Pa. Auditor General Timothy DeFoor released a statewide school-district audit that uncovered a legal (but suspect) practice. The study revealed 12 districts statewide raising local property taxes while holding millions of dollars in their general funds.
DeFoor explained: “These districts have found a way to use the law to their advantage so they could always raise property taxes.
“It’s basically a ‘shell game’ … [in which they raised] taxes 37 times during the four years we reviewed [2018–2021], which increased their respective general fund accounts to $390 million.”
Only one of the 12 school districts involved a Delaware County town.
West Chester Area School District was included in the audit which is primarily in Chester County but does include the town of Thornbury in Delaware County.
“Some startling trends began to appear to our auditors,” DeFoor noted, “like moving money around to make sure a district would always meet the threshold to raise taxes.
“They also applied for a [tax-raising] referendum exception as a regular budgeting tool, rather than an extreme measure as the law intends.”
School district responses claimed that state fluctuations in education funding made the tax increases necessary.
The full press release on this issue is on the website of Auditor General Timothy DeFoor.