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Statement: The Democratic Education Funding Plan

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

By Marc Stier and Eugene Henninger-Voss Senator Vince Hughes, Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Lindsey Williams, Democratic chair of the Senate Ed Committee; Sen. Tim Kearney, member of the Senate Education Committee, and Democratic vice-chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Rep. Matt Bradford. Democratic chair of the House Appropriations Committee and Rep. Michael Schlossberg, House Democratic Caucus Administrator today put forward a bold proposal for new funding for Pennsylvania’s 500 school districts. Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center strongly supports this proposal. It goes far towards eliminating the inequitable, inadequate funding that keeps 89% of the school districts in the state from meeting their responsibilities to our children. For years, we have pointed to Pennsylvania’s failure to provide adequate and equitably distributed funding to our school districts. The pandemic has made that failure even more evident. And the federal provision of ARP funds, as well as budget surpluses… Continue reading

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The Outrageous Decision on Vote by Mail

  By Elections, Elections and Voting, Voting

The party-line Commonwealth Court decision declaring mail-in ballots unconstitutional is immediately outrageous and portends a deepening crisis in our democracy. The PA Supreme Court must—and we believe will—move quickly to overturn it. The decision is outrageous for two reasons. As Judge Wojcik’s dissenting opinion clearly demonstrates, it is based on a one-sided analysis of the Pennsylvania Constitution and case law.  The majority opinion contains a close and highly textured reading of the Constitution and case law that leaves out of consideration a critical amendment to Article VII section 6 of the Constitution. Taking that amendment into account undermines the reasoning of the majority opinion. Second, the majority opinion outrageously disregards the non-severability clause in Act 77 that would require it to declare the entire Act unconstitutional if any part of it is so declared.  Act 77 was a compromise in which Republicans accepted vote by mail in return for Democrats… Continue reading

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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 Trump Movement

  By 2016 Presidential race, Fascism, Philosophy, Politics

Many people were shocked as well as disturbed by the 2016 election results. Having written a few chapters of a book that explored the origins of support for far right political movements in the liberal societies I was disturbed, but not shocked. This essay draws on ideas I developed for a book I am completing—Civilization and Its Contents: Reflections on Eros and the Culture War. It seeks to explain not just the 2016 election but why fascism, or neo-fascism, is a permanent temptation in liberal democracies. To read full screen or print click here. 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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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