Shady dealings alleged over Haverford site Plans to redevelop an old state hospital led to questionable conduct, a grand jury said. One commissioner was charged.

When Haverford decided to redevelop the 212-acre parcel that was once a state hospital, the township commissioners could have done as the civics textbooks suggest: meet in public, discuss their differences, and take a vote.

Instead, a grand jury said yesterday, feuding officials held secret meetings, ignored state public-information laws, didn't vote on key decisions, leaked inside information to a favored developer, and made a $600,000 payment to an influential law firm without a public vote.

As a result, a commissioner, Fred Charles Moran, has been charged with bribery, and a 36-page grand jury report lambastes the conduct of both Haverford officials and a well-known Philadelphia real estate lawyer, Jeffrey Rotwitt, a partner at Obermayer, Rebmann, Maxwell & Hippel L.L.P.

Moran is accused of asking a developer to pay the township an extra $500,000 to ensure needed zoning approvals. "Call it extortion, call it what you will, here's what we want to do," Moran is quoted as saying in 2005.

Rotwitt is described by the grand jury as participating in a "ruse" to get the $600,000 advance payment by suggesting, incorrectly, that his firm would otherwise halt work. The law firm later returned the money after it learned the commissioners never voted to issue the check.

Also, the report details allegations that between September 2002 and November 2004 some of the commissioners violated the state's Sunshine Act by failing to keep the other commissioners and taxpayers informed, and that they secretly conducted business to further "private political ambition."

Moran, 61, arrived in handcuffs for a preliminary arraignment before Magisterial District Judge John P. Capuzzi. Later, after the cuffs were removed, Moran casually put both arms on the judge's bench, leaned forward, and crossed his feet as the charges were read and bail was set at $10,000 unsecured. Neither he nor his attorney would comment.

Rotwitt referred questions to another Obermayer lawyer, Walter W. Cohen, who said that the firm was caught in an "intra-party political squabble" and that the grand jury report "shows that our firm didn't do anything improper."

The investigation stems from the township's 2002 purchase of the site at Marple and Darby Roads and the Blue Route. Built in 1964, the hospital closed in 1998.