Our View: Higley district officials shouldn’t compound error

The Higley Unified School District inappropriately, if not illegally, used a veteran political pollster to conduct a telephone survey of residents about a proposed budget override — after the school board already had committed to placing the measure before voters in the Nov. 4 general election.

Now, the district wants to compound that error by reneging on its contract to pay the pollster $10,500 for work already preformed.

As Tribune writer Hayley Ringle reported Saturday, the telephone survey was conducted Aug. 8-10 and concluded that 82 percent of Higley voters are likely to support the override. However, state election law forbids the use of any public resources to attempt to influence the outcome of an election.

District officials say they didn’t violate that law because the board approved a contract with pollster Bruce Merrill to conduct the survey on June 26, a week before the board decided to call the budget override election. If that interpretation is wrong, district spokeswoman Sara Bresnahan told Ringle the district will try to avoid any sanctions by refusing to pay Merrill.

Local governments can legitimately use polls and surveys to measure the public’s level of interest in issues that might later require approval at the ballot box. Officials use that feedback to gauge whether it would be worth the time and expense to schedule an election. But once that election is called, the only reason for a government agency to conduct a political poll would be to help supporters plot strategies to convince voters to approve the measure. That violates the spirit of the law, if not the actual language.

Higley could have, and should have, canceled the telephone survey at the moment the board decided to take the budget override to an election. The district didn’t, and now it has to face the consequences.

The district should pay Merrill for work performed in good faith and then accept whatever penalties county or state officials might mete out.