BCT Editorial – 7/10/05

This page was last updated on July 10, 2005.

Starting points; Editorial; Beaver County Times; July 10, 2005.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Now that Pennsylvania’s lawmakers are the second highest paid legislators in the nation, we have but one request:

“Do something to earn it.

“One fault our highly-paid, highly-perked lawmakers have is that they refuse to tackle tough issues. Instead, they tinker with mountains-out-of-molehills legislation and have turned constituent service into a high art.”

[RWC] I’d like to learn the Times definition of “constituent service.” Two of the greatest services representatives can provide are to provide limited government and fiscal responsibility. As a whole, the General Assembly fails miserably in these two services.

“But they don’t do anything of serious import.

“Here are four areas that need to be addressed in the next two years:

· Tax modernization. Pennsylvania is not a high tax state. However, several business taxes are too high, and the reliance on property taxes to generate local revenue for school districts is a major point of contention. Unfortunately, tax modernization, which requires shifting the tax load around, would create winners and losers, and lawmakers hate to offend anybody when it comes to taxes, even when the overall good is self-evident.”

[RWC] Thank goodness the Times finally concedes “tax modernization” is a euphemism for tax shifting. Unfortunately, it still holds onto the “Pennsylvania is not a high tax state” mantra.

· Government modernization. Study after study shows that Pennsylvania’s Byzantine system of government inhibits growth and complicates doing business here. The commonwealth has too many municipalities, too many local planning commissions, too many authorities and agencies (sewer, water, etc.), and the structure of most county governments is rooted in the 19th century. The entire system needs to be revamped.”

[RWC] Let’s assume this point is correct for the sake of argument. Unless the state usurps local authority, what are state reps to do? Don’t Times editorials advocate from time to time the need for local control?

· School district consolidation. Pennsylvania has too many teensy-weensy school districts that are struggling to balance the needs of the children they are educating with the ability of taxpayers to fund that education.”

[RWC] Once again, isn’t this the responsibility of the school districts and their voters?

· School funding inequity. Despite the General Assembly’s approval of Gov. Ed Rendell’s ‘foundation funding’ initiative to eventually guarantee that each of the state’s 501 school districts spend at least $8,500 per pupil, the per-pupil spending gap between the state’s richest and poorest school districts still would be enormous.”

[RWC] I’ve shown this claim is BS in numerous critiques. The most recent example was my critique of “Economic apartheid” (June 23^rd).

· Special education funding. The current formula has no basis in reality. Even worse, it often hits school districts charged with educating large numbers of low-income students harder than their more well-to-do counterparts.”

[RWC] I have no data to either support or refute the Times position on this issue. Given the quality of other so-called facts presented in editorials, however, I would be surprised if this is not at least a gross exaggeration.

“In the next two years, we look forward to positive results in each of these areas.”

[RWC] As the author noted above, the editorial took some numbers from the S&P website. It carefully omitted some figures from S&P, however.

The author forgot to mention the “economic apartheid” actually resulted in Big Beaver Falls ($8,514/year) spending 17.2% more per student than Beaver ($7,265/year). This isn’t an isolated example.

Let’s look at the Aliquippa and Center Area school districts. “Poor” Aliquippa ($9,225/year) spent 25.2% more per student than Center ($7,367).

That’s some “economic apartheid.”

Now that you have some context, let’s look at the comment “One problem with Rendell’s proposal is that the GOP controls the Legislature, and Republican power brokers in the House and Senate have their own separate plans when it comes to subsidies for next year.” Not once does the author mention that Mr. Rendell’s proposal would not help “poor” districts like Aliquippa and Big Beaver Falls because they already spend more than $8,500/student-year. Instead, the author chooses to bash Republicans.