(Nineteenth in a series)

by Christiaan A. Hart Nibbrig

“PENN SQUARE COMPLEX IS HAILED AS ‘EVERYTHING THE CITY NEEDS’ STRONG PRAISE FROM CROWD OF NEARLY 300″ —- Lancaster New Era, front page, banner headline,

August 26, 1999, two weeks before County Commissioners vote on room tax to fund “complex”

After the Stadium Bill became law, in February 1999, and as Ernst & Young was quietly conducting its market study on behalf of the Lancaster Campaign, Lancaster Newspapers’ role as a partner in the convention center and hotel project started to seep into its reporting on the project, and bias began to show.

Dale High, Chairman and President of High Industries, had always enjoyed positive coverage from all three major Lancaster Newspapers. But now, as a Penn Square Partner, the items written about him started to read more like press releases from High’s personal public relations firm rather than credible newspaper reports.

The flavor of the aggrandizement is suggested from some of the Lancaster Newspapers’ headlines from 1999:

• “PA. CHAMBER NAMES HIGH TOP BUSINESS LEADER OF ‘99″ (Lancaster New Era);
• “DALE HIGH HONORED AS TOP ENTREPRENEUR OF ‘99″ (Intelligencer Journal)
• “LOCAL BUSINESSMAN IS TOPS AMONG U.S. ENTREPRENEURS” (Lancaster New Era)
• “THE NEW ERA RED ROSE IS PRESENTED TO S. DALE HIGH” (Lancaster New Era)

A typically gushy profile, “The High Road”, this one found in the Sunday News, September 26, 1999, begins:

“Inside the office building, prominent business executive S. Dale High sits scanning papers on a table.

“Outside, a flock of Canada geese glides prettily past High’s picture window. ‘The whole squadron,’ High remarks later as he walks outdoors to the lush park that he incorporated into the Greenfield Corporate Center.

“The sturdy office complex at his back symbolizes the vibrant Lancaster County he would like to preserve for his three children, two stepchildren and eight grandchildren. …”

The convention center and hotel project presented an ethical dilemma for Lancaster Newspapers. The company was a major partner in what would become one of the largest capital projects in the region’s history. Given the vested economic interest of Lancaster Newspapers, and the the multi-millions of taxpayers’ dollars involved, questioning the impartiality of LNP seems natural.

One might have thought that the top editors at LNP would have strained to soothe those concerns by vigorously investigating the project’s viability, or perhaps even hiring an outside ombudsman to review potential conflicts of ethics and professional standards.

This did not happen.

In 1999, it was clear that the top editors at Lancaster Newspapers were not interested in balanced coverage of the project, and, in fact, had decided to take a proactive role in promoting it.

There are several specific examples in 1999 alone that demonstrate the biased LNP coverage of the project. Here are some of them:

• In addition to the over-the-top headlines (“Everything the City Needs” is one of many), there were full-color, front page, artist’s renderings of the proposed project. These lovely, airbrushed images, with smiling citizens under blue skies, were splayed on the front pages before anyone read the Ernst & Young report and before the room tax was passed. These renderings were equivalent to front page advertisements for the project.

• The reporting was unacceptably weak. For example, many of the organizations said to be supporting the project, like the Lancaster Alliance, Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Investment District, Economic Development Company of Lancaster, had the same individuals on the different boards of directors. So while the project appeared to have broad support, these interlocking directorates were never revealed in the press. Three of the directors of these organizations – High; Fulton; Buckwalter – were principals in the project. Others were indirectly linked to it, like John O. Shirk, a partner at the Barley Snyder law firm, the principal solicitor used by Lancaster Newspapers. Those connections merited mention, but there was nothing from LNP on this.

• Lancaster Newspapers, at minimum, should have disclosed its ownership interest in the project from the outset of its involvement. It was not until a court case in 2006 that LNP finally disclosed its stake in the project (44% then; 50% today). The company’s downtown real estate, property values which would be affected by the project, should also have been fully disclosed. They were not.

• There was virtually no due-diligence in reporting on the studies commissioned by the Lancaster Campaign, funded by the Lancaster Alliance, twenty-five percent of whose founding members made up Penn Square Partners. The terms “feasibility study”, “four-star hotel” were never properly defined. In fact, LNP reporters, and sponsors of the project, repeatedly referred to all the market studies at some point as “feasibility” studies. This created an inaccurate picture of what the studies actually were. Further, there was no mention of the many “Competitive Weaknesses” of Lancaster as mentioned by Ernst & Young, only blind praise for the tepid market report.

• The Pinnacle study of 1998, which recommended the Lancaster Square location for the center, was squashed, and LNP failed to push for release of that study.

• There was no pressure from LNP to release the Ernst & Young study prior to the Commissioners’ vote, although LNP Chairman, Jack Buckwalter, was a founding member of the Alliance, the organization that paid for the report. Buckwalter should have publicly insisted the report be published in all three papers.

• Lancaster Newspapers began its practice of the demonization of the opposition. First were the hoteliers. (“Hoteliers threaten lawsuit over tax”). The depiction of the Lancaster citizens who would be hit first and most directly by the tax and the project was of litigious whiners, not wronged taxpayers unfairly forced to pay for its competition. Lancaster Newspapers continued this approach with others, including elected officials who later questioned the project.

The Ernst & Young study was completed in July, 1999, and submitted to the Lancaster Campaign on July 19^th of that year.  For weeks, members of the Greater Lancaster Hotel & Motel Association (GLHMA), had been asking the Campaign’s Chairman, Tom Baldrige, to provide complete copies of the document. Baldrige, after promising the hoteliers they could review it, withdrew his “overpromise” of the full report in early August.

The hoteliers, instead, were given the “Executive Summary” of the report and, after reading it, immediately issued a sharp rebuke of its findings. In a GLHMA “Resolution 08-99″, dated August 19, 1999, the hoteliers affirmed:

“…based on the information provided to date from the partial Ernst & Young report, the GLHMA is opposed to the proposed Penn Square Conference Center, further, that upon review of such partial report and such limited information, the new business said to utilize such facility can not be substantiated…”

Rodney Gleiberman, General Manager of the Continental Inn, and a present and past member of GLHMA, says, “When Ernst & Young did its study, they did not speak with one current customer, tour operator, or local lodging operator to gauge what effect the room tax might have,” says Gleiberman today. “In my opinion, their conclusions were not only incomplete, but irresponsible, as well.”

Others were interested in seeing the complete Ernst & Young report before the County Commissioners were scheduled to vote on imposing the room tax at their September 15, 1999 board meeting. In a letter to the Lancaster County Commissioners, dated September 07, 1999, the Board of Directors of the PA Dutch Convention and Visitors’ Bureau (PDCVB), urges release of the full report:

“The Ernst & Young Feasibility Study [sic] is the basis from which we are to make our decision, yet the full report has been seen by only a select few. We would encourage you to release the full report to our Board of Directors and key hoteliers in order to gain their expertise in developing a well-rounded marketing plan.”

Luis A. Mendoza was a republican Lancaster City Councilman in 1999. He, too, was stonewalled. “I made several requests to [Lancaster Campaign Chairman] Tom Baldrige, asking for a copy of the study,” says Mendoza today. “I was the only one on Council asking to see it, and I never got to see it before the county voted on the tax, and before we voted on whether to set up the Authority.”

Whether the editors at the Intelligencer-Journal themselves read the Ernst & Young study is not clear, but their support of the project and the enabling taxation of Lancaster County business was unequivocal.  In an editorial on the day of the vote on the tax, the Intell wrote:

“We also believe that the county commissioners should impose a room tax on hotels throughout the county to help pay to build the convention center and to promote tourism in both the city and county.”

On September 15, 1999, in two separate resolutions, numbers 45 & 46, the three Lancaster County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to impose two taxes: a 3.1% hotel/motel room tax and a 1.9% excise tax.   Both taxes would be levied solely on the hotel and motel owners of Lancaster County. The tax would commence January 01, 2000.

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Next Installment:  Tax and spend and spend and spend…