Pa. budget

‘If government is here to share the taxpayer’s wealth then everyone needs to share in the sacrifice’

- Tom Corbett, governor of Pennsylvania, March 8, from Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Too many of the sacrifices are weighted toward people on the lowest end of the economic scale or the middle class’

- Daylin Leach, state senator, March 8, from Inquirer

The tea party tsunami finally struck Pennsylvania. I live less than two miles from the state line, which means my closest choice to relocate is New Jersey, Chris Christie’s state.

“Everyone” who must sacrifice covers Pennsylvania’s public schoolchildren, college students and their parents and America’s favorite new scapegoat…drum roll, please…all of the state’s public school teachers. The Philadelphia Daily News March 9 cover headline said it all: “We’re getting drilled.”

Between the two governors, what a race to the bottom.

“I wonder if Gov. Corbett’s announcement of cuts to education is really a method to reduce the intelligence level of Pennsylvania voters in order to assure Republicans’ reelection,” wrote David Plasket of suburban Willow Grove in a letter published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Plasket’s words carry more irony than he may realize. Corbett spent a year as a public-school teacher before entering law school and Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley has extensive education credentials. In their campaign Web site, Cawley touted his work as a Bucks County commissioner to expand Bucks County Community College “by opening a Lower Bucks Campus and expanding the Upper Bucks Campus.” He was also a member of a local school board, in Bristol Township, and was a trustee at the county college and a trustee at Temple University, from which he graduated.

Temple is one of four state-related related universities and 14 state-owned universities that will collectively lose $625 million - half their subsidies - under the $27.3 billion budget Corbett proposed on March 8 to reduce the state‘s $4 billion deficit, according to the Inquirer.

Corbett also proposed slashing $1 billion from public school subsidies from the current $8.9 billion school budget which is bound to bring about tax hikes, elimination of programs and/or teacher layoffs in school districts throughout Pennsylvania. The governor also plans to eliminate 1,500 state jobs, 500 through layoffs; cut optional Medicaid benefits to the poor and $150 million in Medicaid benefits to hospitals; and urges school boards to freeze teacher salaries.

In a move comparable to his fellow Republican governor in Wisconsin, Scott Walker, The Daily News reported that Corbett seeks to revive business-tax cuts and refuses to resort to taxes or fees on natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale upstate by companies which make hundreds of millions of dollars. These companies are required to pay levies in 14 other states.

The News’ John Baer pointed out that Corbett - “in a remarkable coincidence” - received $835,720 from oil-and-natural gas interests when he ran for governor in 2010.

“We will grow as an economy, as a commonwealth, as a people,” Corbett declared in his budget address. “If you tax less, people will see the point in earning more. If you regulate more sensibly, businesses will be able to maneuver in the turns of tight economics.”

Philadelphians like myself are about to personally experience a drastic example of how state government starves the city that feeds it. Philadelphia supplies 10 percent of the state sales tax revenues to the state. Philadelphia and its four suburban counties comprise 31 percent of the population. The Philadelphia and Pittsburgh metropolitan areas together comprise just about half the state’s population of 12.6 million, yet they will be hardest hit.

Philadelphia and Pittsburgh each could probably be self-sufficient, especially if combined with their suburbs, should they separate from Pennsylvania. How would central Pennsylvanians, the Republicans’ most dependable voters, keep state government from collapsing in the event of secession?

Philadelphia schools are expected to lose $100 million, or 10 percent of the public schools reduction. Two of Pennsylvania’s largest universities stand to lose excessive amounts, Temple University in Philadelphia and the University of Pittsburgh. Two of Penn State University’s campuses are located in Philadelphia’s suburbs and Lincoln University is in Chester County outside Philadelphia. State College, population 38,000, will take a comparable hit as home to Penn State’s main campus.

In a March 12 letter to the Inquirer, the heads of four affected universities wrote, “Gov. Corbett said repeatedly in his budget address that job creation is the key to turning around Pennsylvania’s economy…Temple, Penn State, Pitt and Lincoln University not only provide high-quality, affordable education for 150,000 Pennsylvanians, they are economic engines for our state.

“Together, our institutions employ more than 68,000 people, with a combined annual annual economic impact of $30 billion. Cutting funding by more than 50 percent, as Corbett proposes, will wreak havoc on these numbers. If building Pennsylvania is all about jobs, then our schools are worth the commonwealth’s investment.”

“I hate to see state government using public education as a whipping post,” said Superintendent Lawrence Mussoline of the Downingtown Area School District in Chester County, as quoted in the Inquirer.

“I feel like the trust of the citizens will be broken,” added Upper Darby Superintendent Louis DeVlieger, whose district would lose $3 million in state aid, bringing its deficit up to $12 million. “We’re either going to drive them out of town with the tax increases, which we’re not going to do, or to drive them out of town by not offering the programs they’ve been accustomed to.”

The budget will not be final until after the House of Representatives and the Senate review it and take a vote, and their response promises to be helpful to Corbett. Republicans control both chambers.

To pile it on, Rep. Scott W. Boyd of Lancaster, a Republican, introduced a bill that would allow teacher layoffs to eliminate deficits and be based on merit, not seniority, the Inquirer reported. Teacher unions get radioactive over proposals to ignore seniority when terminating teachers.

Corbett and other Republicans plan to introduce school vouchers, which will drain more state money from the public schools.

In an analysis published in the News, Ben Waxman accused Corbett of “three big lies” - only three? - in the proposed budget. He first challenged the governor’s claim that overspending is the cause of the deficit. “The state budget deficit wasn’t caused by extravagant spending; it was caused by a sudden drop in revenues due to the national recession,” he wrote. “The programs he’s cutting might not be luxuries after all.”

He identified the second lie as misuse of federal stimulus funds. “The governor believes spending the one-time funds on operating expenses was a gimmick that undermined the state’s fiscal stability,” he wrote. “Pennsylvania spent stimulus funds exactly how it was supposed to. The direct relief to states was meant to provide a temporary cushion for government coffers hurt by lagging tax revenue.”

Corbett falsely contends that the $186 million hike for state prisons “is due to criminals, not poor policy,” Waxman writes. “Pennsylvania’s prison population has grown by 500 percent since 1980 despite few changes in crime patterns. According to the state Commission on Sentencing, a bipartisan panel created by the legislature, the huge jump is due mostly to mandatory sentences for petty drug crimes. Throwing the book at minor offenders is a policy choice made by state lawmakers.”

Beyond Waxman’s analysis, Corbett states: “This budget sorts the must-haves from the nice-to-haves.”

“Hospital care is a must-have, not a nice-to-have, for all Pennsylvanians, retorted Carolyn F. Scanlan, president and chief executive of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania in the Inquirer.

Scanlon was griping about Corbett’s plan to cut Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals by $150 million. Advocates contend that this will lead to the loss of $183 million in federal matching funds.

The governor says of taxes: “The people paying them - the sales clerks and millwrights, the farmers, the moms and pops who run the corner stores - ask them if a tax hike ever seems modest…”

Do these millwrights, farmers, etc. own stock in the gas-drilling corporations? Critics have only urged taxing the corporations drilling for gas in the Marcellus Shale.

State Sen. Daylin Leach, a Democrat representing portions of Montgomery County outside Philadelphia, told the Inquirer, “He talked about how we all have to make sacrifices, but then he excluded whole sections of the population. What sacrifice does an energy executive make? What sacrifice does someone making $1 million a year have to make?”

“The big winners are corporations with out-of-state addresses,” added Eric Epstein, who founded the activist group Rock the Capital, according to the Inquirer.

Corbett is at his most disingenuous when he exploits California Gov. Jerry Brown’s response to his state’s massive deficit: “Even in California, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed to cut take-home pay for state employees by 8 to 10 percent. His own words were: ‘We have no choice,’ and that California must ‘return to fiscal responsibility and get our state on the road to economic recovery and job growth.’ It’s no different here.”

My governor neglects to mention that Brown is also organizing an initiative to raise taxes as one means of closing California’s funding gap.