Ironically, 2023 CBSD Dem campaign blasted spending ‘millions’ on ‘politically connected lawyers’

When Heather Reynolds sought a seat on the Central Bucks School Board in 2023, she suggested spending less on wheeler-dealer attorneys and more on academics. 

“Taxpayer money should be going into our classrooms to enrich the curriculum & address learning loss, not to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to crisis PR firms and politically connected lawyers,” she declared in her campaign literature. “I pledge to put our tax dollars back towards supporting our children’s education and to be transparent and open with the community.” 

Arguably, the most contentious legal issue Central Bucks School District faced that year, and the one that likely spurred Reynolds’s comment, was the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania on behalf of a suspended teacher. The teacher claimed he experienced unfair treatment for helping a transgender student file a civil-rights complaint over alleged bullying. 

CBSD paid Philadelphia-based Duane Morris just over $167,000 for legal work on the issue. The outfit is a political powerhouse, the former workplace of federal judges Marjorie Rendell, a Democrat, and Michael Baylson, a Republican appointee. CBSD settled the case the following year the following March.

The Democrats’ anti-GOP message went beyond legal matters. Alongside her running mates, Reynolds excoriated the Republicans then constituting a board majority for overseeing what the Democrats portrayed as a hard-right cultural agenda on library books and transgender policy. Reynolds unseated then board President Dana Hunter (R); Democrats Karen Smith, Dana Foley, and Rick Haring all beat their GOP rivals as well. 

While the now 8-1 Democratic board can boast they’ve kept their promise to shift CBSD’s orientation leftward, they can’t say they’ve stopped the flow of “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to “politically connected lawyers.”

This September, the district hired Trevose-based Clarke Gallagher Barbiero Amuso Glassman to provide legal counsel, with Peter Amuso to serve as district solicitor. Calling Clarke Gallagher “politically connected” would understate its influence. 

State Senator Steve Santarsiero (D-Doylestown), who chairs the Bucks County Democratic Committee, is among the firm’s attorneys. In May 2023, The Philadelphia Inquirer mentioned managing partner Michael Clarke as a standout example of “a pay-to-play culture in which the line between business and politics is often blurred.” Clarke donates heavily to Democratic campaigns in southeastern Pennsylvania, including in Bucks County. 

Amuso himself has a modestly notable political background, having run unsuccessfully as a Democrat against Republican Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman in 2007. He weathered some controversy during his CBSD appointment when critics noted Pennsbury School District, under Amuso’s erstwhile solicitorship, once settled a First Amendment lawsuit after plaintiffs complained about Amuso curtailing residents’ public comments. 

Democrats Jenine Zdanowicz, Rob Dugger, and Rick Haring voted against Amuso’s appointment, declining to support a solicitor candidate whose firm also handles labor issues for the district, as Clarke Gallagher has done since March. Reynolds, who is school board vice chair, voted to confirm him. 

In so doing, she blew past the threshold of the “millions of dollars” she earlier disapproved of spending on “politically connected lawyers.” The Inquirer used that very phrase to describe Clarke in its lengthy 2023 report on him and similarly active well-heeled attorneys in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Altogether, CBSD has paid $275,859.53 to his firm as of October 3 for labor representation and solicitor duties, according to payment records The Independence requested. Those include an interim contract Clarke Gallagher picked up when school directors dismissed the (also politically prominent) Wisler Pearlstine firm in June. 

While Wisler Pearlstine has received fees from the district at varied times for legal services, frequent payments began in March 2024 and the partnership has taken in $214,577.67 since then. Firm partner Ed Diasio, who once held a North Penn School Board seat as a Republican, officially took over the solicitorship the prior November, replacing David Conn. 

Conn stirred perhaps the greatest public contention of the three solicitors the newly Democratic board hired over the last two years. Disapproving CBSD residents faulted him for aiding the 2023 Democratic candidates in an election-law matter and soon afterward taking the solicitorship in a fashion they alleged violated Pennsylvania’s open-meetings law, or “Sunshine Act.” Delays in providing residents information on his appointment which was made — based on Conn’s own advice — in expedited fashion resulted in the district incurring a $1,500 sanction and a $75,000 adverse settlement.

“David Conn, as an attorney, is completely inept,” said CBSD father Jay Callaghan. “He had no business being in this arena.”

Fellow active district parent Shannon Harris lamented what she deemed Conn’s inappropriately partisan campaign activity prior to becoming solicitor. She furthermore lamented the sway that powerful local figures could have over the district with Amuso as solicitor. 

“Heather Reynolds is clearly being hypocritical in that the board violated the Sunshine Act, hired a solicitor [Conn] who represented her previous to her taking office, and then spent over $100,000 of taxpayer school district funds to fight her own actions,” Harris said. “And now the hiring of Clarke, who is connected to Steve Santarsiero, is very concerning because of how much influence they could potentially have over school district policy.”

Before and after Conn’s short-lived solicitorship, the district has constantly used his firm Sweet Stevens Katz Williams, largely to handle cases involving special-needs students. The partnership easily received more payments from the district than any law firm in at least the last four years. In just the first three days of October, Sweet Stevens got over $14,000 from CBSD. 

Per her 2023 promise, Reynolds and her fellow Democrats did cease hiring public relations firms. (The earlier majority-GOP board paid a six figure total to Philadelphia-based Divine+Partners.) But realistically, there was no way Reynolds and her colleagues could have kept payments to politically connected attorneys under the hundreds-of-thousands level she considered so excessive two years ago: CBSD is the third-largest school district in Pennsylvania and government solicitors who have unimpressive political relationships are virtually nonexistent. 

Yet selecting Clarke’s firm certainly did nothing to dilute the political notoriety of the district’s legal counsel. And Clarke Gallagher received much more money from the district in part of 2025 than Langhorne-based Begley, Carlin & Mandio, the firm retained before Democrats took the board, did in 2023. Begley Carlin was paid $135,259.90 that year.

School Board candidate Betty Santoro reproved the current board for what she considers poor leadership in light of recent abuse allegations at Jamison Elementary School, something she said exacerbates the legal expenses CBSD pays to Amuso’s firm. (The allegations led to the dismissal of several district personnel including former Superintendent Steven Yanni.) Santoro is running on a slate with Roman Szewczuk, Andrew Miller, and Sharon Beck. Democrats running include incumbent Daniel Kimicata as well as Katrina Filiatrault, David Comalli, and Amanda O’Connor.

“If this abuse case would have been handled correctly when it first came to light, from the beginning, they wouldn’t have to incur all of these legal fees,” Santoro said. “The hypocrisy is that Heather ran on that in ’23, to say that we are going to make sure that we are fiscally responsible and that our funds are used directly in classrooms, yet they have to spend out a huge amount for these attorney fees.”  

Neither Reynolds, Clarke Gallagher, nor the current Democratic candidates for Central Bucks school director responded to requests for comment.

Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence.