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Fair Districts 2; Gerrymandering 0

  By Legislative Districts, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy briefs

The Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission released new district maps for the Pennsylvania House and Senate today. As we predicted, the maps look very different from the current ones because they aim to adjust for dramatic population changes over the last ten years and to remedy two decades of Republican gerrymandering. Because they do so, both maps are fairer and more representative of the people of Pennsylvania than the old ones. At this moment, we do not have detailed information about the Senate redistricting plan so we cannot comment on it in depth. We do have data on the House redistricting plan, however. The three standard metrics of redistricting we used in our earlier piece show that the plan has a slight Republican tilt compared to the heavy Republican tilt of the maps in 2012 and 2002. Between the current map and the new one, the Republican advantage according to the… Continue reading

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Rep. Grove’s Congressional Maps Are Just More Gerrymandering

  By Congressional redistricting, Legislative Districts, PBPC Blog posts

Statement by Marc Stier on Representative Seth Grove’s proposed congressional district map.  The congressional district map proposed by Representative Seth Grove today is an obvious effort to gerrymander those districts to benefit the Republican Party. The maps would be likely to make it difficult or impossible for Democrats to hold two to four of the seats they occupy today. At a minimum, they would give the Republicans a majority of congressional seats in a state where Democrats are a substantial majority of voters. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy recently released a policy paper on state legislative districts that calls for fair districts that represent the people of the state. We deserve nothing less in our congressional districts. If the General Assembly passes legislation containing these lines, Governor Wolf must veto it. Continue reading

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Thinking about the West Side Story Debate

  By Art, Film, Uncategorized

The recent New York Times piece on the reaction of Latinx people in the arts to West Side Story has drawn some sadly uncharitable responses from people whose political instincts are typically progressive. So, even though my initial and concluding thoughts about the whole issue is to say that the arts are, thankfully unlike politics in that the best work does not come from agreement and compromise but a willingness to put forward distinctive, unique, challenging and often upsetting work, I do want to say a few words about why I think we should not be divided about the wrong things when it comes to West Side Story and other works of art that raise issues of gender, race, and class. It’s important to note to being with that there was no unanimity of opinion in the article let alone an effort by the voice of the New York Times… Continue reading

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Don’t Fear–Run for office in 2022

  By Uncategorized

My biggest fear about the 2022 election is not that conditions will be that political and economic conditions will be difficult for Democrats–for reasons I have explained a few times I don’t think that will be the case–but that good candidates are not getting ready to run in state legislative races and political contributors are not getting ready to fund them beause that wrongly fear that it will be a bad year, (And it doesn’t help that we don’t know what the district lines will be now and won’t for about another two weeks.) Political scientists have shown that this dynamic explains part of the problem with mid-term elections for the party that holds the presidency. In other words, the failure of parties in those elections is a self-fulflilling prophecy. Don’t let that happen. If you are thinking of running for the General Assembly in 2022, do it. If you… Continue reading

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The Ten Worst PA Legislative Initiatives of 2021

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania, Public Policy, Talking points

The year coming to an end will go down as among the worst in the long history of the Pennsylvania General Assembly. At a time when so many Pennsylvanians are struggling to keep body and soul together against the continuing threat of COVID-19 and the economic difficulties created by the pandemic, the Republican-dominated General Assembly has embarrassed itself and our state. It has done nothing to help Pennsylvanians with health and economic problems. It has passed legislation—vetoed by the governor—that would have led to more COVID-19 deaths. And instead of dealing with the real problems of the people of the state, it has spent most of the year advancing constitutional amendments and legislation that would undermine our representative democracy and carrying out unnecessary “investigations” in support of the Big Lie about the 2020 presidential election—the same one that elected every member of the House and half of the Senate. There… Continue reading

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Overturning Roe v Wade would be a game changer in state legislative races

  By Uncategorized

Originally posted on Facebook In all the punditry’s hand-wringing about the Democratic chances in the 2022 election, I rarely see any reference to the impact of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. After today, I think that outcome is likely. And I also think the impact on our elections–especially state legislative elections–will be profound.  All of us who do advocacy on state legislative elections know how hard it is to get people–and lately newspapers, too–to pay attention to them. We know how they don’t connect the party identification of incumbent legislators to control over the legislature and control over the legislature to policy decisions. And so Republicans incumbents in SEPA and elsewhere in the state, and their equivalents elsewhere, skate by as voters turned off by the increasingly Trumpified Republicans Party push the button for familiar names of incumbents.  If Roe is gone, voting for any Republican legislator in PA,… Continue reading

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Statement in Response to the Arbery Case Verdicts

  By Criminal Justice, PA Budget and Policy Center, Statements, White Supremacy and Structural Racism

Statement by Marc Stier on behalf of the Keystone Research Center and the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. “The verdicts in the Ahmaud Arbery case show that the criminal justice system in America can respond appropriately to the most extreme examples of racial injustice. Our task as Americans is to ensure that it does so in all cases.” Continue reading

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Pa. can build a clean electric vehicle future. Wolf, lawmakers must embrace it

  By Climate Change, Published Op-Eds

Originally published by  the Pennsylvania Capital-Star on November 18, 2021 To protect our economy and lives from devastating climate change, the future of transportation on our roads must be based on electric power. Twenty-nine percent of greenhouse gases nationwide are generated by transportation—the largest percentage of any sector of the economy. The federal government is thus strengthening its commitment to electric vehicle adoption, and multiple vehicle manufacturers have committed to full electrification, with auto manufacturers such as Volvo, Ford and GM investing tens of billions to scale up domestic EV production over the coming decade. These companies are reimagining their vehicle portfolios, releasing new electric models, and investing in electric vehicle manufacturing and the required supply chains in the United States, including right here in Pennsylvania. This transformation has to happen not just with the cars we drive but with what is known as medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHD), that is… Continue reading

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Build Back Better Will Cut Taxes For All But the Top 1% of Pennsylvanians

  By Federal Taxes, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

Thanks to our friends at the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy, we have new data on the impact of the tax changes in the Build Back Better plan that is under consideration in the House of Representatives as I write. The first table looks at the average change in taxes for families in seven income groups that would occur as a result of all the provisions of the bill as well as due to different parts of the bill—the corporate tax changes, the income tax increase for some individuals, the state and local tax (SALT) cap adjustment, and the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. As you can see, those in the bottom 20% of families, with an income under $22,400 and an average income of $12,900 will save an average of $1,070 a year. Every group above them receives a smaller average tax cut except the… Continue reading

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MEMO: PA House Bill 1800 Is Voter Suppression and Its Amendments Are Shameful

  By Elections and Voting, Memos, PA Budget and Policy Center

To: Members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly From: Marc Stier, Director, PA Budget and Policy Center Re: HB 1800 and proposed amendments  The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center opposes nearly all the provisions of HB 1800 and urges members of the House to vote against it. We evaluate the legislative proposals about elections with three criteria in mind: First, they should make voting easier and more accessible for the people of Pennsylvania. Second, while they should preserve the security of our elections, they should not include security features that are unnecessary or that make voting less accessible. And third, they should provide sufficient funds to the county governments that administer our elections. Sufficient funding for our elections would resolve most of the technical problems with elections in Pennsylvania today. By these standards, HB 1800 is not genuine election reform at all. We will consider the details of the bill below.… Continue reading