An open letter to Honesdale Mayor Derek Williams: publish your Statements of Financial Interests. The public shouldn’t need a Right-to-Know to find them.
Mayor Williams, this is a request, not an attack. The public is entitled to know basic facts about how their mayor earns his living, what businesses he runs, and what financial relationships he has with the borough he leads. Pennsylvania law requires every mayor to put this information in writing, every year, on a single form: the Statement of Financial Interests.
Pocono Review searched the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission’s online database. We found Statements of Financial Interests for other Honesdale officials. We did not find any for you.
That doesn’t, on its own, prove your filings don’t exist somewhere. It does mean your colleagues are findable in the public record on the same database, and you are not. If your filings exist in a folder at Borough Hall, the simplest fix is to publish them. The form was created to be seen, not stored.
Here is what the public record otherwise shows.
Canaltown, LLC
You are the sole listed officer of Canaltown, LLC, a for-profit Pennsylvania business registered to your apartment at 552 Main Street. Entity number 4252888. Filed March 13, 2014. Filing type: Domestic Limited Liability Company — for-profit, not a charity, not a nonprofit. Twelve consecutive years of annual reports. As recently as January 8, 2025, you filed an amendment with the Department of State updating the company’s address from “552 Main St” to “552 Main St Spc 3,” specifying the apartment number. You are actively maintaining the entity.
Canaltown’s website soft-pedals what it is, calling the company “technically a business” and saying any economic framing is “in the spirit of the gift.” The Commonwealth doesn’t grade on spirit. The filing type is what the filing type says it is. In a 2021 River Reporter profile of your mayoral campaign, you described yourself as Canaltown’s “project lead” who had “served as a grant writer for a few borough projects.” A 2020 piece in the same paper reported Canaltown submitting a review to Honesdale Borough Council pushing changes to downtown zoning and short-term rentals. At the time, you were a salaried Wayne County planning department employee. You joined Honesdale Borough Council as mayor fifteen months later.
Lisa Glover
On paper, you run Canaltown alone. Off paper, you don’t. The company’s website names a second principal alongside you: Lisa Glover, the design half of the operation. She’s also your domestic partner — and the same Lisa Glover now co-leading the $400,000 People’s Playground Project at Central Park, working out of borough channels you control.
This is a pattern. In casual settings — a website, a Facebook post, a River Reporter photo caption, a Wayne County Arts Alliance donor wall — the two of you appear as a pair. In every venue where the law requires disclosure, only one name appears. The state business filing lists you alone. Borough records of Glover’s commission service do not mention her relationship with you. The Wayne County Community Foundation’s IRS Form 990 — where you are on staff and Glover sits on a managed fund’s board — answers “No” to whether any officer has a family or business relationship with another. Same two people. Different forms. Different answers.
What Pennsylvania calls a fatal defect
A Statement of Financial Interests lists income, business directorships, ownership in for-profit entities, and creditors. Block 16 covers business directorships and employment. Block 17 covers ownership in any for-profit legal entity. A twelve-year-old Pennsylvania LLC with you as its sole listed officer belongs on both.
When the form is missing or incomplete, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a name for what it does to a candidacy: fatal defect. Section 1104(b)(3) of the Ethics Act says it plainly — failure to file “shall be a fatal defect to a petition to appear on the ballot.” The court has used the rule to strike a candidate for governor off the primary ballot and refused to let candidates fix late filings. Pennsylvania courts, it has held, are “not empowered to employ principles of equity to override the express statutory command.”
We are not claiming you failed to file. We are saying your filings are not where your colleagues’ are, and the public should not need legal paperwork to find them.
Reasonable Questions
These are the questions a complete and public SOFI would have answered. Each could be addressed in a sentence.
About Canaltown: How much revenue has Canaltown LLC generated in each year since you took office? Has Canaltown ever been paid by Honesdale Borough for any service, including grant writing? Has Canaltown ever been paid by an entity that subsequently received Honesdale Borough funds, contracts, permits, or grant assistance? Why is Lisa Glover, identified as Canaltown’s co-principal on the company’s own website for over a decade, not listed as an officer on the state filing?
About the Wayne County Community Foundation: What is your annual compensation from WCCF, where your titles have included Community Grant Writer and Community Engagement Manager? Are you involved in WCCF’s administration of the Known Grove Sacred Land Stewardship Fund, the Friends of Honesdale Parks Fund, or the GHP Honesdale Revitalization Fund — all WCCF pass-through funds for projects in the borough you lead? Have you participated in any WCCF decision involving funds whose beneficiaries include Honesdale Borough, your domestic partner, the People’s Playground Project, the Wayne County Arts Alliance, or the Greater Honesdale Partnership?
About your dual role: In a January 2026 WCCF press release announcing $72,500 in PA Heart & Soul grants for Honesdale, you stated as Mayor: “I encourage anyone interested in Honesdale Heart & Soul to contact me or the Wayne County Community Foundation.” When residents contact you about Heart & Soul, are they reaching you as Mayor or as a WCCF employee? What policy governs your recusal when a borough matter intersects with a WCCF fund or program?
About the disclosures: Have you filed Statements of Financial Interests for calendar years 2021 (as a candidate), 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025? If so, why are they not on the State Ethics Commission’s database alongside other Honesdale officials’ filings? Will you publish them now, without requiring residents to file Right-to-Know requests?
What we’re asking, and what we’re not
This is not a lawsuit. This is not a demand for tax returns. This is not partisan. We are not asking for anything beyond what the Commonwealth already requires you to disclose — disclosures every mayor in every borough in this state files annually.
The cost of publishing what you’ve filed is a single email to the borough secretary asking her to post the PDFs. The cost of leaving residents to chase your records through Right-to-Know is paid by the residents.
Pocono Review will publish your response in full, without edits, if you submit one.
Mr. Mayor, Honesdale is asking. Please answer.
Mayor Derek Williams can be reached through Honesdale Borough Hall at 958 Main Street, Honesdale, PA 18431, or by phone at (570) 253-0731. Pocono Review will publish his response in full. Send to tips@poconoreview.com.
Pocono Review covers Wayne, Monroe, Pike, Carbon, Lackawanna, and Luzerne counties.