Taxpayer Groups

Led by a group of political conservatives, a coalition of taxpayer organizations filed suit yesterday, seeking to overturn the passage of this year's state budget. The suit, filed in Commonwealth Court, said the $14 billion budget should be ruled invalid because the legislator who cast the deciding vote was not in the House chamber during the vote, a violation of House rules. The lawmaker, Rep. Richard Hayden (D., Phila.), has admitted that he was at the Philadelphia International Airport, awaiting a flight, at the time of the Aug. 4 vote.

With a myriad of taxpayer groups lobbying school boards or winning seats on them, parents in several county districts have begun to organize to support expenditures for quality education and extracurricular programs. When four incumbents in the Owen J. Roberts School District were swept out of office last year by candidates representing conservative Christians, a group calling itself PEERS - People for Educational Excellence in Roberts Schools - organized and worked to defeat two cost-cutting proposals by the new board.

Challengers representing taxpayer groups had mixed success in school board races throughout Chester County. The most drastic changes came in the Coatesville Area School District, where members of a group demanding accountability swept into a majority on the board. Candidates representing the Association for Better Local Education (ABLE) ousted Board President Mary E. Houlihan and the finance committee chairman, Thomas Lewis. They also picked up an open seat, bringing their total representation on the board to five out of nine members.

The donnybrook shaping up in the Chichester School District over an early-bird five-year extension of the teachers' contract reached in September is more than just a parting of minds over how the district should be run. Angry taxpayers are combining vigilance with a grass-roots mandate to become watchdogs in the district. Armed with pie charts and their own statistics, the most prominent of these groups are succeeding in imposing their agenda on the district, discomfiting board members and many residents alike.

The state's largest teachers' union is launching an offensive to corral support for teachers from local communities and state lawmakers and to quiet the outrage over school taxes that grass-roots groups have turned into a political force. With groups such as the Delaware County Taxpayers Alliance gaining ground in school districts throughout the state, the Pennsylvania State Education Association will encourage its members to meet with community residents and even join taxpayer organizations, association president Annette Palutis said yesterday.

School boards, beware. Your critics have often accused you of spendthrift ways, and now they have a powerful new weapon. Unity. For the first time, taxpayer groups from nearly every school district in the county will meet under one roof tonight. And guess what they'll be talking about. Taxes - among other things. "We're going to talk about what each group's experience has been; their purposes, successes and failures," said Jeff Hellrung, who helped form the Unionville-Chadds Ford Taxpayers Association.

The North Penn Board of School Directors has approved a contract to hire Edward Bowes as the district's new superintendent. At a special public meeting Friday, the board voted unanimously to hire the Indianapolis-area superintendent to run the district for the next four years, beginning Aug. 1. Bowes, 54, had been the school board's favored candidate since a board- appointed committee of about 17 residents, representing a variety of community...

It's a balancing act: How much should the public know about teacher contract negotiations? Too much, and negotiations could be jeopardized. Too little, and it could fuel taxpayers' resentment. In the past, negotiators on both sides were reluctant to tip their hands. But increasingly, some school boards are giving the public a peek at their proposals. This is due partly to a new state law and partly to pressure from taxpayer groups, which have focused much of their ire on teachers' salaries and benefits.

In recent months, school board meetings in Hainesport Township have become bitter and divisive as two taxpayer groups have battled over the direction of the school district. "In the 27 years since I have lived in the township, I have never seen the township at odds like it is now," said Carole Clark, the Board of Education's eight-term president. "Right now, I don't see any building in the community. There is just no unity. " With a 110 percent increase in the township's local purpose tax and a 23 percent increase in the school tax in this year's budgets, Hainesport residents are angrily pressuring the Board of Education and the Township Committee to cut back on what officials say are already lean budgets.

It's a new day in this year's school board races. Two years ago, the competition for seats on many area school boards was tepid at best, with many candidates running unopposed. This year, it's raining school board wannabes. What happened in two years? Several things, according to area politicians, school board candidates and education officials. The most important difference, however, is taxes, they say. When school boards start enacting 20- and 30-mill real estate tax increases, people take notice, start attending meetings, and run for office.

A local taxpayer group is questioning why the Burlington County Bridge Commission paid $2.7 million to a politically connected public-relations and lobbying firm over six years. Rick Perr, head of the Burlington County Taxpayers Association, said documents he reviewed at the commission's office gave no indication of work performed by the Strategy Group from 1997 through 2001. The Republican-controlled commission did release quarterly reports by the Strategy Group for 2002, the last year the firm was retained.

The vice president of a city taxpayer association has sued to stop raises for Camden's high-ranking police and fire officials. "If I stop it, I will have stopped $200,000 a year from leaving Camden," said Kelly Francis of the Camden Taxpayers Association, a grassroots group that monitors tax issues in the city. All the police and fire officials live outside Camden, Francis noted. An ordinance that City Council adopted in June gave nine high-ranking police and fire officials raises averaging $20,000 annually.

The president of the Burlington County Taxpayers Association yesterday took aim at the county's GOP chairman, calling his involvement in no-bid bond deals "proof of the abuse of public trust. " Richard J. Perr, also founder of the taxpayer group, which frequently targets the county's dominant GOP, held a news conference to report on party chairman Glenn Paulsen, government agencies, and politically connected firms. GOP critics, who say Perr's group is a thinly veiled Democratic operation, scoffed at the report.

Chester County's 26th Legislative District is a study in contrasts. It contains Coatesville, a city struggling to recover from hard economic times; the Amish farms of Honey Brook Township; and the upscale homes of Wallace Township. It stretches along the county's northwestern border through East and West Nantmeal and Warwick to the fast-growing township of North Coventry. It also is the site of one of the county's most closely watched contests this election season as political newcomer Cheryl Spaulding, 53, a Democrat from Caln Township, challenges the Republican incumbent, State Rep. Tim Hennessey, 52. Hennessey, 52, a lawyer and municipal solicitor from North Coventry, has represented the district for the last eight years.

A failed attempt by the Board of Education to buy a six-acre site from the Diocese of Trenton for athletic fields first spurred David Senno to action. The effort rankled Senno, 34, enough to launch an offensive this fall against the district's $29 million bond issue, which once included plans to buy the land from an unwilling diocese. The bond issue squeaked by in October with 87 votes, but Senno has not backed down. Now, he is the force behind the creation of Moorestown's first taxpayers' association, a nonpartisan group to watch over the actions of the school board and Township Council.

A taxpayer watchdog group yesterday accused Congress of increasing the number of pork-barrel spending projects in fiscal year 1997 despite promises to cut such appropriations to reduce the federal deficit. The group said it would present a list of offending budget items to the White House, where President Clinton - newly empowered with a line-item budget veto - could slice the bacon to bits. "There's a lot of rhetoric about balancing the budget, but we'll never get there from here unless certain members of Congress stop grabbing the taxpayers' wallets every time they want to fund a pet project or buy a special-interest vote," said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW)

The donnybrook shaping up in the Chichester School District over an early-bird five-year extension of the teachers' contract reached in September is more than just a parting of minds over how the district should be run. Angry taxpayers are combining vigilance with a grass-roots mandate to become watchdogs in the district. Armed with pie charts and their own statistics, the most prominent of these groups are succeeding in imposing their agenda on the district, discomfiting board members and many residents alike.

Had representatives from any local or state teachers' unions shown up, things might have gotten ugly. But the meeting of state and federal legislators with eight Montgomery County taxpayers' groups was peaceful Thursday night as they discussed their frustrations with the conditions and costs of public education in Pennsylvania. It was the second powwow of its kind - the first was held last December - between lawmakers, state officials and taxpayers' groups from such school districts as North Penn, Colonial, Methacton and Upper Merion, which form a coalition called the Montgomery County Taxpayers Consortium.

Whatever else may work for them, New Jersey Republicans can always turn to a pair of issues that have propelled them to great political successes during the 1990s: taxes and Jim Florio. And they are doing so with zeal in this year's U.S. Senate race. The latest example occurred yesterday, when a national group supporting GOP candidate Richard A. Zimmer denounced his opponent - Democrat Robert G. Torricelli - as an ideological soulmate of the former governor best known for his record-setting tax increase.

A Southeast Delco School District taxpayers' group sued the district's teachers' union in Delaware County Court yesterday, seeking $1.2 million in salary givebacks in a forthcoming contract. Concerned Citizens of Southeast Delco - headed by school board member Byron Mundy - contends that the teachers' "back-loaded" contract gave them a starting salary level for a new contract that is too high. The current pact expires at 12:01 a.m. Sunday. "Back-loading" means deferring salary increases until the later years of a contract.