Fellow blogger, Act Local, recently urged readers to use some of that focus and energy we’re expending on the national election to work for change right here in Tredyffrin. Locally, the issues we face not only impact our daily lives but affect the future of this township- like protecting Tredyffrin’s last undeveloped spaces, evaluating redevelopment plans along Lancaster Avenue and their impact on the community, dealing with planned roadway expansions that will encroach on our quality of life, lcoal traffic problems, stormwater issues, school funding etc. All of these affect us where we live.

Just imagine how our community would benefit if more people stepped up and got involved.

For years, one political party has controlled appointments to every board and commission in Tredyffrin. If you weren’t “one of them", you felt marginalized. But times are-a-changin’. Tredyffrin’s diverse mix of well-educated, community-oriented people is a resource many towns would love to attract. As a group, we have a wealth of talent and experience to offer. But as individuals we assume someone else is stepping up.

It turns out that a pretty small group of people are running things around here. Too small. Those who currently serve as supervisors, school board directors, members of the planning commission, zoning board, environmental advisory committee, library board, historical preservation committee,etc., or who are active in a civic or school group, are all investing in our community. And don’t get me wrong - I appreciate the fact that they bring with them dedication and a willingness to work hard on behalf of others. But they also bring their own beliefs, biases and personal agendas. That’s why we need balance and some new blood - to avoid the kind of partisan groupthink that has operated pretty much unchecked in Tredyffrin.

Heres’s a perfect example: this past January, Tredyffrin’s Library Board held a public hearing to respond to a complaint. In their capacity as co-chairs of the Library’s Capital Campaign, Anne Mc Collum, Rod Ross and Paul Olson publicly denounced two Supervisors - the only Democrats on the Board of Supervisors- for not contributing to the library’s Capital Campaign. Mc Collum and Ross wrote a sharply-worded letter to the editors of the local papers, and co-chair and Supervisor candidate Paul Olson placed his own campaign ad containing their letter in the same newspapers - all within days of the November election. The gist of the letter- those who didn’t contribute to Tredyffrin Library’s Capital Campaign were unworthy of public office.

Aside from the questionable ethics of using proprietary knowledge of contributors - including anonymous donors, as the basis for this charge, Olson, McCollum and Ross breached IRS rules that specifically prohibit tax-exempt organizations and those who represent them, from influencing elections. Not to mention, the arrogance of suggesting which charitable organizations are required giving for public officials.

When confronted with these facts, members of the Library Board backed away from their responsibility to repudiate such conduct. Though one Library Board member viewed the actions of the Capital Campaign chairs as protected free speech, others found fault with the chairs’ conduct but would not support taking any punitive action.

My point here? This board lacked the independence and courage to act in the public’s best interest, as is its obligation. Perhaps because each member been appointed by a Republican Board of Supervisors. Or maybe because of a bullying presence at the meeting. TTGOP chair John Alexander and Supervisors Warren Kampf and Bob Lamina were there to speak in defense of McCollum’s, Ross’s and Olson’s actions. All characterized the complaint as partisan whining. Mr. Lamina actually pre-empted the public comments portion of the meeting to warn the Library Board that any policy determination they might make should first be brought up “with the Board {of Supervisors} at whose pleasure you serve.” An amusing little joke, or a veiled threat? You decide. (More on Mr. Lamina’s questionable ethics in a future post….)

So it was no surprise that the Library Board folded under pressure. Their only decision? To form a subcommittee on “information in fundraising” to set policy for future fundraising efforts. Personally, I’m not holding my breath on that one.

…I am struck sometimes by the reality that many of our elected and appointed officals are so tied by partisan loyalties that they simply cannot represent the township’s best interests. Don’t you agree that we need more independent thinkers who have our whole community in mind?

Please add your voice to the public discourse. Write letters to the local newspapers. Attend township meetings (find dates and times at www.tredyffrin.org) and be heard on issues that concern you. Consider serving on a committee, seeking a municipal board appointment, or running for office if you have the stomach for it. At least give it some serious thought in this season of hope, change and a “different kind of politics".

It has taken me a bit of time to digest the last Board of Supervisor’s meeting. There was just so. much. to. digest.

Oh, and so much to comment on, I’ll have to pick my favorite. That would be the motion and subsequent vote on the Upper Gulph Rd/Conestoga Rd intersection fiasco.

For those of you who do not know, back in 2006 the BOS voted to approve the plan for a new park in Strafford, called Westover Park.

Westover Park is turning out to be very expensive.

When the plans for the park were first announced, I (silly little average Tredyffrin resident) immediately thought, hmmm, what a strange place for the entrance to a park, next to one of the worst intersections in the entire Township! If I had been sitting on that Board for the vote, I would have voted it down. I would have voted it down because it was clear to me at the time that we had no business putting an entrance to a park at such a dangerous intersection. And that the only way to accommodate a park entrance there would require serious, expensive, changes. Is this park really worth all that money? Especially since we have put so much money into Wilson Farm Park, just a short drive down the road?

But, the park was passed.

At some point, someone must have realized, now that the Township is going forward with the park, something needed to be done about that intersection.

So, the powers that be created five (expensive) options to deal with the intersection.

Let’s take a look at two of these options for a minute.

Option 1, T Intersection, Realign Upper Gulph Road to require a stop at its intersection with Conestoga Road. East bound Conestoga Road will also have a stop. All traffic flowing through this intersection will have to adhere to the stop signs.

This option allows for a complete halt of traffic, and sidewalks. It also, it appears, will require some confiscation of resident’s land. But, this is a park we are talking about! I’m sure those Tredyffrin residents will be happy to give up their land.

Option #5, Single Lane Roundabout, Realign Conestoga Road and Upper Gulph Road, with a landscaped island in the middle; no stop signs - instead traffic would yield in all directions to traffic in the roundabout.

Have you ever been through a roundabout? If not, reserve your opinion about them until you have been in one. Then, if you get the chance to drive through one, ask yourself if you’d like your child to attempt to access a park with a roundabout right in front of the entrance.

I list these two only, because these are the options that were so attractive to our Supervisors. Two of them seem to think roundabouts are Tredyffrin’s future.

Ultimately a motion was made to move forward with Option 1, and the motion was passed (even though the final price tag of Option 1 has not been determined yet, I might add). I am happy the Board realized how necessary it was to stop traffic completely if they are intent on going forward with the park. It would simply be too dangerous for any child to attempt to walk to that park barring the complete halting of traffic. I agree with and applaud the majority of the Board for voting for this option. I’m particularly happy that the roundabout option was defeated.

However, it should never have come to be in the first place. I listened with interest as one Supervisor remarked that if he had realized the intersection would have to be re-aligned, along with the resulting expense, he never would have voted for the park in the first place. I just have to ask - didn’t he even drive by the park location when it was up for a vote? If so he clearly would have recognized the need for major changes.

What I can’t explain is how another Supervisor could not have plainly seen the need for an expensive intersection re-alignment right from the start, considering he lives a stone’s throw away from it.

I don’t know the full price tag of Westover Park and the intersection re-alignment (no one does). I do know it will be expensive. I also know that this entire episode is a startling example of the fiscal-un-conservativeness of our current Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors.

Leaders of §501(c)(3) organizations retain their personal free speech rights to endorse political candidates and support partisan issues, provided that the endorsement is done in their individual capacity and not as a spokesperson for their nonprofit.
--Richard A. Newman, Attorney, Arent-Fox law firm, in legal background paper “IRS Issues Guidance on Prohibited Political Activity by Nonprofit Organizations”

Here is an interesting case study in legal distinctions: Tredyffrin Library capital campaign co-chair, Rod Ross, had 2 letters of political advocacy published in the Oct. 23 issue of Main Line Life. They’re stacked, one above the other, in one newspaper column.

Essay question: Why did Mr. Ross write 2 letters for same-day publication in the local paper? How are they different? Compare and contrast. Extra credit for mentioning the paid political advertisement with the same text in the Nov. 1 issue of the Suburban and Wayne Times.

The first letter seems a heart-felt, personal appraisal of Ross’s friend and political candidate, Paul Olson. The second letter, co-signed with another fundraising co-chairperson, Anne McCollum, seems a piece of political hatchetry that perhaps Mr. Ross just signed onto. But there it sits. Blatantly inappropriate political bias from the two self-described “co-chairs of the Capital Campaign,” the charitable building-fund for renovating our Great Building library.

The McCollum/Ross letter singled out only Republican supervisors for praise, although both Democratic supervisors had most recently served as the board of supervisors’ liaison to the library and had actively advanced the library’s role in the community. The letter further smeared Democrats Paul Drucker and Mark DiFeliciantonio with the charge of not contributing to the library’s charity, even though Mr. DiFeliciantonio had supported the library’s Foundation and Mr. Drucker had long supported his neighborhood’s Paoli Library.

Tempest in a teapot. Except the teapot is a §501(c)(3) charity, and the tempest is a prohibited political activity.

Leading The Witness
You would have expected the library’s Board of Trustees to hasten toward clearing up the legal distinctions around their fundraising leaders’ political statements. One of their members, attorney Michael Broadhurst, left the November library board meeting with the charge to investigate the §501(c)(3) issues. Apparently he returned empty-handed to the January 22 meeting, because he gave no report on the legal ramifications.

Instead the board mostly examined Mr. Ross’s state of mind, with Mr. Broadhurst leading their “witness” along this path: So, you were writing as a private citizen. —Yes, I was.—Okay, there we have it. Case closed, we need to move on.

You can’t blame the library board for wanting to move on. There is always a tendency toward denial when a member of a community or family transgresses.

Exposed
Serious legal risk aside, there was the hope that some boundaries of courtesy and decency would be re-established through the library board’s examination. Instead, we’re left with the clear sense that Karl Rovian tactics have trickled down to the township level.

One only had to hear the 3 Republican supervisors at the January library meeting proudly and smugly acknowledge bending the charity to their benefit. Warren Kampf, current chair of Tredyffrin’s board of supervisors, used almost 8 minutes of his 3-minute allotment with a long rambling discourse of justification. Mr. Kampf included the example that if he didn’t contribute to the fire company, but campaigned in support of the fire companies, he’d expect their leaders to malign him in the community. He said, “Anybody who signs up to run for public office is essentially exposing almost all of their lives to public scrutiny.”

Making A List
So, let’s follow Mr. Kampf and propose that he publish a new chart. In one column list the current members of the township board of supervisors and all the members of the public advisory boards. Next column, contributed to the Tredyffrin Library, yes/no. Next column, amount, if known. (If not known, confer with capital campaign co-chairs for financial details.)

With time we should be able to expand that chart to other charities on the Tredyffrin GOP’s preferred list.

With tax time approaching, it might be easier if you just make an extra copy of your Form 1040, Schedule A, and send it directly to Mr. Kampf.

Some comments from January 22nd library board meeting about the Ross/McCollum letter and paid political ad—

Rod Ross: “The letter came about as a result from something that preceeded it…. We thought that the assertions which came out by an anonymous blogger deserved a response and a quick one.”…
Paul Olson: “Mr. Tredyffrin, the blogger,…”
Rod Ross: “…That’s how we had the knowledge to respond and refute these false assertions.”
Warren Kampf: “…things being said by bloggers on the Democratic website that just weren’t true.”

You have in a nutshell the Republican defense for publishing an attack letter and paid political advertisement outing Democrats for not contributing to the Tredyffrin Library capital campaign fund: “Mr. T made me do it.”

Like school kids, they say they were provoked to respond to scurrilous “untruths” about the library from the anonymous Democratic blogger, Mr. Tredyffrin.

Turns out that Mr. T carries more credibility.

The irony is both the timeline and the truth are readily accessible. (Search Mr. T for “library.”) Any of our librarians—true information professionals—could have uncovered the following sequence of events with a few mouse clicks. It’s a shame no one asked them for research help.

Timeline
Mr T’s first posting to mention the library was on Monday, Oct. 22—a long truth-in-advertising piece that poked fun at Republican yellow lawn signs claiming the “real results” of Republican rule. The library is mentioned only briefly in a short paragraph at the end of the posting.

However, already on that Monday morning of October 22 Rod Ross and Anne McCollum, library capital campaign co-chairs, were having breakfast with a local newspaper reporter, hoping to sell their in-hand “story” about Democratic supervisors to him. Since he declined to write their piece for them, they offered their letter to the editor of Main Line Life. Their letter was posted on-line at MLL on Oct. 23 and printed in the Oct. 24 edition.

In case you missed: That letter uses their confidential knowledge of the library campaign donor base, including anonymous contributions, to smear the 2 Democratic members of Tredyffrin Board of Supervisors with the charge that they did not contribute to the library’s charitable effort and were thus bad citizens. This letter clearly says “as two of the Co-chairs of the Tredyffrin Public Library Capital Campaign Committee.” They made no effort to distinguish that they are writing as private citizens.

In fact, the letter lists a series of statistical bullet points about the source of campaign donations that display very much as an official report, claiming to present the “facts.” (This same letter with McCollum and Ross’s name printed at the bottom appeared in abbreviated form as a paid political advertisement in the November 1 issue of the Suburban and Wayne Times.)

One can only conclude that McCollum and Ross must be fortune tellers, having divined and been provoked by a “false assertion” in the future.

Ground Truth
Mr. T’s next discussion of the library was on Oct. 31 (a week after the Ross/McCollum letter). This was a mere twelve innocuous sentences, serving simply to call attention to a one-page flyer, “Ground Truth on ‘Saving’ the Tredyffrin Library” just posted on the Tredyffrin Democrats website.

Using publicly-available information from the minutes of township supervisor meetings, that flyer presents the actual history of the all-Republican board’s plans to close the Tredyffrin Library in favor of a new location in Chesterbrook. The flyer ends with the astonishing claim that “In reality the Tredyffrin library was ‘saved’ by citizens, not politicians. In fact, our library has been saved twice by citizens—once in blocking the Republican supervisors’ scheme for relocating to Chesterbrook, and a second time in their very generous donations to the library’s capital campaign.” When Democrats tell the truth, why do the Tredyffrin GOP leaders find it inflammatory?

On November 4, two days before election day, Mr. Tredyffrin does get fired up. In this post he takes after candidate Paul Olson for sending out a last-minute attack post card against opponent Ellen Brotman-Austin. Olson’s card again uses the theme that a failure to contribute to the charity of Mr. Olson’s choice disqualifies one from public service. While Mr. T’s column expresses outrage, it is not uncivil. And of course, it is 2 weeks after the Ross/McCollum letter.

Planned Political Initiative
That is the true timeline and content for the Mr. Tredyffrin-blogger’s commentary on the library, its capital campaign, and Mr. Olson. The capital campaign co-chairs are like school kids caught in their own misbehavior, wanting to point fingers elsewhere.

Okay, that’s a lot of he-said-she-said for you dear readers. Point is, Mr. T is innocent. What about the letter writers and ad sponsors?

Their letter was a planned political initiative. They weren’t defending the honor of the library charitable effort. They intended smearing the honor of political opponents, including one who was not even a candidate. Along the way, they subverted all the good work of a committee of 18 citizen fund-raisers and hundreds of generous donors, and fractured the unity of a community around a beloved institution.

On January 22, politics and politicians came crashing into the Tredyffrin Library board meeting, normally a quiet preserve from partisan strife.

On the agenda was a discussion about the October 23 letter to the editor of Main Line Life from the library’s capital campaign co-chairs Rod Ross and Anne McCollum. That letter intended to “out” Dem supervisors Paul Drucker and Mark DiFeliciantonio for not contributing to the library building-fund.

This is a claim you can only make with absolute confidence if you have access to the complete database of contributors, including the anonymous donations. However, to trade on that insider knowledge would be a violation of the ethical standards for fundraising leaders. Oops.

Second oops: In the letter, which also singled out only Republican supervisors for praise, Ross/McCollum specifically represented themselves “as capital campaign co-chairs.” But the campaign is a tax-deductible “501C3” organization, and charity leaders are specifically forbidden to engage in political endorsements, except when acting unofficially as private citizens.

When the exact same Ross/McCollum words, but in a briefer edit, appeared in the November 1 issue of the Suburban and Wayne Times with their names at the bottom as a paid political advertisement from the “Friends of Paul W. Olson” it seemed pretty bold evidence of transgressing IRS guidelines.

Violating confidentiality and political advocacy by the fundraising co-chairs left the library board in a difficult, embarrassing position. When some citizens expressed outrage by letter and by public comment at the November meeting, the board had a mess on its hands.

Campaign co-chair Rod Ross was asked to attend the January meeting and did. Anne McCollum did not. Paul Olson attended in multiple roles—as fundraising co-chair, political candidate, and now township supervisor also serving as the Board of Supervisors liaison to the library board.

Also in the room were some Democratic committeepersons and a nice turnout of “civilians,” but the heavy hitters were the Republican big dogs—3 Tredyffrin supervisors, Olson, Bob Lamina, and Warren Kampf and Tredyffrin GOP chair John “C.T.” Alexander.

Library board president Yolanda Van De Krol asked those present to keep politics out of the discussion, and organized the meeting around hearing from Mr. Ross, then the library board members, and finally the general public, asking them to be brief. The 3 township supervisors each trampled those guidelines.

To Whose Pleasure You Serve
After hearing briefly from Mr. Ross and before the board got very far in their own discussion, Mr. Lamina interrupted to say that he was one of the “paid for” people sponsoring Mr. Olson’s ad with the Ross/McCollum letter. He said, “Politics is a full contact sport. I’m proud of the placement of that ad in the paper and stand behind it.” Just to make sure the library board understood they weren’t referees in this “sport,” Lamina concluded his remarks by saying that if the library board had any “policy questions” they should “bring it up with the Board to whose pleasure you serve.”

Mr. Olson was not as subtly intimidating, but he did erupt with some bizarre responses. One board member went through a careful review that the Ross/McCollum letter and political ad had thrust the library into a “highly-charged political situation” and should have been phrased differently—that perhaps the writers owed a clarification and an apology. To that Mr. Olson responded, “You’re a Democrat, and I’m a Republican. I’m not going to apologize for that” and said the suggestion was “beyond the pale.”

Does Not Serve Any Purpose
Those who hoped that the ethical issues would be sorted out with fact-finding and analysis had to be disappointed at the January 22 meeting. Interestingly, it was an attorney on the board, Michael Broadhurst, who led the members away from facts and the law, saying there was “no need to engage in a long-running debate on who did what, when and how. It does not serve any purpose.”

Mr. Ross had little to say. He asserted that he and Anne McCollum were “private, a-political individuals” and disavowed political intent. Both Ross and Olson acknowledged that they had “special knowledge” about the donations, but said they used that knowledge to “refute these false assertions” from the Mr. Tredyffrin blogger, the local GOP’s new all-purpose scapegoat. (More on the phantom “false assertions” in a later post.)

Mr. Ross’s assertion was quite sufficient for the library’s Mr. Broadhurst, who proposed a motion that the board’s only response would be to form a committee to write policy on guidelines for future political activity by persons representing the library. Some more discussion and a 5-4 vote carrying the motion brought that portion of the proceedings to an end. That left the patient public with the opportunity to comment on a case that was already closed. Faced with a fait accompli, many still spoke, but it was whining into the wind. Too late, too sorry.