Patrick Lester:

Lower Macungie Township will apparently be getting at least two new faces on its five-person Board of Commissioners come January, dramatically altering a board that that was largely defined by a single controversial land deal.

Ron Beitler and Brian Higgins, who were outspoken about how the current board negotiated and approved the rezoning of David Jaindl-owned farmland, were able to defeat incumbents Ron Eichenberg, the board’s current president, and Roger Reis, the previous president, in Tuesday’s Republican primary, unofficial results showed.

Ryan Conrad was the lone survivor among the three incumbents whose seats are up for grabs this year.

Let me just preempt a silly idea that might surface: that Lump Sanders is entitled to the seat because he placed 5th in the election. An appointment is just that – an appointment. The majority is not obligated to appoint anyone other than who they subjectively feel is the most impressive candidate they interview. It should be someone who reflects the governing majority’s views on politics and policy. Bethlehem City Council could potentially have a 6-1 progressive majority, with Eric Evans politically isolated, and Bob Donchez playing a substantially weakened role as Mayor.

John Callahan’s big win in Northampton County was of course the real bright spot, and Deb Hunter winning one of the Democratic slots for Northampton County Council was also excellent, but that’s about where the good news ends for Northampton County.

The rest of the Democratic slate for Northampton County Council is just depressing. You’ve got Christen Borso who seems nice enough, but is rumored to be not the sharpest. You’ve got Ron Heckman, an ex-Reibmanite. And then you’ve got Jerry Seyfried and Tom O’Donnell, who aren’t especially bad or anything but instead of two really old guys, you at least could have had an opportunity with Jason Toedter and Kerry Myers to build the Democratic bench with some younger politicians. But voters went with some familiar good old boys instead, increasing the odds that County Democratic governance will remain a backwater of tired old-school thinking. Hopefully John Callahan and Deb Hunter can develop a progressive governing coalition and shake things up anyway.

The Bethlehem results are worst of all.

I just learned yesterday that Bob Donchez has a stomach condition that flares up fragrantly under the stresses of leadership. No wonder he is always the last to decide on every vote. No wonder the tiniest group of mildly upset people can sway his vote on anything. No wonder so many of his campaign proposals entail outsourcing key policy decisions to this or that panel. John Callahan told me Donchez is constitutionally incapable of making decisions, and this has been quite clear observing his approach to governance on City Council. He’s the worst possible fit for an Executive job. Donchez won not by making any particularly compelling argument for himself or his vision, but by name recognition alone. This is a not-insignificant setback for a city that’s clawed its way back to prosperity through hard choices and creative thinking, and where further gains will come only through sustained persistent experimentation. Willie Reynolds was clearly the better candidate to continue the tradition of bold governance in the post-Steel era.

The good news is that a progressive City Council could potentially fill the pending leadership void, and pass laws that the Mayor does not want to, if the progressive faction can operate as a cohesive governing coalition. The City Council elections appear to have made this strategy more feasible. On net, the progressive faction on Council gained two members – Bryan Callahan and maybe Adam Waldron. Bryan replaces the conservative David DiGiacinto, and it’s now looking like Adam Waldron replaces conservative Jean Belinski. The progressives could govern the 7-member Council with a coalition of Karen Dolan, Willie Reynolds, Michael Recchiuti, Bryan Callahan and Adam Waldron. They will soon need to fill Bob Donchez’s seat, and if another progressive applies for the vacancy s/he would likely be approved by the DRRC faction. That would give progressives a solid 6-1 governing majority, which would allow them to veto bad Donchez initiatives and pass laws without his approval.

In Lehigh County, I am a little terrified of rightwinger Scott Ott’s big victory over sensible Republican Dean Browning. Some Democrats would rather run against Ott, since he’s obviously a clown, but not me! Remember that this barely registered with the Lehigh County electorate in 2009, when they very nearly elected him over Don Cunningham. Ott is a nutcase, but as a professional entertainer, he knows how to make his candidacy pop. Tom Muller, the Democratic nominee, will come with the better policy ideas, and a novel political story to tell, but Ott will be the more interesting figure in the race, and my fear is that enough moderate Republican voters will say to themselves “screw it, how bad could it get?”

For the Lehigh Commission, voters selected a pleasingly strong Democratic slate. Geoff Brace and Wes Barrett are both very sharp top-tier candidates, and while I would have liked to see Juan Camacho replace David Jones, I am satisfied overall with the Brace, Barrett, Jones and Bill Leiner team as the Democratic standard-bearers. On the Republican side, I am pleased to see cosmopolitan Republican Percy Dougherty survived his Wayne Woodman-backed primary challenge from tea person Scott Aquila.

On Allentown City Council, a throw-the-bums-out election would have been appropriate given the level of acrimony over the high-stakes controversies of the past two years, but the small number of voters who turned out were decidedly not in the mood. Jeff Glazier was the only incumbent to lose a seat, which is too bad because I like Jeff, and he was replaced by police chief Daryl Hendricks. Julio Guridy, Cynthia Mota and Ray O’Connell all retained their seats. I don’t know how upset people should be about this. The water lease vote was correctly decided in my view. The Delta Thermo waste-to-energy plant vote would have been a good excuse to throw some incumbents over the side, but unless I missed something none of the challengers really tried to turn this into a campaign issue. Was there something else voters should’ve been upset about? I don’t really see it.

Any other significant races I’m missing? I had to pay close attention to a lot of municipal races across the state for Keystone Politics, so I largely tuned out judicial and school board races this year. Gloria McVeigh told me that the tea people were trying to take over the school district in Saucon, and I am not sure if they succeeded. Were any of the smaller borough races of interest?

Different kinds of buildings yield different amounts of property tax revenue per acre. Many areas limit residential development to just one house per acre. How do the property tax collections from that type of zoning regime stack up to the revenues produced by mixed-use buildings? How do these stack up to big box stores like Wal-mart?

Here is a chart from the new Smart Growth America report, showing the municipal property tax yield per acre from different kinds of development in North Carolina:

Why’s this important? Lots of municipalities think they are doing “economic development” by subsidizing, directly or indirectly, big box shopping centers. But in reality, this is the lowest impact type of development there is. Cities who want to grow the local tax base can hardly do better than to simply allow more multi-story mixed-use buildings in their business districts, and more multi-family buildings in their neighborhoods.

The Good:

- Bill Peduto beat Jack Wagner in the Pittsburgh Mayoral primary! And by a solid margin of ~52-40. This one makes all the disappointments better. More on this later.

- John Callahan prevailed over Lamont McClure and a reheated Glenn Reibman in the primary for Northampton County Executive, also with over 50%.

- Democrats won two special elections for the state House, in HD-42 and HD-95.

The Bad:

- Bob Donchez narrowly bested Willie Reynolds by about 300 votes for Bethlehem Mayor. Still sore about this one since I was working for Willie yesterday.

- Old-head network favorite Bill Courtwright somehow won over KP favorite Liz Randol for Scranton Mayor

- Eric Papenfuse beat out Equality PA’s preferred candidate Dan Miller for Harrisburg Mayor. I wasn’t really that into any of the candidates, but at least now Harrisburg will have a Mayor who’s not certifiably insane.

- The Philly Shrug beat Brett Mandel for Philadelphia Controller by a 2-1 margin, with shamefully low turnout.

Do not vote for that ballot line! Do not pick somebody based on a name! Do not pick somebody based on their ballot position!

Resist the temptation to complete your ballot, and leave blank any ballot line where you have not read up on what the candidates support.

This is especially important in primary elections for school boards and judicial positions. Unfortunately, PA still has cross-filing - a key early Progressive-era process reform whose purpose is to prevent ideological activists and interest groups from using primary elections to hold elected officials accountable to any policy agenda. By preventing voters from using partisan labels as a short-cut, cross-filing works very well at this purpose, and it allows Republicans to hide on the Democratic primary ballot undetected.

We need to end cross-filing as soon as possible, but until then, don’t vote for any unlabeled candidate you haven’t already verified as a Democrat. Voting only for the offices you’ve researched will lead to better, more accountable elected officials, and better public policy outcomes.

I was excited to hear Lehigh GOP Executive candidate Dean Browning say he could potentially support a County-wide police force for Lehigh County. This is a smart move in terms of coordinating police efforts, particularly now that the regional crime data center has been an early success.

Now that it’s possible to coordinate information between all the various municipal police departments in Lehigh County, this naturally raises the question of whether the County isn’t also the appropriate level for setting police crime control strategy, and raising the revenue to fund policing countywide. I say this is the appropriate level of government, and Dean appears to agree. Republican John Brown of Bangor has also been trying to regionalize police departments in the Slate Belt, and hopefully he would scale up that effort Countywide if he won the Executive race in November.

From Bernie O’Hare’s report out of the LVEDC/LV Partnership debate:

All candidates support more regional efforts. Brown noted his 18-month effort to regionalize police departments in the Slate Belt. Callahan noted the revenue sharing from the casino with Allentown ($2.5 million) and Easton ($0.8 million), calling it a “watershed moment for regional cooperation.” He also pointed to combining redundant water and ewer authorities, noting that Bethlehem and East Allen are combining after two years of negotiation. McClure stated he supported the Allentown arena, unlike Callahan. Reibman wants a bi-county or even a tri-county health department, and wants rail to Philadephia, New York and Scranton.

Browning believes Lehigh should start moving towards a county-wide police force, and is urging a regional approach to the three publicly-owned nursing homes in the Lehigh Valley. Muller pointed to Lehigh County’s regional crime center, which in four short months has helped bring in 3 homicide suspects from Bethlehem and Berks County.

Ott insisted that regionalism has to be voluntary and can’t be forced from the top down, claiming that the “politics of regionalization may put a damper on some of the dreams of regionalization”

People who care about progressive taxation need to get interested in this issue. Townships generally have higher fiscal capacity than central cities. What that means is their residents can afford to pay more taxes. If you fund policing out of municipal tax bases, what’s going to happen is that poor people in central cities will pay more per capita, but their lower fiscal capacity means they’ll max out their ability to pay well at well below the ideal quality of services. The townships generally have higher fiscal capacity, but don’t buy as nice of services for themselves. Richer areas have less crime, and tend to hire fewer police and pay less in taxes.

If you regionalize the tax base, you’re going to have more cross-subsidy of urban police services by wealthier suburban areas. I don’t recommend advocates highlight this aspect in Countywide elections, but it’s generally going to be the case that regionalizing services will mean folks in the wealthier townships bearing more of the tax burden, and urban areas getting better quality services than they have now.

The Allentown office of a high-tech fiber optic business will be part of a new 10-story building at the Alvin H. Butz Inc. corporate complex at Ninth and Hamilton streets, company and city officials announced today.

United Fiber & Data, which is part-owned by members of the band Live, announced in February its intention to locate a regional sales headquarters in the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone. Greg Butz, president of Alvin Butz and Co. Inc., unveiled the building’s sketch plans today [...]

Williams Hynes, president and CEO of Think Loud Development and United Fiber & Data, said he expects the company to create jobs paying in the $75,000 to $85,000 range.

Hynes said the company was looking for unique and high-tech office space akin to headquarters of Silicon Valley firms, and the group was impressed by Butz’s design.

“Collectively, we’re like, ‘This is absolutely bad-ass,’” Hynes said.

Chad Taylor, who is United Fiber & Data’s chairman and lead guitarist for the York-based band, said: “Butz really knocked it out of the park.”

Hynes said the Allentown location is ideal to serve clients in New York. The regional sales headquarters is part of United Fiber & Data’s development of a 418-mile dark fiber line from New York to Virginia, but connecting areas off the Interstate 95 corridor. United Fiber & Data also plans to build a 20,000-square-foot data center elsewhere in the city outside the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone, in addition to data centers in York, Reading and Lancaster.