Consultant for Bond Measure Cancels Deal : Campaign: An adviser quits amid questions about the Lancaster district spending public money to urge passage of a funding measure.

A political consultant who had an $80,000 contract with the Lancaster School District to organize a campaign for a school bond measure has decided to cancel the deal amid questions about its legality, school officials said Thursday.

School officials said they also intend to ask the private citizens group supporting the $47-million bond measure to reimburse the district for more than $1,500 in campaign-related travel expenses that the school board last month had decided to pay out of public funds.

Both developments emerged Thursday, a day after The Times detailed how the district had used public funds and resources in recent weeks to help organize the political campaign. State law and court cases say that public funds generally should not be used to take sides in elections.

School board President Frank Astourian said the political consultant, Kent Price, gave notice of his decision to withdraw Thursday afternoon. Price could not be reached for comment, but Astourian said the consultant wanted to “avoid any appearance of taint” that might harm the bond measure.

In December the school district placed on the April 10 ballot the measure to raise property taxes within the 10,700-student district to pay for new school construction and to acquire school sites. The measure, known as Measure A, needs a two-thirds vote to pass, and thus far it has no organized opposition.

Two weeks later, the Lancaster school board awarded San Ramon-based Price Research Consultants an $80,000 contract. School district officials have acknowledged part of Price’s task was to provide the district and its citizen supporters with advice on how to run the campaign.

Astourian and other school district officials said Thursday they still believe the contract was legal. But they also for the first time publicly acknowledged that, as Astourian put it, “there may have been some crossover into the gray area” of the law.

Apart from the Price contract, the district spent $1,518.50 so that Interim Supt. Ed Goodwin, Assistant Supt. Rowland King and three parents tapped to lead the citizens campaign could meet with Price in Northern California. Goodwin and King acknowledged campaign strategy was discussed at the session.

Goodwin also organized a Jan. 24 meeting at district headquarters during which administrators, teachers and parents were solicited as campaign volunteers. At least some school officials attended the afternoon meeting while on district-paid time.

Because of the terms of the contract, Price’s decision to drop out now means he will not get any of the $80,000 he was to be paid by the district if the ballot measure were to pass. Astourian said he still expects Price to continue managing the campaign under contract to the measure’s private campaign committee, Citizens for Classrooms.

Earlier in the day, Astourian had said he favored keeping Price under contract to the district. “I know what we’re doing is a little on the border of being open to interpretation, but I don’t know if it would be in our best interest to drop the contract and just wing it ourselves,” he said.