Lehigh County is not a “Sanctuary City”

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Despite what you may have seen in a 2017 campaign mailer from a Lehigh County Executive candidate. . . No, Lehigh County is not and never was a “Sanctuary City”.

A sanctuary city is one that by virtue of different philosophical views of elected officials limits cooperation with federal efforts to enforce immigration laws. Or in the worse cases outright obstructs and stymies the work of immigration and customs enforcement (ICE). Key being an unwillingness to cooperate based on philosophical differences. Sanctuary cities are a problem that should be addressed. Lehigh County is not one.

The County cooperates fully with ICE within the parameters of the law. (the US constitution) There is no activism taking place on the part of county officials to obstruct or otherwise hinder immigration enforcement. That includes the current Democratic Executive or the Republican majority of the Board of Commissioners.

#ConstitutionALWAYS – The Bill of Rights matters!

Problems arise when detaining individuals without a warrant, due process, or a judicial order. Here, there was an issue where the county had what they believed to be a legal (not philosophical) issue. Aside from (what should be) the obvious constitutional matter, a few years ago Lehigh County detained a (turned out to be innocent) American citizen at the request of ICE and subsequently was sued. That lawsuit cost county taxpayers $95,000 in a settlement agreement. Could easily have been more. 

This problem is acknowledged by Sen. Pat Toomey. To that end, he’s proposed a fix to put the Feds, not localities, on the hook for detainees eliminating the potential for costly local lawsuits.  Toomey stated, “We need legislation to ensure local police are not subject to lawsuits for good-faith efforts to cooperate with federal law enforcement to remove dangerous criminals and terrorists from our streets,” That sort of lawsuit is exactly what happened in Lehigh County.

Again, in a sanctuary city, elected officials object to US immigration policy and actively seek to undermine it. This is not and never was the case in Lehigh County. Again, the County detained an American citizen under direction from ICE without due process, got sued for it settled and cost taxpayers almost 100k. After the costly debacle, they decided to address the problem by creating a policy to avoid wasting more taxpayer money on lawsuits of the same type.

Today, Lehigh County policy allows all 3 of these things to happen:
1.) Full good faith cooperation with federal immigration law.
2.) Constitutional due process observed
3.) Limiting the counties exposure to more lawsuits.

We don’t live in a society where an administration can make a phone call and have a suspect detained without due process. If the federal government wants to change the current practice then they need to change the law.

Certainly not helpful in this dialogue was a County Executive candidate muddling a complicated issue in an effort to score political points. In Lehigh County, everyone supports the good faith effort cooperating to enforce immigration laws. Creating a wedge where none exists is opportunism.

 

Garbage mailer.

Also no, Brad Osborne (or the entire board for that matter) did not undertake re-assessment for personal gain. That’s a silly thing to imply in this hit job. What happened was in 2012 the County Board of Commissioners implemented the county’s first reassessment in more than two decades. It was at the time very long overdue. Necessary for as long as we maintain a totally broken system where we fund schools with property taxes. (School Property taxes should be completely eliminated via SB76 which would make this whole issue moot)
Reassessments are done (and should be on a regular basis) to assign properties more accurate, updated values based on items like actual home sales. These values serve as the basis for real estate taxes. So it’s critical to get it right. If the process isn’t done on regular basis values become unfair. Some people pay too much and some pay too little. When the County reassessed essentially taxes went down for 55% of homeowners. And unfortunately up to 45%. The fact of the matter is the entire effort is to find the real values. The system is not at all perfect. But it becomes much worse when reassessments aren’t performed for decades at a time.
Re-assessment should be a non-partisan no-brainer. However, it’s important to point out the effort was led at the time by conservative Commissioner Scott Ott and supported by a conservative reform slate. There was bi-partisan support. The only wrangling that occurred was over when to do the exercise.
In conclusion, the entire mailer was basically garbage and very disappointing. I wrote about why candidates feel the need to “go negative” yesterday here.