Municipal Law and Intergovernmental Disputes in Delaware County

Intergovernmental agreements bind

Delaware County has 49 municipalities in about 184 square miles, which is why so much here is done jointly. Fire companies, police coverage, public works, emergency services and equipment purchases are frequently shared between two or more boroughs.

Pennsylvania’s Intergovernmental Cooperation Act allows municipalities to enter these arrangements, and an agreement made under it is enforceable. A borough cannot treat a long standing commitment as informal simply because the council that made it has since changed.

The dispute that comes up most often

Shared equipment. Two municipalities operate a joint fire department. They plan a purchase together over several years. One buys the apparatus on the strength of the other’s assurance that its share is approved. Then the second municipality declines to pay, or asserts that the underlying agreement no longer binds it.

The money is only part of the problem. Fire and emergency cover does not pause while two boroughs argue, so residents of both carry the risk while it is resolved.

Course of dealing matters as much as the document

Many of these arrangements date back decades and the original writing is thin, amended by practice, or partly lost. That does not make them unenforceable. Years of joint budgeting, shared invoices, minuted approvals and correspondence establish what the parties actually agreed and how they behaved.

Which is why the first thing worth doing is not legal at all. It is gathering the record: council minutes, budget lines, the correspondence, the approvals. That material usually decides the case.

Suing a local agency has its own rules

The distinction is worth getting right at the outset, because the notice requirement that ends a tort claim against a township has no application to a contract between two boroughs.

Who we act for

We act for municipalities and for parties in dispute with them. Cases are heard in the Court of Common Pleas at the Delaware County courthouse in Media, the county seat, and we are a short walk from it.