Chester County Democrats

This website is a portal for Democratic activists in Chester County. It contains current local, state, and national political news and locally published letters to the editor that cannot be accommodated on other sites.

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The Pottstown Mercury (pottsmerc.com), Serving Pottstown, PA
Friday, July 3, 2009
By Laura Catalano
Special to The Mercury

HARRISBURG — State Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D-19th. Dist.) introduced a bill in the state Senate Thursday that would limit the power of lame duck school boards to act on a superintendent’s contract following primary elections.

The bill was drafted in direct response to the Owen J. Roberts School Board’s recent termination of District Superintendent Myra Forrest. Three members of the board majority who voted to terminate her contract had lost their seats in the May primary election.

Senate Bill 1007 would ban school boards from acting on a school superintendent’s contract if three or more of its members are in lame-duck status due to a defeat in a primary election, and if at least 11 months remain on the superintendent’s contract. The bill will be referred to the Senate Education Committee, of which Dinniman is minority chairman.

Dinniman, reached by phone at his Harrisburg office Thursday, said he wrote the bill in response to the flood of letters, e-mails and phone calls his office has received since Forrest was terminated on June 22. He estimated he’d received at least 100 calls and letters, and he noted that the number of people who turned out for a school board meeting to protest the board’s decision was also impressive.

About 1,200 people attended that meeting, the vast majority seeking to have Forrest reinstated. The school board majority, however, refused to rescind its 5-4 vote to dismiss the superintendent, despite the fact that students, parents, teachers and residents plead with them for nearly six hours to do so.

“I’ve been involved for over 17 years in Chester County political life,” Dinniman said. “It’s very rare you would see 1,000 people show up at anything. When I saw how strongly the citizens felt, and that they were willing to sit at that meeting for hour after hour to plead their case, and I thought their case was just, I wanted to show some support.” …

keep reading at The Pottstown Mercury

Specter’s autobiographical Passion for Truth (HarperCollins, 2000) is a fascinating and substantial (564-page) read that reveals much about political life, including more than any Democrat wants to know about Philadelphia politics in the 1960’s and Specter’s insights into national events like the Warren Commission, the Bork hearings, and the Clinton impeachment.

Specter, born in Wichita KS in 1930, grew up in the Depression in a family that admired FDR. As his career developed in Philadelphia, Specter also admired Adlai Stevenson and JFK. However, in early 1965, after the local Democratic machine made it clear they would not support him for DA, the post he wanted to run for, Specter writes,

“My warm feelings toward the national Democratic leadership clashed with my distaste for the corrupt Philadelphia fixes in the city’s criminal courts and contracting procedures…. I held no allegiance or even sympathy for the local Democratic machine….

“Nonetheless, changing parties involved a high level of trauma. Continue Reading »

Press release from State Senator Andy Dinniman (D-19)
Subject: Dinniman’s Senate Bill 1007
Date: Jul 2, 2009

Senator’s SB 1007 Limits Power of Lame-Duck School Boards

HARRISBURG (July 2) State Senator Andy Dinniman has introduced a bill to limit the power of school boards in certain situations in response to Owen J. Roberts School Board’s recent termination of District Superintendent Myra Forrest.

On June 22, a divided OJR school board voted 5-4 to fire Superintendent Myra Forrest, an action which drew more than 1,000 protestors to a Monday meeting in the school district’s high school auditorium. Three of the five school board members who voted to fire Forrest were defeated in the May primary election and will leave the school board after their terms expire in November.

Dinniman’s Senate Bill 1007, introduced on Thursday, would ban school boards from acting on a school superintendent’s contract if three or more of its members are in lame-duck status due to a defeat in a primary election and if at least 11 months remain on the superintendent’s contact. The bill will be referred to the Senate Education Committee, of which Senator Dinniman is minority chairman. Continue Reading »

from Democracy For America by email Jul 1, 2009 12:46 PM

For years, candidates for Congress and elected members of Congress told you they needed to be elected and re-elected so they could lower health insurance costs and provide universal coverage. Along the way, you kept working for and voting for those candidates and members of Congress until, at long last, after the 2008 elections they formed wide majorities.

Now, as that new, wide majority drafts legislation designed to lower health care costs and provide universal coverage, you deserve to know if their campaign promises were real, or just empty rhetoric. Will your Senators support a meaningful public health insurance option–the minimum requirement to lowering health care costs and providing insurance to all Americans–or not?

It is up to us to find out. Continue Reading »