In Leola on Saturday, Republican Party officials were attacking the county's proposed home-rule charter as a special-interest power play.

A half-hour later in Lancaster, other Republicans, including former Congressman Bob Walker, were defending the charter as the best opportunity to move Lancaster County into the future.

"Some of my friends in the Republican Party ask you to accept their view that change is unnecessary because good governance is simply a matter of who is elected to office," Walker said at a press conference on the courthouse steps to announce charter endorsements by Walker, former county Commissioner Sharron Nelson and former state education Secretary John Pittenger.

"Electing wise and competent public officials is always important, but if they must govern inside an increasingly antiquated and dysfunctional structure, they will fail despite their best intentions."

But three minority members of the Lancaster County Government Study Commission, which drafted the charter, and GOP committeeman Dale Murray contended at a Lancaster County ACTION breakfast at Leola Restaurant that home rule is agenda-driven and will lead to bigger government and higher taxes in the end.

With a referendum less than a month away, the battle over charter passage is becoming increasingly heated — and is increasingly shaping up as an intramural fight between Republicans.

The divisions in the party over home rule were on display Saturday. The county committee has adopted a resolution opposing the charter, but other Republicans, like Walker and Nelson, are lobbying for passage.

Pro- and anti-home-rule coalitions have unveiled dueling Web sites — www.citizensforhomerule.org and www.homerulegamble.com — to spread their messages before voters go to the polls on Nov. 4.

Murray argued Saturday that the charter allows county government to take on more, undefined powers.

"It's a blank check," he said.

'David and Goliath'
State law permits counties to adopt home rule charters, which transfer some powers to the local level and allow for a form of government different than the one mandated by the state's County Code.

After its creation in a 2006 referendum, the GSC studied county government for a year before deciding that home rule was needed. The charter written over the last year goes to voters for approval Nov. 4.

Three GOP-endorsed GSC members are leading the fight against passage.

GSC member Jim Bednar, noting that the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry, the League of Women Voters, the Lancaster County Association of Realtors and the Hourglass Foundation support the charter, compared the Republican fight against passage as "David and Goliath."

Home-rule supporters have pledged $250,000 to a pro-charter campaign, Bednar said, but opponents are having trouble raising enough money to mail out literature and pay for yard signs.

In response to a question on why the chamber backs the charter, Murray noted, "You've got a lot of developers and so forth behind the chamber," and it's easier to work "if you have this kind of control" of government.

Tom Baldrige, the chamber president, rejected those assertions as "absolutely false." The chamber's motivation in supporting home rule, he said, is simply to give greater local control of the structure of government.

"I hope we could get past the scare tactics and accusations and spend the remaining days before the election focused on the actual contents of the charter," Baldrige said.

But the two sides disagree sharply on what the charter actually says, as Saturday's rival presentations showed.

Before about 75 people, Murray showed a presentation highlighting what the Republican committee sees as problems in the charter.

The charter takes a system that has worked well for 280 years, Murray said, and allows an unelected county administrator to assume all the administrative authority now exercised by three county commissioners.

An expanded board of five county commissioners would have little legislative work to do, he said, but they would still be paid $55,000 each.

Murray argued that the GSC majority tried to take control of county authorities before finding out such a move would be illegal, and he also said the charter might allow county government to take away powers of local municipalities.

GSC majority member Heidi Wheaton, an East Hempfield Township supervisor, rejected that as illegal under state law.

Most worrying, Murray said, is that home-rule advocates will not say why they want what he sees as expanded powers and more control.

"What is it that they're not telling you? he asked. "What we're hearing from the pro-home-rulers is platitudes."

Back to the future
But home-rule advocates suggest an agenda, as well, for charter opponents.

"I'm afraid that there are some in the political hierarchy of both major parties who are willing to protect perks and patronage at the expense of a good governance opportunity," former Congressman Walker said at the pro-charter press conference.

County Democrats, who supported the 2006 referendum, have taken a neutral stand on the charter.

Democrat Pittenger, a former state legislator, said existing county government "does not facilitate strong leadership. It commingles the power to make policy with the power to carry out that policy and then further confuses things by entrusting both legislative and executive power to a three-person board of commissioners."

For Lancaster County to compete for jobs, Pittenger said, it needs "competence and integrity" in government that surpass that of neighboring counties: "This is a competition we are likely to lose unless we can provide more vigorous and coherent policies at the county level."

Republican Sharron Nelson, who served a year as an appointed commissioner, noted the state-prescribed structure is the same as it was in 1873, but the federal government has been changed by constitutional amendment six times since then.

As commissioner, she said, "I became aware of the inefficiencies resulting from the three-commissioner system," including restrictions on what two commissioners could say to each other under the state open-meetings law and the inability to form committees to study issues in depth.

No system is perfect, she said, but home rule could be tweaked as necessary once the charter is adopted.

"To remain special and keep its unique character, Lancaster County must be able to chart its own course into the future," Walker said, recognizing that government must be "more representative of the diversity of our county," must be able to use modern technology and management tools and must be able to act "without having to seek approval from Harrisburg."

"That course is the promise of the home-rule charter."

---

Helen Colwell Adams is a Sunday News staff writer. E-mail her at hcolwell@lnpnews.com.