Washington County Commissioners met Thursday and their first order of business was to address concerns that an emergency meeting held February 6, violated the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act. That meeting centered on the cyber attack of county computers that took place in January by Russian cyber criminals. In a statement read by County Solicitor Gary Sweat, he stated that based on information that he gathered from cyber legal and IT professionals, an emergency meeting needed to be scheduled regarding threats being made by the cyber attackers. He cited section 712.1(b) of the Pennsylvania Sunshine Law as basis for his suggestion. That paragraph permits emergency meetings to be scheduled without notice when there is a “clear and present danger to life or property”. The results of that meeting authorized a payment to the cyber criminals and associates of more than $350,000 to obtain a decryption key to unlock county data. The data that was seized by the hackers contained personal information such as social security numbers and drivers license numbers of county residents and employees. The motion passed 2-1 to authorize the payments and protect county information. Two motions were voted on in Thursday’s regular meeting ratifying the motions approved during the emergency meeting and memorializing them in public record. Commissioner Larry Maggi was the dissenting vote each time. In a written statement Maggi said that “There are no guarantees that the county will get our data back and that the information won’t be placed on the dark web. There are no guarantees that this will not happen again.” According to Commissioner Chairman Nick Sherman, county operations are back to approximately 80% of capacity.