The writers of the article "U.S. Sugar waged secret ballot fight" (April 9) imply that the Palm Beach County League of Cities may be involved in local municipal elections and candidates' races. Nothing could be further from the truth. The league is an apolitical, not-for-profit organization that equally serves elected officials from all parties. Our mission is about better government, best practices and optimized intergovernmental relations at all levels. We advocate only for our municipalities and their issues.

Before November's general election, the league, at its board's direction, helped form a political action committee named Citizens Protecting Rights to advocate or oppose specific issues deemed key to municipal interests. The issues are those approved by our board of directors and general municipal membership. As per law, the committee is run separately and remotely from the League of Cities operations and offices in the Palm Beach County Governmental Center.

Groups such as sugar growers, developers and the business community may share interest in many growth management-regulated issues with municipalities. Contributing to our PAC accordingly is not a correlation that the municipalities and/or the League of Cities are involved in any way with "election tampering."

The county commission often makes decisions on issues that are in direct competition with the entities they regulate. The league had no choice but to form a committee to try to counter the misinformation being promoted by the county at taxpayers' $175,000 expense. The county outspent our efforts by almost 3-to-1 for the November election.

Furthermore, Commissioner Karen Marcus' comments, "I'm surprised, especially from a government perspective," and "Cities are not supposed to have anything to hide," appear to be continuing propaganda — that the county is watching out for the people while the cities run amok. A contribution to our PAC from a committee named "Americans for Jobs" in no way makes us guilty of collusion, nor does it involve us in that organization's operations or mission. You bet the League is interested in overturning the outcome of the "Exclusive Method for Voluntary Annexation" referendum passed by only about a 10-point margin in November. The vote was against passage in most of the precincts of the area targeted for protection. It is bad legislation that hoodwinked the public.

The referendum will be enacted by ordinance, rather than included in the charter as the state statute intended, which allows a majority of the county commission to change the ordinance at any time without returning for a vote of the people affected. Let's hope that House Bill 1669, which was drafted to prevent moves like Palm Beach County's, is passed this session. It would require specific annexation procedures to be included in county charters.

JAMES TITCOMB, executive director
Palm Beach County League of Cities
West Palm Beach