Mister Tredyffrin and Friends

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.