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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

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The Dougherty-Henon Verdict is a Miscarriage of Justice and Why it Matters

  By Labor, Philadelphia

John Dougherty and Bobby Henon were convicted of bribery and other charges today. Having read the original indictment and followed the trial closely, I continue to think that indictment and trial, as well as the conviction, was a terrible miscarriage of justice. Aside from the last couple of paragraphs, I wrote the following about six week ago before the trial started. I have seen no reason to change my argument or conclusion. …This trial of John Dougherty and Bobby Henon strikes me as an attempt to criminalize everyday politics. Did John Dougherty want Bobby Henon to be on City Council so that he would have a friend who would support Local 98’s causes. Yes. But that’s not illegal. Everyone who supports a candidate or makes a contribution to him or her wants that. Did John Dougherty need to have Bobby Henon on his payroll for Henon to support Local 98’s… Continue reading

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Economic, Racial, and Ethnic Inequality in Pennsylvania School Funding

  By K-12 Education in PA, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports

  It is well known that Pennsylvania’s K-12 schools are inadequately and inequitably funded. But the extent of the problem is not fully understood. This paper uses new data and methods to demonstrate just how unfair—and morally unsustainable—the funding of elementary and secondary education is in the Commonwealth. Click here to print or read the report full-screen.   Continue reading

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Speaker Cutler’s Attack on the Principles of the Founding Fathers

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports

The State Government Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives plans to take up two proposed constitutional amendments proposed by Speaker Cutler that are a direct and serious attack on the Pennsylvania Constitution and the entire framework of government designed by the founders of our country. Indeed, it is hard to think of any constitutional proposal that so directly and radically breaks with the wisdom of those who created the Constitution of the United States and whose work inspired the constitutions of our fifty states. While the constitution of every state is somewhat unique, every one of them enshrines the principle of the separation of power and the checks and balances in the institutions of government they create. Speaker Cutler’s amendments directly attack those principles. The separation of powers doctrine requires that each branch of government—in PA the governor, the General Assembly, and the courts—be delegated one of the three… Continue reading

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In Pennsylvania Schools, The Kids Who Need the Most Get the Least

  By K-12 Education in PA, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

On Friday, a trial will begin in Commonwealth Court to determine whether Pennsylvania is meeting its constitutional responsibility to give every student an adequate and equitable education.   By the standards the state of Pennsylvania sets for itself, it does not. Only 16% of school districts provide an adequate level of funding. And our analysis of the distribution of school funding relative to the share of students who are living in poverty or who are Black or Hispanic reveals inequities that are striking, immoral, and unconstitutional.  The benchmark we use to identify the level of funding in each district necessary to provide an adequate education is the 2007 costing-out study, as updated in 2020 by Penn State education professor Matthew Kelley. As required by Act 114, the costing-out study aimed to “arrive at a determination of the basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the state’s academic standards.”  Three times in the last ten years, a substantial bipartisan majority… Continue reading

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On the PA School Funding Lawsuit: Don’t Change the Subject

  By Health Care For America Now, K-12 Education in PA, Published Op-Eds

Originally published in the PA Capital-Star, August 11, 2021 In September, a group of students and school districts will make a case in state court that Pennsylvania is not meeting its constitutional responsibility to give every student an adequate and equitable education. The conservative Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg think-tank, has called the funding lawsuit misguided. But its analysis doesn’t address the critical question of the gap between what schools spend and what they should spend according to adequacy standards written into state law. Instead, it changes the subject and presents data about other questions, tangentially related to the fundamental question at hand. The lawsuit is not about how much money is spent per student in Pennsylvania on average because a high level of spending could, and does, hide vast disparities between school districts. Those disparities arise because the bulk of school funding comes from local sources. Wealthy districts raise far… Continue reading

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What the Infrastructure Bill Does for Pennsylvania

  By Infrastructure, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Pennsylvania

Under the formulas contained in the bill, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will bring $17.8 billion in new spending to Pennsylvania or over $1,400 for each resident of the state. (The state will be able to apply for additional funds as well that could bring the total of spending in Pennsylvania up to $50 billion.) Funds will be allocated roughly as follows: Roads and bridges. Based on the formula alone, Pennsylvania will receive $11.3 billion for federal-aid apportioned highway programs and $1.6 billion for bridge replacement and repairs. Pennsylvania can also compete for funds under the $12.5-billion Bridge Investment Program for economically significant bridges as well as for the $16 billion dedicated for major projects that will deliver substantial economic benefits to communities. These funds are critical. Our state has 3,353 bridges and more than 7,540 miles of highway in poor condition. Since 2011, commute times have increased by… Continue reading

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The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: A Major Step Forward

  By Environment, Federal Budget, Infrastructure, Statements

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: A Major Step Forward Statement from PA Budget and Policy Center, Keystone Research Center, and 99% PA Campaign In passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act last night, the House of Representatives advanced the first of two parts of President Biden’s investment agenda. The over $1 billion infrastructure bill will generate the largest expenditure on the physical infrastructure of our country in decades. It will make huge new investments in roads and bridges, railroads and public transit, clean drinking water, high-speed internet, and repairing the damage to land and water from extractive industries. These and other investments will reduce costs for businesses and consumers, make our economy more competitive, and together with the second part of the Build Back Better plan, create an average of 1.5 million good new jobs per year, many of which will be unionized. It takes time to enact major… Continue reading

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What to Expect When You’re Expecting New Districts

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports, Redistricting

Sometime in the next ninety days—and perhaps much sooner—we expect to see the Legislative Redistricting Commission (LRC) release its first draft of a plan for the redistricting of Pennsylvania’s state House and Senate districts. This policy brief aims to give Pennsylvania’s citizens, community leaders, media, and advocates some idea of what to expect from the forthcoming LRC plan. To state our conclusion as succinctly as possible: we expect the LRC to give us fair, nonpartisan legislative districts for the first time in at least two decades. Chairman Mark Nordenberg is leading the effort to undo the effects of twenty years of Republican gerrymandering and create districts that recognize demographic changes over the last decade. As a result, fairly drawn districts lines will look very different than current ones. Click here to print or read full-screen.  Continue reading

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The “Billionaire Tax”: What It Is and Why We Need It

  By Billionaire tax, Federal Taxes, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Taxation, Uncategorized, US

UPDATE: Senator Ron Wyden has released his “Billionaires Income Tax” legislation—read the language of the bill here:  https://www.finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Billionaires%20Income%20Tax.pdf. As negotiations between President Biden and House and Senate members over the Build Back Better plan have developed in the last few weeks, a new tax proposal to fund the close to $2 billion investment in health care, child care, paid family leave, climate change, and other programs, has come to the fore: a “billionaire tax.” While Senator Wyden and others have been discussing this proposal for some time, it is a relatively unknown concept and would be a new form of federal taxation. Here we briefly explain what it is and why it is an excellent idea. The new proposal is to tax the increased wealth of the richest Americans each year. The tax would apply immediately to tradeable assets—stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and derivatives—where the value of the asset is… Continue reading