

Rongione cautioned officials to explore where the money is.

"No one in the administration and many members of Council had not seen that report before it was produced in the middle of this council meeting," Rongione said.

Rongione said he was "blindsided" by the report.

Others were also blindsided, including three Democrats and three Republicans on Council who united to block the use of any federal money until they got some answers.

"That's our duty to the taxpayers, to answer to that taxpayers as to where that money is," Wagner said.

"We want to know where the money is, how is it spent and we have to answer to our residents, so if how are we going to answer them if we don't know ourselves," Councilmember Lisa Faraglia said.

"It was a lot of information that was not present," Councilmember Matt Silva said. "We were asked to make a large allocation of funds without all the information."

Pointing fingers in the midst of the chaos.

One thing that remained clear -- the math exposed a bigger issue far beyond the bottom line.

"You need to talk to each other outside of this forum. You need to solve your problems before you get here," a resident said.

Council and the mayor assured workers they will get paid on Friday.

Upper Darby's mayor announced a team of forensic accountants will be brought in to review exactly what happened.

CBS3's Joe Holden and Alicia Roberts contributed to this report.

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