Taxation Without Representation: Hammond residents pay for tax without vote
AMITE---Inconsistencies in an advertised--but moot--tax election for the Tangipahoa Parish School Board has unearthed questions about which voters were chosen to approve the Hammond Accelerated Magnet Program proposition in 2007 versus who actually pays the tax.
In an exclusive ActionNews17.com investigative report, evidence has been uncovered showing that a select group of Ponchatoula voters were allowed to vote on the Hammond magnet school tax in 2007, while others who live immediately outside the proposition area near the Hammond city limits, are paying for the tax even though they did not have the right to go to the polls on the issue.
Documents submitted this month by the School Board to parish election officials have sparked a series of questions about the millage, which will expire at the close of the fiscal year in June.
From ineligible voters approving the millage from a different zip code, to Hammond residents paying for a tax they never had the opportunity vote on, to election maps being redrawn three years after the tax was originally passed, there is much confusion surrounding a tax measure that School Board officials say they would like a "second bite at the apple" to get it to voters before the millage expires in June.
POPULAR FORMULA: A SCHOOL-WITHIN-A SCHOOL
The Hammond Accelerated Magnet Program began as a cooperative project among a number of community partners who brought a plan to bring white families back to Hammond's fast-growing minority-based student population in its public schools.
In the spring of 2006, Hammond Chamber Chairman Lemar Marshall brought together representatives from the Hammond business community, the City of Hammond administration, Southeastern Louisiana University, major local employers like Wal-Mart and North Oaks Medical Center, to begin discussions with members of the School Board's Hammond Delegation to consider a magnet school concept for Hammond.
Over the first few months, the partners, putting their money where their mouths were, committed monetary pledges to bring art, music, dance, and accelerated learning programs to a community-based pilot magnet program at Hammond Eastside. By the time the school year began that fall, the program was an overwhelming success, with equal numbers of white and black children enrolled in the program and a waiting list of eager students and parents interested in growing the start-up project.
In July 2007, as the Board began a new front in its longstanding federal desegregation suit, U.S. District Court Judge Ivan Lemelle allowed an election calling for a six-mill tax in Hammond to expand the program through the early and middle elementary grades at both Hammond Eastside and Hammond Westside Schools. The election was an overwhelming success, with a vote of 551-221 to fund the program for Hammond schools.
A SECOND CALL FOR THE TAX
In the two and a half years since the magnet tax was passed, the Board's federal desegregation litigation has taken center stage in terms of what is allowable versus what must be vetted by the courts before being implemented locally.
In 2009, in an attempt to begin the process of getting out from under the more than 40-year-old Joyce Marie Moore v. TPSB deseg case, the Board submitted a draft plan to the federal courts in an effort to gain unitary status. That plan, which called for utilizing larger scale magnet, Montessori, and IB programs in Hammond and in other outlying, high-risk schools, was submitted to the courts in April, 2009, where it has been lying dormant for nine months.
In the meantime, the Board has been unable to commit to extended funding for the Hammond magnet program, nor have they asked the Judge to consider the possibility of expanding the program until the deseg matter could be resolved.
That all changed early this year. On Jan. 5, 2010, the School Board adopted a formal resolution calling for a nine mill property tax to be put before the voters of the Hammond Accelerated Magnet Program district sometime this spring. Mirroring the expiring six mill tax passed by voters in July 2007, the new nine mill proposal was going be used to fund the school-within-a-school magnet program and expand it to the 7th and 8th grades in Hammond public schools.
The resolution was passed, and forwarded to the courts, as well as state election and financing officials, for consideration.
State officials gave the tax an "OK;" the federal courts last week turned down the matter, setting up the potential for the fledgling magnet program to close at the end of this school year.
QUESTIONS ABOUND--TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
Pursuant to Louisiana law, the Board adopted the resolution calling for a March 27, 2010 tax election for "Consolidated School District No. 1" and began the process of notifying the public by publishing legal advertising for the tax proposition in their official journal, The (Hammond) Daily Star.
However, the advertisement, which has run Jan. 12, 19, and most recently on Tuesday, the 26th, inspired more questions than answers from the public.
Beyond the fact that a federal district court judge on Jan. 15, 2010, denied the Board's request to hold the tax election, a number of citizens have contacted ActionNews17.com to ask why more than one-third of the parish's eligible precincts would be used to hold a Hammond tax election when only 20 precincts are needed for any other city election.
According to the official list of precincts that the School Board by resolution indicated they would be employing to hold the March 27 ballot, voters from 31 polling places in Tangipahoa Parish would be eligible to participate in the HAMP tax election. The official School Board advertisement shows the following precinct report:
POLLING PLACES
WARD/PRECINCT LOCATION
040Hammond Fire Station #3, 1614 N. Oak St., Hammond
040A (in part)Hammond Fire Station #3, 1614 N. Oak St., Hammond
041Hammond Fire Station #3, 1614 N. Oak St., Hammond
042Michael J. Kenney Rec. Center, 601 W. Coleman St. Hammond
042AMichael J. Kenney Rec. Center, 601 W. Coleman St. Hammond
043New Hammond Fire Station #2, 508 E. Thomas St., Hammond
044 (in part)Hammond Area Vocational School, 111 Pride Ave., Hammond
045Michael J. Kenney Rec. Center, 601 W. Coleman St., Hammond
045ABaptist Fire Station, 44532 S. Baptist Road, Hammond
046Michael J. Kenney Rec. Center, 601 W. Coleman St., Hammond
047Michael J. Kenney Rec. Center, 601 W. Coleman St., Hammond
048New Hammond Fire Station #2, 508 E. Thomas St., Hammond
049Hammond City Council Annex, 312 E. Charles St., Hammond
070A (in part)***Ponchatoula City Hall, 125 W. Hickory St., Ponchatoula
072 (in part)Ponchatoula Community Center, 300 N. Fifth St., Ponchatoula
072A (in part)Ponchatoula Community Center, 300 N. Fifth St., Ponchatoula
120A (in part)Baileyville Fire Station, 49464 Hwy. 445, Robert
120BHammond Area Vocational School, 111 Pride Ave., Hammond
127A (in part)Natalbany Middle School, 47370 N. Morrison Blvd., Natalbany
129 (in part)New Hammond Fire Station #2, 508 E. Thomas St., Hammond
129A (in part)Natalbany Middle School, 47370 N. Morrison Blvd., Natalbany
133 (in part)Baptist Fire Station, 44532 S. Baptist Road, Hammond
133ABaptist Fire Station, 44532 S. Baptist Road, Hammond
137 (in part)Country Side Lane, 41266 Country Side Lane, Hammond
137B (in part)Baptist Fire Station, 44532 S. Baptist Road, Hammond
137C (in part)Country Side Lane, 41266 Country Side Lane, Hammond
139 (in part)Tangipahoa Parish Government Bldg., 15475 Club Deluxe Rd., Hammond
141Hammond Area Vocational School, 111 Pride Ave., Hammond
141AHammond Area Vocational School, 111 Pride Ave., Hammond
143Hammond Area Vocational School, 111 Pride Ave., Hammond
145 (in part)Vinyard Elementary School, 40105 Dunson Rd., Ponchatoula
*** No Voters
At the heart of the polling controversy, documents, such as the register above indicate a number of Ponchatoula locations were scheduled to be used in the magnet tax election. Parts of precincts that include polling locations at Ponchatoula City Hall, Ponchatoula Community Center, Vinyard Elementary School, and outlying Country Side and Baileyville are considered virtually unheard of options in a Hammond tax election.
Though made moot by the Judge's order denying the election, a search of the original 2007 proposition records only complicated the issue. Official Secretary of State election returns from 2007 show that not only were these "unthinkable" locations used as polling places--there were voters in these areas who were able to participate in the original referendum.
ActionNews17.com consulted a number of local election sources for information specific to the 2007 Hammond Accelerated Magnet Program tax. On Thursday, Tangipahoa Parish Clerk of Court Julian Dufreche and Registrar of Voters John Russell met with ActionNews17.com reporters for several hours, and the outcome of these interviews presents a complicated series of answers to what is becoming a new, but familiar, tax controversy in Tangipahoa Parish.
PONCHATOULA VOTERS SAY YES TO HAMMOND TAX
A former mayor and lifetime resident of Ponchatoula, Dufreche, the parish's chief election official and President of the Parish Board of Election Supervisors, said Thursday that a legal notice from the Tangipahoa Parish School Board announcing the district's intent to run a spring tax for the Hammond magnet program prompted immediate questions in his office.
Dufreche says he immediately recognized the error of a Ponchatoula City Hall precinct being on the rolls for the Hammond school tax.
Precinct 70A at Ponchatoula City Hall box is one of the newer precincts created in Tangipahoa Parish and represents an area of voters who live inside the city limits as well as those who live close enough to the Ponchatoula boundaries that it is conceivable those areas could be annexed into the city limits, Dufreche said. The clerk, in reviewing the list of proposed voter precincts, said the inclusion of the city hall precinct was a curious choice, as the voters who live there would clearly have students who attend the Ponchatoula schools.
Dufreche said he was working with state and local election officials to review voter rolls for the magnet tax election when the Judge's order came down late last week, making the proposition ballot moot for the spring. However, the Clerk said questions about the precinct boundaries continued to nag him until he discovered this week that not only was Precinct 70A inappropriately identified--but so was Precinct 072, which lies solely inside the Ponchatoula city limits.
A check of the official election returns from July 2007 indicate that while Precinct 072 was open for voters, no one cast ballots there on election day; however, in Precinct 70A, there were four votes on the magnet issue, with all four in the affirmative.
Dufreche said several of the other partial precincts, including boxes located at the Ponchatoula Community Center, appear to be in line with voter registrations; however, he has been working with Registrar Russell to clarify any inconsistencies on the matter.
REDRAWING MAPS THREE YEARS LATER
Russell, also well-versed in the questions about the magnet tax, said he was approached earlier this week by a concerned citizen with similar questions about the geography for voters eligible to vote in the original magnet tax.
Russell said that his office has a practice of "validating" proposition maps for any election issue that comes into his office. He said that unless otherwise able to do so, each election district map is scrutinized by Russell personally, comparing the election district description (or "syntax") to the street-by-street maps produced to help voters recognize whether or not they are eligible voters in an election.
Russell said that he was in the process of conducting such a validation when he discovered a "discrepency in the language of the syntax," on the magnet school maps.
The registrar said there was a miscommunication in "the syntax by which the first map was drawn and how the map currently exists." Russell said the language of the legal description of the tax area "varied enough to change the lines of two portions of two precincts" that should not have been included in the official call.
Those precincts are the same identified by Dufreche, Precincts 70A and 72, Russell confirmed.
The School Board removed 70A from the official list; however, because the March tax election was called off, Russell said he had not informed them that they also needed to pull the Precinct 72 box. In addition, Russell has officially moved the southernmost boundary of the tax district north by about an inch on the physical map, pulling the district north to just below Demarco Lane on the west, across Nature's Trace and east to north of Tom Drive.
Russell said the adjustments were strictly to the southernmost boundary of the Hammond taxing district. And while the same precincts were apparently used in the October 2005 alternative school tax renewal for Hammond, Russell said he could neither confirm nor deny that the same physical map would apply to both taxing districts.
TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION
In addition to questions about who was eligible to vote in the original ballot issue in 2007, there are now questions about who was not able to vote but is being charged the six mill tax from outside the district lines.
The northernmost portion of the taxing district follows three stair-step lines from the parish line east across Wardline Road to Jake Drive and then east at Kohnke Hill Road roughly to an area just east of Conrad Anderson Drive north of the Hammond airport and then east again to Gottschalck Lane and then down the westernmost edge of the Tangipahoa River down to just south of I-12 and Thibodaux Road.
A cursory check of addresses immediately north of the tax district boundary indicates residents in one Hammond neighborhood who could not vote for the magnet program are being charged for the tax.
The Woodbridge Subdivision, made up primarily of professionals and retirees, is two streets north of the official Consolidated School District #1 tax line; however, in a check of the assessments in that neighborhood, as posted on the Tangipahoa Parish Assessor's website (www.tangiassessor.com), most of those residents are, in fact, paying the six mill tax, despite the fact that they live outside the voting district.
Russell, upon consultation with the Assessor's office Thursday evening, confirmed that the tax is being assessed in that area, regardless of the residents' ability to participate in the magnet tax election.
When asked what ramification that would have for voters, Russell suggested that voters who believe they have been taxed in appropriately appeal their assessments.
POSSIBILITY OF OTHER INCONSISTENCIES
The Greater Tangipahoa NAACP, a vocal opponent of the School Board's so-called "inequitable" funding practices for local schools, has long argued that voting records and individual school taxing districts do not match up.
Patricia Morris, President of the local NAACP, has raised questions for more than two years that taxes collected for small rural schools, such as the Sumner and Champ Cooper schools, were paid in part by voters who were not eligible to participate in those proposition elections.
Morris has doggedly challenged smaller, school-by-school tax districts, saying that they perpetuate the inequities that larger, more at-risk schools suffer due to voter apathy.
ActionNews17.com will be conducting a school-by-school review of these outlying districts to determine whether there is any merit to Morris' claims.