How Mayor Williams Built a Grant Pipeline With Himself at Every Stop
(opinion)
What would it look like if a small-town mayor designed the perfect grant money machine? It would look like this: You’d start by learning how grants work from the inside — say, by spending years as a county planning employee writing them. Then you’d move to a nonprofit foundation that processes grant money, taking an administrative cut on every dollar that flows through. Then you’d get yourself elected mayor of the town that receives those grants. And then you’d make sure nobody was watching.
Derek Williams has done all of these things. Before becoming mayor of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, Williams worked at the Wayne County Department of Planning and GIS, where his job included grant writing for borough projects. He then moved to the Wayne County Community Foundation, where he currently serves as Community Engagement Manager. WCCF is a fiscal sponsor and grant administrator — meaning it takes an administrative percentage on the money it processes. Williams then ran for mayor of the very borough his employer funds. He won in 2021 and was reelected in 2025.
Follow the money in a circle. As mayor, Honesdale needs grant funding for infrastructure, community development, and revitalization projects. As a WCCF employee, Williams works at the organization that writes, receives, and administers those grants — taking a percentage on each one. His salary comes from WCCF. More grants flowing through WCCF to Honesdale means more justification for his position, his salary, and his foundation’s revenue. The borough is, functionally, his own employer’s client — and he runs both sides of the transaction. In the private sector, this would be called a kickback scheme. In a court of law, they call this fraud.
It doesn’t stop there. Williams founded Canaltown, a community project that appears to be fiscally sponsored through WCCF — his employer. Canaltown has no independent 501(c)(3) status. Its finances are buried inside WCCF’s tax filings. Williams also sits on the Honesdale Borough Planning Commission — the body that reviews zoning and development proposals for the town he governs. He chairs the Wayne Tomorrow! Transportation Task Force, which advocates for projects that then need funding. He touches the money at every point in the cycle: the demand, the supply, the approval, and the administration.
And the numbers that are public should make you uncomfortable. WCCF’s own 990 tax filings tell a story. In fiscal year 2022 — the year Williams took office — WCCF’s total expenses were $1.36 million and its “Other Salaries” line read zero. Zero. By fiscal year 2023, expenses climbed to $1.54 million and Other Salaries appeared at $78,514. By 2024, expenses hit $2.03 million and salaries reached $144,650. By 2025, expenses ballooned to $2.55 million and Other Salaries hit $160,205. In three years, WCCF’s spending nearly doubled. Staff compensation went from nothing to $160,000. That is the period in which Derek Williams became mayor of the borough his employer services.
The year Williams took office, WCCF spent $1.36 million and had no salaried staff beyond the CEO. Three years later, it’s spending $2.55 million and paying $160,000 in staff wages — wages that include Williams’s own salary (which, by itself, could constitute a violation of Pennsylvania’s Ethics Act or federal law if federal grant dollars are involved). The CEO, Ryanne Jennings, earned $96,813. The remaining four employees split that $160,205. Williams’s mayoral salary maxes out at $2,500 per year under Pennsylvania’s Borough Code. So publicly, he’s earning maybe $42,000 to $50,000 combined. But here’s the question nobody is asking: did WCCF’s budget nearly double because Honesdale suddenly needed more grants — or did Honesdale suddenly need more grants because WCCF’s budget needed to grow? When the mayor controls the demand and his employer controls the supply, who exactly is making that call?
Nobody has asked the obvious questions. How much total grant money has flowed through WCCF to Honesdale since Williams became mayor in 2022? What administrative percentage does WCCF charge on those grants? There is no legal cap on what a fiscal sponsor can take off the top — industry standard is 5 to 15 percent, but nobody outside WCCF knows what their cut actually is. Has Williams recused himself from any WCCF decisions involving Honesdale? Has the borough filed any ethics disclosures under Pennsylvania’s Ethics Act (65 Pa.C.S. § 1103) about these overlapping roles? The answer to all of these, as far as public records show, is that nobody has bothered to find out.
And what happens when someone does ask questions? Ask Jim Hamill. Hamill was elected to Honesdale Borough Council in 2021, winning more votes than any council candidate in recent history. He was elected council president. He started raising questions — about policing shortfalls, about a borough manager contract he claimed cost taxpayers $284,000 in a single year, about transparency on a playground project. These are the kinds of questions a functioning government is supposed to welcome.
The retaliation was systematic and surgically timed. In March 2023, Hamill was voted out as council president. Then came October 2025 — one week before the mayoral election in which Hamill was the only candidate challenging Williams. The council stripped Hamill of all committee assignments and publicly accused him of eroding public trust. One week. Before an election. Let that sink in. The council didn’t bring this up in July. They didn’t bring it up in August. They waited until October, when the damage would be maximum and the recovery time would be zero. Voters went to the polls having just read about Hamill being rebuked by his own council. In November, they voted 5-1 to formally censure him. Williams won reelection with 68.67 percent of the vote.
This is not about proving corruption. It is about the complete absence of anyone asking whether corruption exists. A mayor whose employer profits from grant money flowing to his own borough. A mayor whose personal project is fiscally sponsored by his own employer. A mayor who sits on the planning commission of the town he governs. A council that strips committee assignments from the one person asking hard questions — timed to a week before an election. And a local newspaper, The River Reporter, that has never examined any of it.
And about that press. The River Reporter, the outlet that covers Honesdale borough government, has never examined any of this. Not the grant money loop. Not the WCCF conflict. Not the Canaltown finances. Not the planning commission overlap. Derek himself was a columnist for the paper before running for office. The paper gave Williams multiple glowing profile pieces during his campaigns. It gave Hamill zero dedicated candidate profiles during the 2025 mayoral race. The last major article about Hamill before election day was about his committee assignments being stripped.
In any other municipality, this structure would trigger mandatory ethics disclosures. In Honesdale, it triggers nothing — because the people who should be asking the questions are the same people who benefit from nobody asking them.
The residents of Honesdale deserve to know how much grant money flows through their mayor’s employer to their borough, what percentage is retained, and whether any of these overlapping roles have ever been formally disclosed. They deserve to know why the one councilmember who asked uncomfortable questions was systematically silenced. And they deserve a press that asks these questions instead of one that looks the other way.
Someone has to start asking. Consider this a start.