Election Method Questioned in Woodland Hills

Following the first election under newly drawn regions for the Woodland Hills Board of Education, one reelected member is trying to rally support to overturn those changes, saying the process takes power away from voters.

In September 2010, the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas approved changing the way school directors are elected in Woodland Hills. Previously, the nine members were chosen from nine separate regions. In the , two members are elected from each of three larger regions, with an additional three at-large seats.

Bob Tomasic, who has served on the board for more than 20 years, opposed the plan from the start. He spoke against the changes in court and again on Dec. 5, 2011, when the board to fill vacancies resulting from this year’s election.

were contested this year—one in each of the regions and two district-wide. Tomasic and incumbent Marilyn Messina each won regional and at-large positions, with incumbent Regis Driscoll taking the other regional seat.

Part of the problem, Tomasic said, is that candidates can run for both regional and at-large seats in the same election. If candidates win two seats—as Tomasic and Messina did this year—the board appoints members to fill the vacancies for two-year terms.

“They get to pick the person they want,” Tomasic said. “It’s just not fair to be able to have somebody run for both positions.”

Pennsylvania law allows candidates to run for any open position for which they are eligible. Legally, a candidate can’t be stopped from filing two bids.

It’s politically advantageous for a person to run for two seats because it increases the chance of election, Tomasic said. He did so even though he disagrees with the system, saying it favors incumbents.

“It increases competition for people with the wherewithal to compete,” he said. “It’s too big, it’s too time-consuming for a non-paying job.”

Tomasic favors reverting to the former nine-region plan but said he would settle for one that would establish three seats in each of the current regions. In any case, he doesn’t want people running for two seats in the same election.

Among Tomasic’s other concerns is that candidates from the district’s smaller municipalities are disadvantaged when facing candidates from communities with larger populations. He also noted that the change came less than a year before 2010 Census data became available and said assessing demographic changes would be prudent.

Maria McCool, communications director for the district, said Tomasic so far is the loudest—and perhaps only—critic of the plan.

“I haven’t heard any buzz about it,” McCool said.

While Tomasic argues that the reapportionment plan is ill-devised, it wasn’t something that happened overnight. A citizen group spent years urging the board to break from its former nine-district plan.

The state allows districts to adopt one of four election methods: all candidates are elected district-wide; three candidates are selected from each of three regions; one candidate is selected from each of nine regions; or two candidates are selected from each of three regions, with the remaining three selected at-large.

Mike Belmonte, the Forest Hills councilman who ran for a regional and at-large school board seat, said he and others had been pushing for the latter plan since December 2007.

In the spring of 2009, they presented the board with 700 signatures in favor of the plan. That June, the board voted 6-3 in favor of it.

Belmonte said the impetus was simple: students in the district don’t study in classrooms separated by the communities they come from, so the way board members are elected should be less provincial. He said the former plan led to uncontested bids.

“It allows for more competition, is what it does ... anybody can vote for anybody,” Belmonte said. “That was the point of all this. This system opened up the races.”

Elections results support Belmonte’s sentiment. While he lost both bids by substantial margins, the at-large race was closer. In his region, Belmonte lost to Tomasic by roughly 20 points. At-large, Tomasic led the pack with 39 percent of the vote, followed by Messina’s 36 percent and Belmonte’s 24 percent. In her region, Messina ran unopposed, ceding roughly two points to write-ins.

According to a 2009 survey by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association, Woodland Hills’ current plan was the least popular, accounting for 4.4 percent of the state’s schools, while the former nine-region plan didn’t fare much better at 4.7 percent.

At-large elections were most popular, with 60 percent of schools choosing that method. The three-region plan followed with 30.9 percent.

For his part, Belmonte declined to comment on the appointments that resulted from this year’s election. He said the issue hadn’t arisen in talks among the citizen group that promoted the plan.

“The salient point is you had every seat contested,” Belmonte said. “The ground work’s been laid for the future.”

Tomasic said he’s unsure of whether his push to change the election method will gain support from other board members. Saying he’s often viewed as the board’s curmudgeon, Tomasic admitted that it may be hard to get a majority behind him.

When he had to choose whether to fill the regional or at-large seat following the election, Tomasic chose the former.

“I was the one against running district-wide,” he said.

Messina chose the at-large seat. Should the election method remain the same, two at-large seats will be contested again in 2013.

It’s likely those contests will produce vacancies, Tomasic said. And the appointment process takes power away from voters.

Belmonte, for instance, was the runner-up in the at-large race (less than one percent of voters wrote in another candidate), but he wasn’t appointed to the vacancy.

“You’ll be in the same situation,” Tomasic said.