Now that a general appropriation bill has been passed by the House and Senate, the General Assembly and the Governor are turning their attention to finding the revenue to pay for it. And they are running into difficulties both reaching agreement on tax revenues that are real, recurring, and fair. But the PBPC-Senator Haywood proposal to slightly raise taxes on income from wealth meets all three criteria. Continue reading
From the Third and State blog. As the June 30th deadline looms, we have little more than rumors about what kind of Pennsylvania budget might be enacted by the General Assembly for 2016-17. But while some may find optimism in talk of getting the budget done, the rumors we are hearing about the details of the budget in the works are extremely worrisome. We know that everyone on both sides of the aisle wants a budget done more or less on time. All members of the House and half the members of the Senate face re-election in November, and none of them want a long, drawn-out budget and delays in funding schools and human services. Yet to reach agreement on a budget legislators have to find their way between their determination to get one done and the structural deficit that requires either some new revenues or difficult budget cuts. More… Continue reading
Originally appeared on the Third and State Blog, May 24, 2016 I’ve been doing political advocacy for over ten years and have been a teacher and writer about politics for a lot longer. I don’t surprise easily. But what I saw today at the press conference at which Senator Scott Wagner and the “Taxpayer’s Caucus” presented their three billion dollars in proposed budget cuts, left me almost speechless. I walked into the room to see a list of cuts, and near the top was a $922 million cut to the Department of Human Services (DHS). I know how devastating real budget cuts of that magnitude would be to senior citizens who get long-term care through Medical Assistance, the working poor who get health care through the same program (which is called Medicaid everywhere else), and people who are intellectually disabled and mentally ill. So I was prepared for the worst.… Continue reading
Originally appeared on the Third and State blog, May 24, 2016 After ribbing Senator Wagner and his fellow members of the taxpayer caucus for not understanding the basics of budgeting, I want to acknowledge that they did come up with a really good idea today. It appears that the Pennsylvania State Police take two sheets of paper to print tickets. Some intrepid investigator discovered that they could get the whole thing on one sheet of paper if they printed in landscape rather than portrait mode. At 8 cents per sheet of paper for the 542,000 tickets they print, that’s a savings of $43,384. We at PBPC are always interested in making government cost efficient and we acknowledge that this is a great idea. We hope it won’t be delayed while we study whether it’s better to print landscape mode or just use two-sided printing. Now, at this rate of savings,… Continue reading
Originally appeared on the Third and State blog, on May 11, 2016. Something new and unusual happened in Harrisburg today. Senators Art Haywood, Vincent Hughes and Jay Costa put forward an idea that actually could help resolve the pressing fiscal cliff we face this year, and at the same time could make our tax system more progressive. Despite partisan differences, three goals are more or less shared by everyone in Harrisburg. While their top priority may differ, for the most part, legislators all say they want: 1. to close the $1.8 billion structural deficit; 2. to spend more on education; 3. and to put no additional tax burden on low- and middle-income taxpayers. Yet no one has presented a plan to accomplish this feat. In an election year, legislators will say that they are not willing to raise the income tax or sales tax – which could generate the necessary… Continue reading
Originally published at Third and State, April 4, 2016 It appears that some elements in the Republican Party of Pennsylvania have one and only one goal – to not raise taxes. It doesn’t matter if spending in our classrooms, and especially in the classrooms in our lowest income communities, have not recovered from the Corbett cuts of 2011-12; they won’t raise taxes. It doesn’t matter if waiting lists for mental health and intellectual disability services grow; they won’t raise taxes. It doesn’t matter if tuition keeps rising for our colleges and universities. It doesn’t matter if the budget is “balanced” with smoke and mirrors; they won’t raise taxes. It doesn’t matter if the ratings agencies can see through the smoke and mirrors and plan to downgrade our credit again; they won’t raise taxes. And now that all the special funds have been raided, all the bills have been put off… Continue reading
Originally published at Third and State March 31 So what difference does a budget actually make? Why should we care that we wound up with the Republican budget for this year (HB 1801), rather than the bi-partisan budget agreed to in December 2015 (SB 1073), let alone the budget Governor Wolf proposed in March 2015? The difference for the education of our kids is found in this first figure above. The $846 million cut from classrooms in 2011-2012 has never fully been restored. And because more funding was cut and less funding restored in the districts that have a higher poverty than a lower poverty rate, state spending per student in those districts remains substantially behind what it was in 2010-11. We call the difference between what was spent per student in 2010-11 and what is spent today the “funding gap.” The bi-partisan budget – the one agreed to by Governor… Continue reading
Governor Wolf decided yesterday to allow the latest Republican budget to become law. We were hoping he would veto it. But we understand why, given the intransigence of the extremists in the PA General Assembly, he decided to bring this round to a close, keep schools open this year, and continue the fight for fair and equitable funding for education and human services to enact next year’s budget. We will join him in that and subsequent rounds. But as this one closes, we should be honest about what we lost and congratulate those who won. So, if you believe that natural gas drillers should not pay another cent to the government, even if that means we never restore the Corbett cuts to education funding and human services, congratulations — you won yesterday. If you don’t care that schools in rich districts in Pennsylvania spend 33% more per child than schools… Continue reading
Republicans claims that government has been getting larger and larger in Pennsylvania and that Democrats want it to grow bigger still. They are wrong on both counts. Government in Pennsylvania is smaller than it has been in decades. And Democrats only seek to restore it to the size it averaged over the last 20 years. Continue reading
