Category: My Work

No comments

New Report: How To Raise Revenues While Sparing Most Pennsylvanians

  By John Neurohr, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Presentation, Taxation

In the wake of Budget Secretary Randy Albright’s mid-year budget briefing and the news that the Pennsylvania budget for 2016-17 will have a deficit of $600 million, the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center today released a new, comprehensive revenue proposal to address the looming deficit for FY 2017-18, which when combined with the deficit for this fiscal year, could approach $3 billion. The new report,  How to Raise Revenues While Sparing Most Pennsylvanians,” can be read in full here. While the current year deficit is a problem for the state, unfortunately it is not the biggest budget problem we face. The Independent Fiscal Office is projecting a 2017-18 deficit of $1.7 billion, which does not include the ongoing costs of higher human service caseloads which might add $300 million or more to the total. One barrier to raising revenues is the reluctance of legislators on both sides of the aisle to… Continue reading

No comments

The Fair Share Tax to Support Public Investment in Pennsylvania

  By Fair Share Tax, PA Budget and Policy Center, Policy reports, Taxation

This paper puts forward a plan, which we call the Fair Share Tax, that would take a major step toward fixing Pennsylvania’s broken tax system and raise the revenues we need to invest in the public goods that are critical to creating thriving communities and individual opportunity in our state: education, infrastructure, protection for our air and water, and human services. Click here to print or read full screen. Continue reading

No comments

Combine spending restraint with new revenue

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, Pennsylvania Budget, Pennsylvania State Taxes, Published Op-Eds, Taxation

This piece originally appeared in the Erie Times-News, December 28, 2016. Pennsylvania has been struggling with persistent budget deficits since the start of the Great Recession in 2008. And we at the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center have been recommending a “balanced approach” to resolving the deficit from the beginning, one that combines restraint in spending with new revenues. But since 2010, under Govs. Tom Corbett and Tom Wolf, the General Assembly has adopted an unbalanced approach. Spending has gone down but revenues have gone down faster. From 1994 to 2011, under both Democratic and Republican governors, the state spent 4.7 percent of the state’s gross domestic product. During the Corbett years that fell to 4.3 percent as spending on education and human services were sharply cut. And while, thanks to Wolf, the state has been able to restore some of those cuts, spending in the last two years remains… Continue reading

No comments

Limitations on the State and Local Tax Deduction Hurt Pennsylvania in Two Ways

  By Federal Taxes, PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts, Resisting Trump, Taxation, US

A major issue in the debate over the Republican tax cut bill is whether the deduction for state and local taxes (the SALT deduction) should be eliminated or reduced. The conference committee bill released on Friday proposes a “compromise” that would allow individuals to deduct up to $10,000 in some combination of state and local property and income or sales taxes. That compromise is deeply problematic for Pennsylvania and many Pennsylvanians, in two different ways. First, substantial numbers of upper middle-class Pennsylvanians will see their taxes go up as a result of the limitation on state and local tax deductions in the conference committee bill. These taxpayers are likely to be concentrated in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where a high percentage of taxpayers take the state and local deduction. Second, the state as a whole will suffer because the limitation on the state and local tax deduction will make it… Continue reading

No comments

On The Mid-Year Budget Briefing: The Full Picture Is Even More Grim

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

Budget Secretary Randy Albright’s mid-year budget briefing this week brings worrisome news that, at its current level of expenditure and revenues, the Pennsylvania budget for the 2016-17 will have a deficit of $600 million. Part of that deficit is the result of lower tax revenues than were projected when the budget was enacted in July. Another part is higher human service caseloads, which will require a supplemental appropriation.   The projected deficit might increase again if the General Assembly does not enact legislation to bring in $100 million in internet gaming revenues and if a second Philadelphia casino license is not sold for $50 million. While the current year deficit is a problem for the state, unfortunately it is not the biggest budget problem we face. The Independent Fiscal Office is projecting a 2017-18 deficit of $1.7 billion, which does not include the ongoing costs of higher human service caseloads… Continue reading

No comments

Statement On The Inaction by State Senate to Fund Unemployment Compensation Call Center

  By Statements, Unemployment Insurance

Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center Director Marc Stier made the following statement after the state Senate failed to vote for additional funding for the Department of Labor and Industry’s unemployment compensation call centers during its only scheduled post-election session day: “If you have received unemployment insurance or know anyone who has, you know how important it is for people to receive help in navigating a complicated system, particularly at a difficult time in their lives. Too often, the phone lines to the call centers where help can be found are busy. And that often means that recently-unemployed people cannot secure the help they need in claiming the benefits to which they are entitled, and which have been paid for in part by their own taxes. “This has long been a serious problem in Pennsylvania. Recent additions to funding from the federal and state governments have helped reduce it. But yesterday,… Continue reading

No comments

IFO Report: Deficits Now and In The Future

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

Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center Director Marc Stier made the following statement following the Independent Fiscal Office release of their Five Year Economic and Budget Outlook: “The herculean efforts of the Governor and General Assembly to overcome their divisions and reach a budget agreement last year may have enabled legislators to leave town in July. But it left the state with a deficit of at least $524 million for the current year, a projected deficit of at least $1.7 billion for the year beginning July 2017, and budget deficits that grow year after year beyond that. “If the state continues to generate revenue under current laws and maintains the current level of services, the projected deficit reaches $3 billion in 2021-22 and continues to grow by $175 million per year thereafter.  “That conclusion, which is contained in the new Five year Economic and Budget Outlook released today by the Independent… Continue reading

No comments

On HB 1885, the Sanctuary Bill

  By Immigration, Memos, PA Budget and Policy Center

Legislation rushed to the finish line in an election year is notorious for being both badly crafted and motivated by less than pristine motives. And that certainly goes for HB 1885, the anti-sanctuary city bill passed by the House recently and currently under consideration in the Senate this week. There is a lot wrong with the bill, starting with the intention of its sponsors to appeal to the anti-immigrant voters whose ire has been inflamed by Donald Trump and continuing on to its likely consequence of leading to racial profiling that undermines police-community relationships, and thus effective policing, in (documented and undocumented) immigrant communities. But here I want to focus on the potential economic costs of the bill to the counties and cities of Pennsylvania—costs that have been barely considered in the fast-track legislative debate on it. The House Fiscal Note on the bill does not even try to identify,… Continue reading

No comments

Against HB 530–Once More with Feeling

  By PA Budget and Policy Center, PBPC Blog posts

HB 530, a revision of the laws that govern charter schools, has reared its ugly head again. We continue to oppose it. School districts in Pennsylvania contain a mix of traditional public schools and charter schools. Some local school districts want to add charters schools. Many do not. All of them should be empowered to evaluate the best way to educate students in their respective districts. Unfortunately, provisions in HB530 will remove much of the supervisory and decision-making authority from local school districts in every corner of the state. Since charter schools receive funding from local school districts, the creation of new seats in charter schools without school board supervision and control diminishes the ability of school districts to establish and manage their budgets. That could result in the underfunding of traditional schools or significant local tax increases. That is why we oppose this legislation, which that permits charter schools… Continue reading

No comments

Rep. Brad Roae Compares School Board Members to Hitler

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

Marc Stier | 10/19/2016 Blog This week, in a Facebook discussion with a person who seems to be one of his constituents, Representative Brad Roae (R-Crawford/Erie) felt it was appropriate to compare school board members in Pennsylvania blaming charter schools for the financial difficulties of their districts to Adolf Hitler blaming Jews for “everything that was wrong with the world.” I’m not sure whether I should be more offended as a Jew or as a policy analyst by Representative Roae’s remark.     It is, of course, morally offensive to anyone who grasps the evil of Hitler’s murder of 6 million Jews, to compare it to any other crime. A general rule of thumb about Hitler comparisons is to not make Hitler comparisons. But to compare it to a public policy choice like the opposition of school boards to charter schools would be doubly offensive if it were not so… Continue reading