Thomas Maher of Nazareth school board was the type of elected official Pennsylvania needs

FROM THE EXPRESS TIMES

The electorate lost a fine public servant last week.

I cannot think of a person who better understood his role as a school board member than Thomas Maher, an Upper Nazareth Township resident who served on the Nazareth Area School Board the last 12 years.

Maher was a rare breed. And that’s unfortunate. Pennsylvania (and New Jersey, for that matter) would be a better place if more people followed his example of providing proper balance in public education. Instead, he was a voice in the wilderness.

Maher died unexpectedly on Wednesday. He was 61.

Public education in Pennsylvania is a broken, dysfunctional system that stacks the deck against students and taxpayers and heavily favors public employees, including those who fail to meet basic performance levels. It is a one-way street that prohibits balance and accountability and is guided by self-serving special interests.

Maher knew all of this and more and he was not bashful in revealing it. He was consistently opposed to wasteful spending, identifying wide areas of abuse and neglect, and he could be relied upon to know the district’s budget better than the public servants who are paid to oversee it. An accountant by trade, you could see administrators recoil when it came Maher’s turn to question spending. And question it he did.

Maher’s no-nonsense approach was the good news.

The bad news is he was all alone.


For 12 years on the board, he was surrounded by colleagues who were more interested in special interests, people who were already public education pensioners or serving on the board to further advance the interests of extracurricular activities of their children. They really didn’t care to stare down top-heavy administrators who pushed for over-market labor agreements and other wasteful spending.

Don’t rock the boat. That’s the theme for the vast majority of school board members, but Maher didn’t buy it.

He also didn’t endorse legislating behind closed doors. Avid readers will recall Nazareth as the place where one former longtime school board member admitted that the real work was done over the phone anyway. Go to a meeting and see how many board members raise questions or challenge the paid public servants.

In typical fashion -- and now sadly appropriate as one of his last votes -- Maher opposed Nazareth’s most recent brainless decision to limit public comment at board meetings. Supporters of the effort to quell accountability managed to keep a straight face by saying they got the idea after attending a recent conference of education leaders. Really? People in education recommend curtailing public participation? A real shocker, eh? Improved efficiency, they called it, again with a straight face.

Maher sniffed it out as a bad idea harvested by featherbedders who want to continue the process of removing the public from public decisions. He voted no, one of two dissenting votes.

Maher so happened to also be the school board member who represents me. I once met him outside of my polling place and thanked him for his service. He could count on my vote.

The Nazareth area will be a lesser place without him.

http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/joe-owens/index.ssf/2011/12/thomas_maher_of_nazareth_schoo.html