Lower Merion’s school board president is fighting to get back on the primary ballot
Kerry Sautner argued in an appeal to Commonwealth Court that she wasn't required to report a lease between her employer and the city of Philadelphia.
The president of the Lower Merion school board says a Montgomery County judge wrongly removed her from the Democratic primary ballot over financial disclosure omissions — arguing she wasn’t required to report a lease between her employer and the City of Philadelphia.
In an appeal brief filed Thursday with Commonwealth Court, Kerry Sautner, the president and CEO of Eastern State Penitentiary, said she didn’t have any ownership interest in the museum, and thus didn’t need to disclose the lease on her nomination petition.
She also said that the community member who challenged her petition, Harshal Dear, hadn’t objected specifically to the Eastern State lease when she first accused Sautner of incomplete financial disclosures — but later raised that issue in a letter to the court. The argument was made too late and shouldn’t have been considered, Sautner said.
The ballot dispute has injected uncertainty into the school board race, as Sautner — who was endorsed by the Lower Merion and Narberth Democratic Committee — fights to regain her place on the ballot ahead of the May 20 election.
The Montgomery County Board of Elections said in a previous court filing that it needed to have the candidate list finalized by Thursday in order to prepare for the election “without having to operate under unduly burdensome schedules and an unreasonable increase in workforce.”
Montgomery County Commissioner Neil Makhija, chair of the board of elections, said Thursday that “while we anticipate a decision from the Commonwealth Court very soon, our Voter Services team is currently preparing for either outcome” — and that the county “will be able to move forward immediately to get the ballot into voters’ hands.”
“The broader issue remains that the timelines set by Pennsylvania state law are frankly unworkable for counties,” Makhija said, noting that lawmakers haven’t updated ballot challenge times to consider mail voting. “Until the legislature takes a full look at the election process from start to finish — from petition deadlines to appeal deadlines — we are going to find ourselves in this position time and time again."
Sautner filed her nomination petition on March 10. It was challenged on March 18 by Dear, a registered Democrat who said in an interview that she felt school boards across Pennsylvania had been “pushing a political agenda,” though she did not make specific allegations about Lower Merion’s board.
Dear — who is represented by GOP attorney and Philadelphia ward leader Matthew Wolfe and Republican state committee member Christian Petrucci — noted that Sautner had not answered several financial disclosure questions on her petition, leaving them blank rather than checking “none.”
» READ MORE: A judge kicked Lower Merion's school board president off the ballot after financial disclosure omissions
Among them was a question that asks candidates to disclose “any direct or indirect interest in any real estate that was sold or leased to, or purchased or leased from, the Commonwealth or any of its subdivisions.”
Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Carolyn Tornetta Carluccio, who issued the March 31 ruling kicking Sautner off the ballot, said in a filing with Commonwealth Court that while she had given Sautner a chance to amend her petition, the candidate still didn’t check “none” on the real estate question.
That “suggests a purposeful avoidance of providing a definitive answer to that question,” Carluccio said.
In her appeal Thursday, which was filed by Dilworth Paxson attorneys Timothy Ford and Maggie Barker Taylor, Sautner said she should have been allowed to amend her petition again.
She also said that despite the form’s instructions, the law doesn’t require candidates to affirmatively state they have no financial interests — only to disclose them if they do.
After a March 24 hearing on Dear’s challenge, Sautner said she had asked for a county employee’s input on filing an amended petition. She also last week filed another amended petition, in which she answered “none” to the real estate interest question.
“There is simply no evidence that Ms. Sautner made a purposeful misrepresentation in bad faith with the intent to deceive the electorate,” her appeal says.