It appears Wannabe POTUS Rick Santorum's visit to New Hampshire last week to help perennial candidate Andy Sanborn was an appropriate choice of local venue:Andy and Laurie Sanborn are running from Henniker as GOP candidates for state Senate and state representative. But according to a court file, the Sanborns were renting out their Henniker home - the only property they own in the town - until recently. It all sounds so familiar:In November 2004, a controversy developed over education costs for Santorum's children. Santorum's legal address is a three-bedroom house in Penn Hills, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, which he purchased for $87,800 in 1997 and is located next to the home of his wife's parents. But since 2001, he has spent most of the year in Leesburg, Virginia, a town about one hour's drive west of Washington, D.C., and about 90 minutes' drive south of the Pennsylvania border, in a house he purchased for $643,000. The Penn Hills Progress, a local paper, reported that Santorum and his wife paid about $2,000 per year in property taxes on their Pennsylvania home ($487.20 per year to Allegheny County, 2006 through 2008, based on a 2007 value of $106,000,[50] plus Penn Hills School District tax). The paper also found that another couple - possibly renters - were registered voters at the same address.[51]
At the time the issue arose, Santorum's five older children attended the Western Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School,[52] with 80 percent of tuition costs paid by the Penn Hills School District.[53] At a meeting in November 2004, the Penn Hills School District announced that it did not believe Santorum met the qualifications for residency status, because he and his family spent most of the year in Virginia. They demanded repayment of tuition costs totaling $67,000. |
