HONESDALE, WAYNE COUNTY — Every judge currently sitting on the Wayne County Court of Common Pleas held a leadership position in the Wayne County Bar Association before taking the bench. So did the assistant district attorney who prosecutes cases before them. So did the magisterial district judge sworn in this January.
The WCBA is the organization that credentials, connects, and promotes the attorneys who become Wayne County’s judges and prosecutors. It is also, according to IRS records, no longer a tax-exempt organization — apparently for the second time.
The WCBA’s last two filings — covering calendar years 2018 and 2019 — were both submitted on January 13, 2021, twelve minutes apart according to IRS timestamps. The FY2018 return arrived twenty months past its original deadline. No filing has appeared since. Under federal law, a tax-exempt organization that fails to file for three consecutive years loses its exemption automatically. ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer confirms the WCBA is no longer on the IRS list.
From Bar Officers to the Bench
The WCBA’s FY2014 return — the earliest available on ProPublica — lists Jeanine Edwards as President and Matthew Meagher as Vice President. Edwards was Wayne County’s sitting District Attorney at the time — the chief prosecutor running the county bar association. Meagher was in private practice, running the firm that bore his name. He had started his career as an assistant district attorney himself, working alongside Raymond Hamill, who became his law partner in 2005 and then President Judge in 2007. Christine Rechner served as Treasurer on that filing, moved to Vice President for FY2015 through FY2017, dropped off the officer list entirely for FY2018 and FY2019, and reappeared as Treasurer on the current WCBA website — a decade-long presence in the organization’s leadership.
Brendan Ellis joined Meagher’s firm after graduating law school in 2012. The firm became Meagher Ellis Law. While working as Meagher’s law partner, Ellis served as WCBA Treasurer from FY2015 through FY2017 — signing the FY2017 return as the organization’s authorized officer — then as Vice President through FY2019. He also served as guardian ad litem in child abuse, neglect, and custody cases. In 2019, he was appointed assistant district attorney. His former law partner took the bench two years later.
Edwards won the judgeship in November 2017, defeating Pamela Wilson — her fellow WCBA officer — in the primary. She was sworn in as President Judge on January 2, 2018, replacing the retiring Hamill — the same Hamill who had partnered with Meagher and who appears in the founding documents of the WCBA’s pro bono subsidiary. Meagher won the newly created second judgeship unopposed in November 2021. Edwards administered his oath.
The current WCBA leadership, listed on waynecountypalawyers.com, includes Jessica Ellis as Vice President. She is Brendan Ellis’s wife. She was sworn in as a magisterial district judge in January 2026 — and was still listed on the Wayne County government directory as an ADA after taking the bench. Pocono Review has previously reported on the overlapping roles at Ellis Law Group, the conflicts created when Jessica Ellis took the bench while her husband continued prosecuting cases in the same small DA’s office, the firm’s ongoing entanglement with the DA’s office and the Court of Common Pleas, and the role of District Attorney Alfred J. Howell in that arrangement.
Wilson served as WCBA Secretary and then President from FY2015 through FY2019. During her presidency, she was simultaneously employed as a Wayne County Custody Master — the person who hears contested custody cases. She led the bar association that recruits and credentials the attorneys who appear before her in those same cases. The WCBA’s Equal Access Project document, adopted in November 2017, acknowledges her in both roles.
Edwards, Meagher, and Brendan Ellis all served as assistant district attorneys before entering private practice, then held WCBA officer positions, then moved to the bench or back to the DA’s office. The path repeats: ADA, private practice, bar leadership, public authority.
Today, Edwards presides over the Court of Common Pleas as President Judge. Meagher sits beside her as the county’s second judge. Brendan Ellis prosecutes cases before both of them as an ADA — including before his former law partner. Jessica Ellis hears cases as a magisterial district judge. Rechner remains WCBA Treasurer and simultaneously serves as Treasurer of the WCBA’s nonprofit subsidiary, Solicitor for Wayne County Children & Youth Services, editor of the Wayne County Legal Journal, and a practicing family law attorney in the same categories of cases the bar association’s pro bono program was built to fund.
A Second Lapse
An expense line buried in the WCBA’s FY2014 Schedule O raises the possibility that this is not the first time the bar association has lost its tax-exempt status. That filing reports an $850 payment for a “1024 FILING FEE.” Form 1024 is the IRS application for recognition of exemption under Section 501(c)(6) — the classification that covers business leagues, including bar associations.
ProPublica records show the WCBA’s tax-exempt status dates to March 2015, consistent with an application filed in 2014 and processed the following year. If the WCBA needed to reapply in 2014, it had previously lost or never held a formal IRS determination. The organization appears to have let its status lapse, restored it, and then let it lapse again.
The federal problems are not the only ones. Pennsylvania began requiring annual reports from nonprofit corporations in 2025, with the first filings due by June 30 for corporations. Pennsylvania Department of State records show the WCBA has not filed. The organization was incorporated as a domestic nonprofit corporation on April 15, 1994, and its corporate status remains listed as “Active” — but its annual report is marked overdue.
The registered office on file with the state is the Wayne County Courthouse, 900 Court Street, Honesdale — the building where former WCBA officers Jeanine Edwards and Matthew Meagher now preside as judges.
Bleeding Cash
The WCBA ran deficits in five of the six years of available filings. Net assets fell from $87,163 at the start of FY2014 to $48,365 at the end of FY2019.
In FY2017 — the same year the WCBA reactivated a dormant subsidiary to receive state legal aid money — its Schedule O shows the organization spent $16,832 on a golf tournament dinner. That was the single largest non-grant expense on the return, bigger than the $12,995 in salaries, the $5,214 in rent, or the $10,090 in dues to the Pennsylvania Bar Association. The organization spent more on a golf outing than it paid every person who worked for it that year.
The single largest expenditure in the dataset is a $50,000 grant to the Wayne County Community Foundation in FY2014. With total revenue of $57,845 that year, the WCBA sent 86 percent of its annual income to a community foundation whose board included Paul M. Meagher — a relative of Judge Matthew Meagher, who was WCBA Vice President at the time the grant was made. Paul Meagher’s name is spelled “MEAGER” on WCCF’s federal filings from at least FY2014 through FY2017, obscuring the connection in electronic records searchable by name. The correct spelling does not appear until the FY2019 return. No electronically extracted data exists for the FY2018 filing. WCBA’s net assets plunged by $24,774 that year — the steepest one-year decline in the available records. No public explanation for the transfer has been disclosed.
That same CPA — Brian T. Kelly of Carbondale — prepared the WCBA’s tax returns and the Wayne County Community Foundation’s filings during the same period. He is currently an Independent Director on the Board of Directors for Dimeco. WCCF’s FY2018 Schedule I later shows a $36,000 grant flowing back to WCBA. Money moved in both directions between the two organizations, prepared by the same accountant, while Paul M. Meagher and attorney Frances Gruber sat on the foundation’s board, and neither organization disclosed a financial relationship with the other on its federal filings.
What Remains Unknown
The WCBA’s last known net assets were $48,365 at the end of FY2019. No public filing has appeared since. It is not known whether the organization has continued to collect dues, publish the Legal Journal, or generate revenue — and if so, whether it has filed corporate tax returns as a taxable entity since losing its exemption, or simply stopped filing altogether.
No public explanation has been offered for the $50,000 grant to the Wayne County Community Foundation in FY2014 — what the money was for, who authorized it, or why 86 percent of the bar association’s annual revenue was sent to a foundation whose board included Paul M. Meagher — a relative of Matthew Meagher, who was WCBA Vice President at the time. Nor has any explanation been offered for the $36,000 that flowed back from WCCF to WCBA four years later. Neither organization disclosed a financial relationship with the other on its federal filings. Both sets of returns were prepared by the same accountant — Brian T. Kelly of Carbondale.
The WCBA’s FY2017, FY2018, and FY2019 filings each deny the existence of a related or controlled entity. PBP’s own FY2017 filing describes itself as a WCBA subsidiary. Both statements were signed under penalty of perjury. It is not known whether the IRS has been made aware of the discrepancy.
Read Part II: Wayne County’s Pro Bono Nonprofit Discloses Nothing
Pocono Review examined IRS 990 and 990-EZ filings for the Wayne County Bar Association (EIN 23-2590246) covering fiscal years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019, as well as a 2011 filing. Corporate records were obtained from the Pennsylvania Department of State business entity search. WCBA officer histories were cross-referenced against current judicial appointments, DA office records, and the WCBA’s published membership and officer listings. Wayne County Community Foundation filings (EIN 23-2656896) were examined for Schedule I grant data and board composition. The WCBA’s Equal Access Project document, adopted November 22, 2017, provided context for the organization’s subsidiary and program structure.
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