It’s been two years in the making, but Lower Merion School District can finally count the win.

More than two years after a Montgomery County judge first sided against the school district in a lawsuit over the school district’s tax hike,  the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court sided with Lower Merion on what could be described as a procedural issue and released its 19-page opinion siding with Lower Merion in the nearly three-year-old case dating back to early 2016 when three plaintiffs filed suit over the school district’s 2016-2017 budget and its 4.4 percent tax increase. Previous court decisions have gone in favor of the plaintiffs., writes Richard Ilgenfritz in The Times Herald.

Alfred W. Putnam, Jr., chairman emeritus of Drinker Biddle and Reath LLP and the person who argued the case on behalf of the Lower Merion before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, said in a statement, “We are pleased that the Supreme Court has unanimously resolved the procedural issue that has delayed the consideration of the merits of the School District’s appeal.”

For his part, plaintiff Arthur Wolk said in a statement that he plans on continuing the fight.

“Justice may be delayed for Lower Merion taxpayers who deserve so much better, but the cause endures and the hope remains that we have a School District that chooses transparency instead of deceit as its standard operating procedure,” he said.

In February of 2016, attorney and Lower Merion resident Arthur Wolk joined with two other residents to file a lawsuit over the 4.4 percent tax hike for the 2016-2017 school year budget. The budget had just been presented to the public at the time and would be approved by the Board of School Directors in June of 2016.

In August of 2016, Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Smyth sided with Wolk and ordered the school district to rescind the 4.4 percent tax hike and limit the increase to no more than 2.4 percent. In Smyth’s order, he called the 4.4 percent increase illegal.

Wolk’s basic argument was that the school district over the previous decade had amassed a bank account of over $50 million by enacting tax increases higher than it needed to fund each year’s programs. The money was coming from million dollar surpluses the district would have following each school year.

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