Gilford cancels tax cap forum planned for audience of seniors

GILFORD — Parks and Recreation Department director Herb Greene announced yesterday that he has canceled a Monday forum about the property tax cap article on the 2012 town warrant that was to have feature school Superintendent Kent Hemingway.

Greene said the decision came when fellow town employees pointed out that a forum held with only one speaker of the tax cap issue would have not been appropriate because all sides of the issue could have equal representation. Presumably Hemingway was not going to speak in favor of the initiative.

He said the idea of a presentation in front of a town-sponsored organization for senior citizens — called Senior Moment-um — was mentioned to him in passing by Hemingway, who asked him if his department sponsored any programs where he could talk about the issue.

Tax cap proponents have now called into question the legal appropriateness of Hemingway's presumed advocacy. In a letter to the editor published by The Daily Sun, on Thursday, School Board candidate Doug Lambert noted that state law (RSA 659:44-a) specifically prohibits public employees from electioneering "while in the performance of his or her officials duties. . . " Electioneering is defined as "an act in any way specifically designed to influence the vote of a voter on any question or office."

Violation of RSA 659:44-2 can be prosecuted as a misdemeanor crime.

Local schools are on vacation this week and Hemingway was not available for comment on Thursday.

Gilford has become a kind of ground zero since about 40 local residents signed a petition for the warrant article. Until July of 2011, when the state Legislature voted to allow municipal tax caps, towns and districts were unable to enact so-called caps on spending or the collection of property taxes. The general goal of caps is to limit the amount of revenue raised through local taxation to a fixed percentage of that raised the previous year.

In Gilford’s case – both on the municipal and the school districts side — the percentage called for by the petitioned article is zero . In reality, both the school district and the municipality have proposed budgets that are less than spend in 2011. However, if passed, in future years the cap would remain in effect and the Budget Committee would still only be allowed to put spending plans before voters that did not increase the amount spent beyond the total for 2011 — thought voters attending the deliberative sessions of town and school meetings would be able to add to those plans, up to 10-percent, by majority vote.

In effect, said lead proponent Barbara Aichinger, it codifies a mechanism by which voters can limit the amount of money a municipality and or a school district can spend.

Greene said he sent Aichinger, a candidate for the Budget Committee, an e-mail on Wednesday asking her if she would be willing and available to participate in the Senior Moment-um forum but he only learned Thursday morning from Town Administrator Scott Dunn that Aichinger was out of town on business.

“Town Administrator Dunn said not having both sides represented in a forum sponsored by the town would be inappropriate and I agreed,” Greene said.

He also said he thought it might be an interesting topic for discussion for the weekly seniors gathering and said he just didn’t think about the political ramifications.

“I really was just trying to give the seniors another interesting luncheon,” Greene said.

According to Dept. Secretary of State David Scanlon, a duly elected board can advocate for or against a political action as long as there is no violation of the Right-To-Know laws requiring all discussion be held in public.

He said the law doesn’t specifically mention using a town or district owned website to expound a position and, to the best of his knowledge, there is no case law that specifically addresses that issue, although an action like a group mailing to residents supporting an issue that is paid for by taxpayers would, in his opinion, be a violation.

A recently as a few days ago, the Gilford School District had a position paper on its website that addressed talking points regarding the proposed tax cap and other petitioned warrant articles, but the website was unavailable for view yesterday.

The First Amendments rights of an elected town or school district official do not go away simply because they are elected officials. In Gilford case, both the School Board and the Board of Selectmen have unanimously as boards and individually as residents come out against enacting a tax cap.

The School Board is scheduled to meet Monday night at 6 p.m. and included on the agenda is item regarding a position statement about the tax cap and the other petitioned warrant articles.

As to Hemingway’s request to Green about the possibility of a forum he could participate in, School Board Chair Kurt Webber said yesterday he was unable to comment because he was unaware of the specifics of the issue.