Lancaster County commissioners pulled the plug on funding Wednesday for a mailer that was to be sent to every household in the county regarding the proposed Home Rule Charter.

Calling the one-page document drafted by the 11-member Lancaster County Government Study Commission "clear advocacy" in favor of Home Rule, commissioner Chairman Dennis Stuckey on Wednesday afternoon sent an e-mail to the 11 members of the study commission, informing them the county will not pay any bill associated with the mailer.

"This thing is just littered throughout with adjectives that suggest this is a better form of government than we have right now," said Commissioner Scott Martin. "It's not educational. It's advocating for home rule."

Carol Phillips, who chairs the study commission, said she was disappointed by the commissioners' decision. She said she will have to meet with her panel to figure out how to proceed.

"I feel that we tried very hard to be fair and accurate without advocating," she said.

The county commissioners last year agreed to give the study commission $50,000 in taxpayer funds to educate the public about home rule. The study commission earlier this summer opted to spend nearly all of that money on a mailer to be sent to nearly 300,000 households.

Phillips said the mailer was designed to outline the contents of the charter they adopted in August, direct people to the study commission's Web site so they can review the complete charter on their own and to urge them to vote Nov. 4.

In April, members of the study commission promised the county commissioners that they would not use the $50,000 to advocate for home rule. They assured the commissioners the money would be spent on education.

Study commission members Jim Bednar, Jim Huber and Greg Sahd, who are opposed to home rule, wrote a letter to the county commissioners Sept. 8 informing them they believed the wording for the mailer approved by the study commission last week violated the promise of neutrality.

"We the undersigned urge you to prevent the use of any public funds from being expended to subjectively promote and advocate the proposed Home Rule Charter in such a manner that misleads and misrepresents by denying the use of taxpayer funds for this obvious pro-home-rule piece," the letter to the county commissioners states.

Some of the statements in the mailer Bednar, Huber and Sahd find objectionable include claims that the charter would create a government providing "more accountability," "greater citizen access" and "better money management."

Martin agreed with their assessment.

"They're subjective, they make conclusions and they clearly are opinions," he said.

Phillips said she did not know Bednar, Huber and Sahd had complained to the county commissioners, but she defended the information contained in the mailer.

"Nowhere do we say, 'Vote for this,' " she said. "It's to drive people to learn more about (the charter). I think we worded things pretty matter-of-factly."

Bednar, Huber and Sahd also complained in their letter that the mailer makes it seem the study commission unanimously favors the charter, because their names and photos were to appear on the mailer with no mention that they voted against the charter. The study commission approved the charter Aug. 18 by a 8-3 vote.

"We were assured this would be a balanced piece of information," Bednar said. "It only contains home rule issues. There is nothing about the current form of county government."

Phillips acknowledged there's a thin line between education and advocacy, but she said state law "requires us to present to the public the advantages of home rule if that's the direction the study commission chooses, which we did."

Bednar attended the commissioners' weekly meeting Wednesday to urge the board to act quickly on the letter he and his colleagues had sent because the mailer was scheduled to be delivered to a printer "any day," he said.

Martin and Stuckey said they reviewed the proposed wording of the mailer with county solicitor Don Lefever Wednesday afternoon and decided it went beyond education. Stuckey said Commissioner Craig Lehman was out of the office during the afternoon and that he notified Lehman by telephone of the decision he and Martin had made to withhold payment of any bills regarding the mailing.

Lehman could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.

The study commission never actually received $50,000 from the county coffers, Stuckey said. Any bills the study commission wanted to have paid out of that budget were to be sent to the county.

"As the fiduciary stewards of the county's tax dollars, we just felt that anything leaning toward advocacy would be an inappropriate use," of tax revenue, Stuckey said.

Phillips said she's concerned about having enough time to reword the mailer at a properly advertised public meeting, make sure the new wording meets the approval of the county commissioners and get the information into the hands of voters in plenty of time before Nov. 4 so they can study the full charter on their own.

"I am certainly concerned people are aware of it and know what it says," she said.

Home rule allows a county to design its own government structure following certain parameters established by the state. Six of Pennsylvania's 67 counties are governed under home-rule charters.

Among other changes, the proposed charter calls for expanding the board of county commissioners from three members to five; having a county executive appointed by the commissioners run the county at the board's direction; eliminating the row offices of register of wills, prothonotary and clerk of courts; and creating the elected position of clerk of judicial records to perform the functions of the three eliminated positions.

E-mail: preilly@lnpnews.com