PORTSMOUTH — Portsmouth Concerned Citizens, a lightening rod for controversy in town, has touched a nerve on the School Committee, whose vice chairman has accused the organization of putting out “inaccurate and misleading” information on a number of counts.

The PCC has accused the Town Council and the School Committee exceeded their authority in amending last year’s budget.

“As I say to individuals when they make unsubstantiated statements — show me the proof,” said E. Richard Carpender in prepared remarks at the committee’s meeting on Tuesday.

“Don’t just throw things at the wall to see what sticks,” Carpender said.

“If you have no proof, then you are guilty of disseminating inaccurate and misleading data and an apology is due,” he said.

But Carpender went further than the budget issue, saying that the PCC has “gone beyond” the generally perceived role of the organization as a “watchdog group for taxpayers” and has become a “special interest group” with a political agenda.

Yesterday, PCC President Larry Fitzmorris said, “I don’t recall us ever claiming to represent all the taxpayers of the town.”

The spark for the latest round of barbs is the PCC assertion that the total budget for the last fiscal year ran a total of $634,749 over the amounts authorized by voters at a special Financial Town Meeting in August 2006.

There were “excesses” of $384,077 in municipal expenditures and $250,672 in school spending, Fitzmorris said in a letter to the Town Council this month.

The Town Council first agreed to ask its independent auditor for an investigation.

But the auditor declined to take on the work, agreeing with the opinion of Town Solicitor Kevin Gavin that the council acted properly in amending the 2006-07 budget.

Rather than cut a total of $637,000 from the expenditure side of the budget in the weeks after the town meeting, the council transferred $200,000 from the general fund and to operating revenue and added $55,000 to estimated income from the real estate conveyance tax.

On Monday, the council agreed to ask the state’s auditor general to look into the PCC’s charges.

“If the auditor general is going to take a look at the whole issue, that’s what we asked for,” Fitzmorris said.

But Town Finance Director David P. Faucher gave the council no guarantees that the auditor general would accept the job.

Both the auditor general and the state’s office of municipal affairs rely on municipal solicitors to rule on the legalities of actions taken by town or city councils, Faucher said, suggesting that the issue would come full circle back to Gavin.

Gavin’s opinion has already received a pass from the office of municipal affairs, Faucher has told the council.

Both Carpender and Faucher have made point-by-point rebuttals to any allegation that the council or the School Committee acted improperly.

Faucher has provided the council with a chronology of budget amendments to the 2006-07 budget, concluding that “there is no discrepancy or dispute concerning the budget figures.”

Carpender’s prepared remarks on Tuesday quoted in detail from a decision by Superior Court Judge Gilbert V. Indeglia last March which justified the PCC’s charge of an “excess” $250,672 in school spending.

Yesterday, the PCC’s Fitzmorris said the dispute is not about the numbers but whether the council had the authority to exceed the bottom line approved by voters at the special Financial Town Meeting.

The council routinely amends the budget on a quarterly basis to reflect changing realities, and the PCC has not complained in the past.

Fitzmorris said the organization was not aware until this past June that the council had used $200,000 from the general fund to balance the budget, even though the transfer was made in September 2006, about three weeks after the Financial Town Meeting.

That aside, he said that the PCC believes any unexpected non-tax income should be used not to boost the operating budget but to replenish the general fund, which is dangerously low at about $1.6 million, less than half what it should be.

In its most recent newsletter in August, the PCC lays claim to considerable political clout in town, listing among its achievement the election of three School Committee candidates and four of the seven Town Council members last November.

The PCC endorsed Town Council President Dennis M. Canario, and council members Karen Gleason, an independent, and Peter J. McIntyre and Huber E. “Huck” Little, both Republicans.

On the School Committee, the PCC said it supported the election of three members, Douglas Wilkey, Michael Buddemeyer, and Jamie Heaney, all Republicans.

Carpender said he had no “problem” with the PCC’s endorsement of candidates, but he did object to the organization’s refusal to discuss how much money it spent, especially when “they put out misleading information in their newsletter that is read by more than just their membership.”

Carpender, in an allusion to Council President Canario, said the PCC newsletter ignored certain events when it gave “one of their endorsed candidates” credit for brokering a deal that kept the Prudence Island School open another year and getting the School Committee to pay for part of its capital program in the current budget year.

Historically, the town has borne the entire cost of capital spending for the schools.

Carpender said that at one point, the School Committee offered to pay for part of the capital program and was rejected by the council.

In the end, he said, the continued operation of the Prudence Island School resulted from a windfall in revenue.

“I believe it is time for the PCC to stop claiming to represent the taxpayers of Portsmouth when in reality they represent their own membership and not all the taxpayers,” Carpender said in his prepared remarks on Tuesday.

Fitzmorris said yesterday that “we know there are at least 40 percent of the town’s taxpayers who disagree with us,” he said.

“If you look at the tent meeting,” he said, referring to the special Financial Town Meeting, “there were a lot of people who disagreed with us.”

The PCC prevailed in cutting $1.1 million from the school budget by a margin of fewer than 100 votes.

Another $637,000 was subsequently removed from municipal expenditures, after all opponents to the reductions had left the meeting in a failed attempt to deny the PCC a quorum.

gmacris@projo.com