Bucks’ bipartisan badness: What the Covid documents tell us
Beginning in August 2021, Bucks County government told a lie which hurt countless children, was never apologized for, and cost taxpayers thousands of dollars. This lie changed the way I look at politicians, health care, and what people will do to stay in power. It is now April 2026. The lie is forgotten by most people, but I will never forget, and I hope the children who were negatively impacted by Covid lockdowns, learning loss, and masks will know the truth one day.
I want people to remember politicians lying to your face and smiling to help themselves. I have previously written op-eds and there are countless articles about the Bucks County Commissioners taking me to Common Pleas Court using taxpayer money to hide Democratic Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia’s emails from her nonpublished government email account. I knew, contrary to what Ellis-Marseglia insists, that the draconian August 23, 2021 school health guidance was not written by our Bucks County health director, Dr. David Damkser, but that instead a generic document was sent to Bucks County Intermediate Unit Executive Director Mark Hoffman and to thirteen Bucks County school districts. This ill-thought health guidance, which superseded Damsker’s less restrictive earlier policy, negatively impacted over 80,000 children in Bucks County and ultimately every school-aged child in the state.
Covid countermeasures were highly controversial in 2021. Many school officials and parents did not believe that Damsker was responsible for the August 23, 2021 school health guidance which deferred to the heavy-handed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The lawsuit hiding the email that suggested who created the policy was dragged out in court for years, ensuring public interest in the document would wear off. Though it has, I was determined to see it out until the end. I was finally awarded the emails in Common Pleas Court and found the specific email the county commissioners lied about and spent your money to hide from the public.
It wasn’t just the Democratic county commissioners who hurt children and wasted tax money. The lone Republican Commissioner Gene DiGirolomo was on the email too. I am embarrassed he calls himself a Republican. He sat silently through two years of county commissioners’ meetings while I, my friend Megan Brock, and several other people made public comments about the health guidance, the lawsuit, and children’s suffering. He could have simply turned over the email; he could have publicly called to stop the lawsuit; he could have said something. Instead, he did nothing. The Democrats’ poor conduct during Covid is no surprise at this point. But to see his name on the hidden email that he could have simply made public is disappointing. He stayed quiet to help his own political career instead of helping children and taxpayers.
The email to which I’m referring suggests that the August 23 document was written by Eric Nagy, Bucks County’s politically connected policy and communications director. “Everyone please see attached document based on our earlier conversations and review,” he wrote to several county officials, including Damsker. Are Bucks County officials really asking us to believe Nagy asked Damsker to review new Covid instructions that Damsker wrote himself?
The new guidelines were essentially a copy-and-paste of generic health guidance that gave schools license to keep healthy children home from school for simply sitting next to someone who tested positive for a cold. Instead of our county commissioners valuing our children, they neglected their education and well-being over politics.
I don’t say this to add to the invective they faced at that time. I have read at least 5,000 emails that contained completely irrational and downright mean language directed at the Democratic commissioners and school board directors about school health guidance during Covid. I do understand the political pressure the Democratic commissioners were under. I read countless emails from Democratic Committee members in Bucks County telling the commissioners to fire our board-certified health director simply because he said children could stay in school. It’s apparent that every single piece of guidance ever given by Damsker came from his own email account. Nowhere in the records I obtained did Nagy send an original message with content attributed to Damsker before August 23, 2021. There is also another email from Damsker dated August 17, 2021, suggesting that he did not expect to soon change his guidance.
Not only did county politicians change a doctor-authored health guidance for our children during a deadly pandemic, they also didn’t want school personnel to talk to Damsker during that pandemic. There is an email from Ellis-Marseglia to Commissioner Bob Harvie (D) and Bucks County Chief Operating Officer Margie McKevitt dated August 28, 2021 in which she writes, “Please tell me Damsker did not talk to [former Central Bucks School District Superintendent Abram Lucabaugh] this day.” This came after an unnamed Central Bucks parent claimed Damsker talked to Lucabaugh about Covid metrics.
Would Ellis-Marseglia really prefer that school personnel have no access to the county health director during a pandemic? Or was she pushing masks, vaccines, and social distancing for the sake of political theater? Either way, the sidelining of the professional tasked with overseeing health policy in Bucks County was shameful.
Jamie Walker is a former teacher and a Central Bucks School District mom of three.
