Meet the Candidate: Lisa Scheller

Lisa Scheller runs a multi-million dollar international company based in Tamaqua with 700 employees in branches as far away as Singapore.  She’s running for one of four at-large Lehigh County commissioner seats in the hope that she can use her business acumen to help the county avoid future tax increases.

Scheller of Allentown is one of four members of a Republican slate that has targeted Commissioner Chairman Dean Browning for defeat in the May 17th GOP Primary.  Joining her are Lynn Township Supervisor David Najarian, former Northampton County fiscal affairs chief Vic Mazziotti and Scott Ott, who narrowly lost to Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham in 2009. Scheller is the wife of Lehigh County Republican Party Chairman Wayne Woodman. 

“I was very dismayed and frustrated when the Republican chairman of the commissioners voted with the Democrats to allow the taxes to be increased 16 percent in what is probably the worst economy in my lifetime,” Scheller said. “I would have voted to send the budget back.”

Asked what she would have cut from the 2011 county spending plan to avoid the tax increase, she offered no specific reductions. “When you’re looking at what to cut you don’t go line by line and say ‘Cut this,’” Scheller said. Instead, she said, the commissioners should have instructed County Executive Don Cunningham and his staff to show them what a budget with a zero tax increase would look like.

In running her family-owned company, Silberline, a manufacturer of pigments found in certain paints, Scheller said if she had to reduce company expenses, “I would go to my managers and say, ‘you have to cut 5 percent or 8 percent’ and they would come back with their proposal. 

Of the county budget, she said: “I find it hard to believe that there’s no unnecessary spending and nothing can be cut.”

Browning responds that Scheller and the other members of her slate have consistently refused to give any specifics on what they would have cut but continue to attack him because he didn’t cave in to political pressure. He claims the move to send the budget back would have been a political gimmick to shift the blame for a tax increase to County Executive Don Cunningham.

In other issues, Scheller opposes the county joining with Northampton County to create a bi-county health department. “I think it’s an expansion of government and I do not see the benefit of it,” she said.

During a county commissioners meeting in February, Scheller questioned the cost of a proposed $3.9 million regional crime data center. In a recent interview, she said she hopes it’s successful but was surprised that the county had budgeted $500,000 for it this year when the budget is so tight. 

“That’s $500,000 that you have to look at saying ‘Do we have to spend this money now?’” she said.

This is Scheller’s first run for public office. She’s currently on the board of trustees at Cedar Crest College and the board of the Manufacturers Resource Center.

Scheller was born in Greenwich, Conn. and moved to Tamaqua in 1963, when her grandfather moved his company Silberline Manufacturing Co., Inc.  to Lansford. Silberline manufactures and supplies aluminum effect pigments, which are ingredients in paints for cars, plastics and other products.

 She attended mostly Tamaqua schools but graduated from Blair Academy in Blairstown, N.J.. Scheller earned her bachelor’s degree in math from the University of Colorado and a master’s in manufacturing systems engineering from Lehigh University. She and Woodman have six children, ranging in age from 10 to 24.

Return to Meet the GOP Candidates

Here are the candidate profiles:

Dean Browning

Norma Cusick

Vic Mazziotti

David C. Najarian

Brad Osborne

Scott Ott

Lisa Scheller

Mike Welsh