Category: My Work

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Another problem with judicial districts: The threat of judicial extremism

  By Judicial Gerrymandering, PA Budget and Policy Center, Published Op-Eds

Originally published by the PA Capital-Star on January 24, 2021 Those of us who have been fighting the judicial gerrymandering constitutional amendment have been focused less on the highly uncertain partisan implications of the proposal but on its implications for the balance of power among the three branches of government in our state. We are concerned that giving the General Assembly the power to draw judicial districts will enable it to exert undue influence the courts. And that power will be especially noticeable in the transition from our current system to a future one, during which legislators would be able to interfere with the retention elections of our sitting justices and potentially deny one of them the ability to run for reelection. The reason that almost all the states that elect justices of the highest court do so in statewide rather than district elections is to limit the influence of… Continue reading

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The Fair Share Tax Proposal is Uniform Under the PA Constitution

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

By Richard Feder, J.D. For a number of years, the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has been proposing a replacement for Pennsylvania’s Personal Income Tax, which we call the Fair Share Tax. This plan is one of a number of ideas that include corporate tax reform and a natural gas severance tax and are designed to reverse the horrible inequities in our tax system that result in families with low and middle incomes paying taxes to state and local governments at about twice the rate of families in the top 1% of incomes. One of the questions raised about the Fair Share Tax is whether it meets the uniformity clause of the Pennsylvania Constitution. PBPC asked a noted Philadelphia lawyer with expertise in tax matters to do a thorough review of case law and other taxes in the state to answer that question. This is his answer in the form… Continue reading

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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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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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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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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

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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