Judge orders at-large elections for Albert Gallatin
Next year’s election will give all voters in Albert Gallatin Area School District the opportunity to vote for all of the available school board candidates. Fayette County Judge Ralph C. Warman has ordered at-large elections for the district, starting with five of the nine school board positions that will be opened in the 2003 municipal election. The change from regional to at-large voting will follow with the remaining four school board positions up for election in 2005.
The judge said those sitting members whose terms will not expire before the 2005 election will remain as is, but any positions that become vacant before then would be appointed or elected at-large.
“I’m pleased with the decision. This is what my clients wanted and what they petitioned the court for. I am very happy and satisfied with this,” said Uniontown attorney David Kaiser.
Kaiser petitioned the court April 12 on behalf of John and Donna Chatlak of Masontown.
The school made no move to dispute the petition, although there was some previous contention over the issue.
At the May regular business meeting, the school board voted to direct solicitor Lee Price to inform the local court that the board would present no evidence against the petition to abolish the regional election plan.
At that time, substitute Superintendent Walter Vicinelly said the board already had made a change in the make-up of the regions but decided not to oppose the at-large plan, saying the board did not want to take any more action or spend any more money on the matter.
Warman’s decision is the latest development in almost a year’s worth of court wrangling over how A.G. directors should be elected.
Last fall, a dozen residents used the “one man, one vote” right afforded by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in a challenge of the voting regions, although a U.S. District Court judge closed that action this spring.
Kaiser said the constitutional argument was the prevailing theme in his clients’ petition.
“The reason why they wanted to go at-large as opposed to regional is so the constitutional principle would be upheld,” he said.
Regarding the merits of at-large voting, Kaiser said a person in one region could receive fewer votes than a person in another region but still win election in the system of three regions, with three school board members each selected by voters living in those regions. Once elected, he said, that person is making decisions that affect all residents, even though all residents did not have a chance to vote on that person.
“They want the right to vote for everybody who represents them,” he said.
Kaiser pointed out a trend in the county toward at-large voting.
Residents in Connellsville Area and Brownsville Area school districts in recent years have successfully challenged population differences in their voting regions, and the courts ordered at-large voting. Both cases invoked the “one man, one vote” right.
Among Fayette County’s six school districts, only Laurel Highlands has a regional system of voting for school board members.
The residents who last fall sued A.G. in federal court over disproportionate population in the voting regions said they were being denied their constitutional rights to the “one man, one vote” provision. The lawsuit asked for fair representation.
Judge Donetta W. Ambrose, in a one-page order issued in March, wrote that the matter was “administratively closed because of similar proceedings pending in the Court of Common Pleas of Fayette County.”
That Fayette County action was prompted by the school board. The directors petitioned the county court for reapportionment of the voting regions, citing the Pennsylvania School Code, which requires school district voting regions to be “as nearly equal as possible.”
Their proposal was to move Smithfield Borough from one region to another in an effort to even out the population among three regions. A hearing was held before Fayette County Judge Gerald R. Solomon, who granted the school board’s request.
Meanwhile, in response to that change in the communities included in the regions, Kaiser said the population in each of the three regions still showed a deviation.
“You can’t get it close enough,” he said.