CUMBERLAND — The Allegany County Board of Commissioners violated state law in a behind-closed-doors real estate deal that involved former Luke mill property in West Virginia, according to a Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board decision issued Wednesday.
While an April ruling said the commissioners — under a business location exception — complied with the Open Meetings Act when they privately approved a lease of county-owned land in Maryland, the new conclusion states the deviation can’t be applied to property outside Maryland.
The compliance board’s latest decision follows a complaint filed by Frostburg resident and county commissioner candidate Kit Pepper Lescallette.
“After we issued our opinion, (Lescallette) learned that the lease approved in closed session involves land located in West Virginia, not Maryland,” the compliance board stated.
According to the ruling, the county’s response to the complaint included that commissioners bought the 228-acre property on both sides of the state line for an economic development project.
The mill closed in 2019 and paper-making equipment was removed.
The county board in April 2025 met and invoked two exceptions to convene in closed session.
Later, the county said it had discussed and approved a lease agreement with a construction company to store wood chips on two acres of the property in West Virginia.
The compliance board ruling said one of the county’s exceptions applies only to “proposals for a business or industrial organization to locate, expand, or remain” in Maryland.
The county at its next public meeting is expected to formally acknowledge the latest compliance board opinion.
Lescallette has complained to the Maryland Office of the State Prosecutor that Allegany County officials repeatedly treated transparency, public participation and the law as obstacles to work around rather than obligations to honor.
“This is significant because the required public process was not merely a procedural formality,” she wrote in a May email to the prosecutor’s office. “The statutory notice and hearing requirements exist to ensure meaningful public participation before decisions are finalized and before public assets are transferred or encumbered.”
Thursday, Lescallette said it would have been awkward for the county commissioners to approve the West Virginia lease in a legally required open meeting “because they had still not informed the public that the county owned the Luke mill property.”
The land was purchased in November 2024 “without public discussion or disclosure,” she said.
“By April 2025, the commissioners wanted to lease part of the property,” Lescallette said.
“Conducting the lease discussion in a closed meeting bought officials several more months before the public learned what had happened,” she said.
“Coincidentally, (state Sen.) Mike McKay’s legislation related to future data center development was moving through the legislative process at the same time,” Lescallette said.
The OMBC “has now found another violation of the Open Meetings Act, bringing the total to 19,” she said. “Residents deserve an explanation for why major decisions involving taxpayer-owned property continue to be made, in violation of state law, behind closed doors.”
Friday, Allegany County Attorney T. Lee Beeman said the county respects the compliance board’s legal analysis and takes its opinions seriously.
“Unlike the earlier opinions addressing procedural requirements under the Open Meetings Act, this opinion concerns a narrow legal question involving the scope of one of the act’s statutory closed-session exceptions,” Beeman said.
At the time of the April 2025 meeting, the county acted in good faith in concluding that the discussion fell within the statutory exception, he said.
“That conclusion was consistent with the county’s understanding that the lease was a part of a broader redevelopment of the former Luke paper mill site, an economic development project intended to encourage business investment and job creation within the state,” Beeman said.
“Notably, the (compliance board) further elaborated that the question is not whether a business is physically located within the state, but whether they operate or do business within the state,” he said. “The evolution of the opinion itself demonstrates that this was not a simple or clear-cut question under Maryland law.”
Beeman said the county “has already implemented significant changes to its Open Meetings Act procedures, including revised notice practices, updated closed-session procedures, enhanced documentation requirements, and additional internal review processes.”
The reforms aim to ensure continued compliance “with both the letter and the spirit of Maryland’s Open Meetings Act,” he said.
“We will continue to review our practices to ensure they remain consistent with evolving guidance,” Beeman said.