Wampum

Did Santorum Break the Law?

I am coming late to the story of whether Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum is actually a resident of that state, but there seems to be one important issue that has been little discussed. Does the incident go beyond mere political embarassment and enter the range of criminal conduct?

Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review has an outstanding series of posts about Senator Rick Santorum's residency problem ( first, second, third, and fourth).

Santorum, the junior Senator from Pennsylvania was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1990. He won that race, in part, by making an issue out of whether or not his opponent actually lived in the district he sought to represent.

In 1995, Santorum was elected to the Senate. At that time, Santorum lived in a house he owned in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania. After being elected to the Senate, Santorum, who is married with six children, sold his Mt. Lebanon home and purchased a house in Herndon, Virginia. They paid $292,184 for the Virginia house. For two years, it does not appear that Santorum had a residence in Pennsylvania.

In 1997, the Santorums paid $87,800 for a two bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania. It is unclear whether or not the Santorums and their six children ever stayed as much as one night in the Penn Hills house, but it is clear that in the normal sense of the word, they lived in the Virginia house and not in the Penn Hills house.

In 2001, the Santorums purchased a $643,361 house in Leesburg, Virginia. The Santorums lived in the Leesburg house. Santorum's wife's niece and the niece's spouse live in the Penn Hills house.

There is little mystery in what happened. After being elected to the Senate, the Santorums moved to Virginia where they lived. To maintain a presence in Pennsylvania, they bought a rental home in Penn Hills.

I have no problem with any of that. Article I, Section III, Clause 3 of the U.S. Consitution requires that a Senator be an "inhabitant" of the state he or she represents:

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

Santorum was born, grew up, went to college, and lived in Pennsylvania. He was an inhabitant of the state when we was elected to the Senate. His job as a Senator required him to be in or near Washington for much of the time. It seems reasonable for him to buy a home there. I do not see why a Senator can not live near Washington during his term of service while remaining an "inhabitant" of his home state.

What I do have a problem with is Santorum using the fiction that he was living in the rental house to rip off the taxpayers of Penn Hills. Two actions taken by Santorum seem to fit that description.

First, Santorum applied for a received a homestead exemption for the Penn Hills house. The homestead exemption allows the homeowner to avoid property taxes on the first $15,000 of value of a home. The homeowner must file for the exemption and it "can only be claimed once, for a place of primary residence ... where the owner intends to reside permanently, not temporarily."

Santorum filed for the exemption on the Penn Hills rental property despite the plain fact that it was not his "primary residence." It is not clear whether or not Santorum actually took the exemption to reduce his property taxes. His aides claim that he did not and I have seen no report from the taxing authorities to determine the fact one way or another.

Santorum's second questionable act has to do with the school system.

Pennsylvania permits children to attend charter schools. When a student attends a charter school, the student's home school district has to pay the cost of the education to the charter school.

The Santrorums decided to send their kids to a Pennsylvania charter cyber school. In 2001-02 three Santorum kids were in the cyber school. In 2003-04, four attended the cyber charter school and this year five Santorum kids were enrolled in the cyber school.

Over the years, the Penn Hills school district has paid something approaching or exceeding $100,000 to the charter school to educate the Santorum kids.

The Santorums submitted the paper work to the Penn Hills school district to obtain the payments to the cyber school. State law requires that a local school district pay for the charter school education only if the children's primary residence is in the district. It seems likely that the Santorum parents represented to the Penn Hills school district that the Penn Hills rental house was their children's primary residence. I have not found a copy of the paper work on the net and I have found no news reports of the contents of that paperwork.

Nonetheless, if such a representation was made, it was false as the Santorum kids' primary residence was in Virginia and not Pennsylvania.

Local school districts often challenge whether or not charter school students are actually residents of the school district.

"It's not unusual for school districts to check out whether pupils really are residents, but some of the tried-and-true techniques, such as staking out a house to see whether the pupil leaves for school, won't work with a cyber school.

James Chavis, home and school visitor and coordinator of pupil services in Penn Hills, told the board last week that he did 136 residency checks last school year, resulting in 44 pupils being removed from the district because they weren't residents.

The courts seem to use a common sense test to determine if a child is a resident of the school district:

Just having two homes doesn't in itself mean the person isn't a resident, Fields said. He noted a 2000 case in the Cumberland Valley School District in which the regular family home was outside of the school district but the mother and her two children spent five days a week at a townhouse in Cumberland Valley. The court ruled the mother and the children were residents of the school district, even though their primary home was elsewhere.

In the case, the court noted: "She and the children actually live there. They stay there during the days and sleep there at night. Mail and phone calls are received there. Clothing, books and supplies are kept there as well."

The court said that was the "classic definition of 'residence.' "

It seems clear that the Santorums can not meet that test. They do not sleep at the Penn Hills rental home. They are not there during the day. If you call that house, you do not get Rick Santorum. Their clothes, books and supplies are all in Virginia.

All of that is not doubt politically embarassing for Rick Santorum, but is it more? Did Santorum break the law?

The answer seems to be a qualified "yes."

Pennsylvania statute 3922 Theft By Deception, provides as follows:

A person is guilty of theft if he intentionally obtains or withholds property of another by deception. A person deceives if he intentionally:

creates or reinforces a false impression, including false impressions as to law, value, intention or other state of mind; ...

Santorum intentionally obtained property of the Penn Hills school district by requesting and receiving the benefit of payment for his children's education.

The payment of about $100,000 towards the education of the Santorum kids is "property" within the menaing of the statute.

Did Santorum use deception to obtain that benefit? The news reports confirm that Santorum provided the paperwork necessary to obtain the payments to the charter school. It would be very interesting to see the actual paperwork Santorum submitted. My guess, and it is just a guess though an educated one, is that those documents will show that Santorum represented that his children were "residents" of Penn Hills. Given that Santorum had to know that that he and his large family did not live in the two bedroom rental house but rather lived in the $750,000 home in Virginia, that statement, if made, was a deception. It was also intentionally made.

An investigation into whether Senator Santorum commited the offense of theft by deception by intentionally misrepresenting the residency of his children so as to obtain a $100,000 benefit (a benefit, it should be noted, that is greater than the price he paid for the Penn Hills rental house) is entirely warranted.

I do not know whether the paperwork submitted to obtain payment to the charter school, or the paperwork submitted to obtain the homestead exemption on the Penn Hills house, were made under oath. If so, it appears that Santorum may have violated a Pennsylvania statute on false swearing.

Pennsylvania statute section 4903 makes the following conduct a crime:

A person who makes a false statement under oath or equivalent affirmation, or swears or affirms the truth of such a statement previously made, when he does not believe the statement to be true is guilty of a misdemeanor of the second degree if:

the falsification is intended to mislead a public servant in performing his official function.

It is unlikely that Senator Santorum actually believed that the Penn Hills rental house was his primary residence. Nonetheless, he submitted paperwork to obtain a homestead exemption making the representation that the rental house and not his Virginia mansion was his "primary residence." That statement was for the purpose of obtaining the Homestead exemption which would be granted or denied by "a pubic servant in performing his official function."

The same analysis would apply if the application for charter school payments were made "under oath or equivilent affirmation."

Even if those statements were not under oath, they may have been criminal. Pennsylvania statute section 4904 Unsworn Falsification to Authorities, makes it a crime to make any written false statement which which the maker does not believe to be true with the intent to mislead a public servant performing his official function.

It appears that the contents of the paperwork submitted by the Santorums to obtain funding for the charter school and to obtain the Homestead exemption are the keys to determining whether or not the Junior Senator from Pennsylvania has engaged in criminal acts. An enterprising reporter might want to consider obtaining copies of those documents.

Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill? Perhaps, but I do not think so for several reasons. First, $100,000 is not exactly chump change. Secondly, Santorum should have been sensitive to the residency issue because he won his first Conngressional seat, in part, http://post-gazette.com/pg/04324/414066.stm by making an issue out of whether or not his opponent actually lived in the district he sought to represent.

Third, Santorum has always been quick to make the harshest possible judgments aout his political opponents when they have been caught in politically embarassing situations. During the Clintion impeachment, Santrum was quoted as follows:

You can certainly argue ... that someone who breaks the law in not upholding and not telling the truth under oath and someone who obstructs justice does, in fact, threaten the republic.

I wonder whether he also thinks that a Senator who breaks the law by misrepresenting his residence to public officials to in order to obtain a $100,000 benefit is sufficiently grave to "threaten the republic"?

When Sandy Berger, an advisor to John Kerry, mishandled some copies of classified papers during the 9/11 investigation, Santorum was again quick to put a negative spin on it. He argued that the documents Berger mishandled were used by Kerry in a campaign speech. As Josh Marshall pointed out at the time, Santorum's charge made no sense whatsoever.

When Republican Senate staffers were caught hacking Democrats' computer files concerning strategy on judicial nominations, Santorum did not apologize to the Democrats. Instead, he accused them of criminal conduct and called for an investigation of the victims!! The Hill reports:

If we’re going to investigate it, we’re going to investigate it,” vowed GOP Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (Pa.). “We want to see all the Democratic memos. The facts that we are aware of show some fairly disgusting activities,” he said. “They want a full-fledged investigation - bring it on.”

Senate Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle, who is heading the probe, briefed members of the Judiciary Committee in a closed session in a secure Capitol room yesterday morning, the day after a group of Judiciary Democrats said the probe warranted a criminal prosecution.

But Santorum angrily rejected that notion. “If there’s anything criminal, it’s the behavior of the Democrats in trying to rig cases and work with outside groups,” he said, referring to the content of leaked memos about Democratic contacts with outside groups to develop strategy on judicial nominees.

Given Santorum's history, I am not inclined to cut him much slack.

I wonder whether any reporter or local district attorney will investigate to determine whether the always self-righteous Rick Santorum is a criminal.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at December 2, 2004 10:03 AM | TrackBack