Tony Phyrillas: Demand property tax relief now

It's been nearly four years since Gov. Ed Rendell and the Pennsylvania Legislature promised state taxpayers would hit the jackpot once casino gambling was approved.

The governor dangled the prospect of property tax cuts in front of reluctant legislators to get the votes he needed to bring 51,000 slot machines to the Keystone State.

Was it worth it? You be the judge. Go to the governor's Web site, http://www.governor.state.pa.us/ and click on the button that says "Property Tax Relief" to review a spread sheet that predicts how much residents in each of the state's 501 school districts can expect in property tax cuts.

For me, it's somewhere between $120 and $302, depending on how much the casinos take in this year. Let's play it safe and stay with the minimum number.

Four years after Rendell promised "historic property tax relief," I get back $120 on my school taxes! I'm paying $500 more in school taxes today than four years ago. I'm already in the hole and I still don't have my check from Rendell.

There was a lot of talk last week in the state Legislature about property tax relief when lawmakers returned to Harrisburg after a 30-day holiday break. The Legislature adjourned after four days and politicians started cranking out press releases about the wonderful job they did on property taxes.

What exactly did the Legislature do? The House voted unanimously to amend the state constitution to allow lawmakers to revisit the property tax issue down the road. That's it.

You can thank House Majority Leader Bill DeWeese, D-Greene, for ending the tax relief debate before it began. Unable to get the votes he needed to push through some of the bogus tax relief bills the Democrats supported, DeWeese did what he always does — punt.

Before adjourning until Jan. 28, what monumental legislation was approved after those grueling 12 hours that the House was in session last week?

House members supported a constitutional amendment to permit elimination of homeowners' property taxes … somewhere down the road. The amendment would revise the state constitution to allow a 50 percent cut in property taxes for primary residences. Because of the uniformity clause in the state constitution, homeowners and businesses are treated equally so you can't cut property taxes for one and not the other.

The amendment would allow the Legislature to eliminate residential property taxes while keeping taxes in place for businesses and other commercial properties.

"It's a borderline joke is what it is," Rep. Will Gabig, R-Cumberland, told the Associated Press. "It will do nothing. It will not reduce property taxes by one dollar. It will not change the system at all."

Another bill that passed the House last week would provide tax breaks to low-income residents (something the Democrats wanted) while cutting the state's personal income tax by $1 billion (a move pushed by Republicans.) But none of this will happen unless the Senate and Gov. Rendell agree and that's not likely going to happen until Rendell unveils his 2008-09 budget in February.

DeWeese promised to take up property tax relief again on Jan. 28, but he's made many promises before. House Bill 1275, which would eliminate school property taxes for all Pennsylvania homeowners, may or may not be on the agenda when the House returns. That's up to DeWeese ... or your local legislator if you make sure they get the message that their job is on the line.

In case you were planning to spend that future property tax cut, keep in mind that the constitutional amendment needs to pass the Senate and then must be brought back for another round of approvals by the next Legislature in the 2009-10 session. Then it goes to voters for a referendum the following year.

In other words, homeowners counting on a significant property tax reform, or better yet, the elimination of school property taxes, will have to wait another three or four years. (Keep in mind that Rendell kept shuffling the deck on us for the past four years for a measly $120.)

The political class that populates Harrisburg did what it always does, put on a show for the voters back home but avoid making any decision. It's the same song-and-dance professional politicians have been giving taxpayers for decades.

All 203 members of the House and half the members of the state Senate are up for re-election this year. The primary election is April 22.

You can wait by your mailbox for that property tax cut check to arrive or you can go to the polls on April 22 and vote out every politician who thinks $120 is property tax relief.

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Is it really property tax relief?

Pennsylvania lawmakers are stumbling over each other this week to deal with the property tax issue that many legislators and Gov. Ed Rendell claimed was solved in June 2006 when Rendell signed Act 1 into law.

There's a lot of bills floating around and it's easy to get confused.

In fact, confusion is the rule in Harrisburg as lawmakers who ignored property tax relief for years pretend they're the taxpayers' best friend.

Here are key differences between the major plans being offered by House Democrats and House Republicans.

The main plan supported by Democrats, House Bill 1600, would REDUCE property taxes for SOME Pennsylvania homeowners TEMPORARILY in exchange for a permanent hike in the state sales tax and income tax. The bill does not restrict school districts from raising property taxes. (In other words, you might as well turn over the deed to your home to your local school district today.)

The main Republican plan is House Bill 1275. It would ELIMINATE school property taxes for ALL HOMEOWNERS in exchange for an expanded sales tax on clothing, some food items and professional services. It would ELIMINATE property taxes for ALL Pennsylvania homeowners. Separately, House Republicans are also pushing for a REDUCTION in the state income tax.

If you want a temporary lowering of property taxes for some, but want to pay more in sales tax and income tax, HB 1600, sponsored by Rep. David Levdansky, the chairman of the House Finance Committee, is for you.

If you want to STOP PAYING SCHOOL PROPERTY TAXES in return for an expanded sales tax, HB 1275, sponsored by Rep. Sam Rohrer, is for you.

Here's some comments on the competing plans from the Pennsylvania Taxpayers Cyber Coalition:

HB 1600: This is the worthless Levdansky/Scavello bill that will raise the sales tax and state income tax to finance a rebate of approximately an average $414. If you don't remember the details, the explanation is here: http://mysite.verizon.net/drbsr/PTCCWeb/HB1600.htm

HB 1489: This is the DeWeese bill that is also known as "HB 1600 Lite." It does not raise the state income tax like HB 1600 but raises the sales tax by 0.5% to finance a small homestead rebate of approximately an average $205. Otherwise the provisions are identical to HB 1600. Reportedly, the governor told the democratic caucus last week that this is the only bill he wants to see approved by the House.

Both of these bills are dangerous pieces of legislation that work on the same principle as the Act 1 tax shift referendum that was so soundly rejected by the voters last May. They permanently raise taxes for a small, temporary rebate that will quickly be eaten away by relentlessly rising property taxes. They do nothing to control costs, address equity for underfunded schools or to solve the education finance crisis. They are WORTHLESS SCAMS that are meant to deceive us unto believing that the politicians have given us property tax "relief" and can be jammed down our throats without any chance for us to reject them. They are simply a PERMANENT TAX INCREASE and must be rejected.

HB 93: This one has slipped under the radar but will still be an issue. The bill provides for the implementation of special tax provisions FOR FIRST-CLASS CITIES ONLY that allow for the refund or forgiveness of property tax liability for certain low-income, disabled, or senior citizens. This is simply more pandering for votes and will take money from property tax relief for other areas of the state.

THE BILL WE SUPPORT, HB 1275, THE SCHOOL PROPERTY TAX ELIMINATION ACT, IS STONEWALLED AND IS NOT SCHEDULED TO BE REPORTED OUT OF COMMITTEE!

Call or e-mail your representative NOW to DEMAND that they support HB 1275, the School Property Tax Elimination Act, and that they REJECT HB 1600 and HB 1489. Tell them that your vote for them in 2008 will depend on their support of HB 1275.

Ignore any mealy-mouthed excuses that they may offer. Contact information for your representative is available here: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/find.cfm

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Downstream

We have posted three remarkable essays over the past week, three essays republished with permission, courtesy of the Bay Journal News Service. What the writers, John Wennersten and Liza Field wrote certainly is appropriate to Pennsylvania, and in particular to the south-central area comprised of Dauphin, Lancaster, Lebanon, Cumberland, Adams, York and Franklin Counties. The Bay Journal News Service and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay’s Bay Journal are concerned with the current and future condition of the Chesapeake Bay.

Why is that relevant to the people of south-central Pennsylvania? One word: downstream.

There are two major rivers that feed the Chesapeake Bay with water: the Potomac, and the Susquehanna. What flows through the counties listed above flows into these two rivers, or one of the lesser subsidiaries like the Severn, the Patapsco, and the Patuxent. Other feeders on the DelMarVa Peninsula flow into the Chesapeake from the east: the Northeast, the Elk, the Chester, the Choptank, and Nanticoke, the Wicomico, and the Pocamoke.

As John Wennersten noted in his Doing the Right Thing, “…on Maryland's rural Eastern Shore, …according to a recent study by the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, as much land may be developed during the next 25 years as has been in the past 400…”. And in Vanishing Acts, he writes, “The orchard belt of the Chesapeake region, which once included hundreds of peach and apple farms in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, is being swallowed. The land is worth far more than the fruit that it produces. In Adams County, Pa., the site of the Gettysburg National Battlefield, apple farmers acknowledge they are a vanishing species, and the range of agribusinesses associated with orchards and general agriculture is disappearing as well.”

The fruit industry in Adams County, which boasts 20,000 acres of orchard up on top of South Mountain, has been scaling back operations with increasing speed over the past few years. And the biggest agribusiness townships in the county, Cumberland, and Straban, have been approving plans for massive housing tracts for the past few years, and for commercial development as well, particularly along the US 15 corridor for several miles north and south of US 30.

That intersection has been targeted for massive development in itself, with the southwest quadrant already developed with car and motorcycle dealerships, hotels, restaurants, and movie theaters. It also houses a window factory and a large office building that houses the headquarters of a local bank.

The northeast quadrant, which was to have housed a casino [which was rejected], and a large shopping mall [plans for which were just rejected with the suggestion to resubmit], already has a hotel on site up and running.

The northwest quadrant will soon house a Walmart Supercenter, at the very least, and probably much more. This area will likely extend north from US 30 to Hunterstown Road, and will likely include land on both sides of Shealer Road.

By far, the worst area will be the southwest quadrant, which already houses a Sheetz, and two strip malls, but is adding a Target store on the last vestiges of Camp Letterman Army Hospital. In addition to commercial development extending south along US 15 a short way, S&A Homes will be removing the trees between there and Hanover Road in order to put in several hundred houses.

Drive through Frederick on US 15, or Carlisle along US 11, or York and Lancaster along US 30, or through Hanover along PA 94. That is what the Gettysburg area will look like in a few short years. Current plans call for enough housing to literally double the population of rural Adams County over five to ten years.

Now Gettysburg College has gotten into the act, having its students of public planning redo a proposed 500 house development near Biglerville in northern Adams County into a proposed 500 home development, complete with green space trails, and community and commercial space!

So the real question is, when is it enough? Where does one draw a line on development? In Doing the Right Thing, Wennersten talks about the developer’s social responsibility. Is there a developer in Adams County that can honestly say he turned down a lucrative development plan because sprawl was getting out of hand? …because Adams was running out of green space? …because Adams should not become a bedroom community for people who can’t afford housing in Washington D.C.? …because there simply is not enough water available in Adams County?

In Gift of Water, gift of life, Liza Field wrote about the creeks – about how esthetically wonderful they used to be. She also wrote: Drought, for all its desolation, does bring an offering: the awareness that money cannot buy water. Indeed, it reminds us that money comes from water. Not vice versa…This is news in the Eastern United States, where we've long taken water for granted, able to squander or impair it freely to benefit "the economy." I can't remember a single local land-use decision, in the past two decades, that placed water quality above "economic growth." Globally, meanwhile, the United States dallies in answering the call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions-though we know global warming is causing droughts-because climate protection would "hurt the U.S. economy."

We would add “water quantity” to Ms. Field’s “water quality”.

Water is a commodity that we all absolutely must pay very close attention to now. Water is not, as we think, infinite, it is finite. Water is, along with air, one of the most basic and necessary ingredients to all life on Earth. Without water, there can be no life. All things come alive with the presence of water.

With development, two things happen to water: first, the demand on the source is greatly and suddenly increased; and second, the outflow from that development, both wastewater and runoff carry an increased cargo of toxins and biohazards not only into our own ground supply, but also downstream. Who among you does not quest for the perfect Maryland Blue Crab Cake, or Maryland Blue Crab Soup? Who does not enjoy eating bushels of crabs every summer, and fresh Chesapeake Bay Oysters? Yet the outflow from development in southcentral Pennsylvania continually and increasingly [as development increases], poisons the very place where these unique delicacies come from – the oyster beds and crab shallows of the Chesapeake Bay.

Granted, the destruction of the shell fisheries in the Bay is not solely the responsibility of the developers upstream. Farmers and communities who use pesticides do a great deal of damage to the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. We saw what the rampant use of DDT did to the population of Bald Eagles in the area decades ago. They are only recently recovered from the endangered species list, upgraded recently to threatened status.

People create waste. Where is it going to go? Solid waste, for example, is trucked from New York City all the way to huge farms in western Lancaster County where the farmers no longer grow things, they plant solid waste, turning their fertile fields to land fills. That waste carries with it some moisture of its own, which trickles down through the earth into the water table, and from there into the streams and tributaries of the Susquehanna River, the headwaters of the Chesapeake Bay. Yes, the earth filters the liquid. For a while, then like any filter, it becomes simply something the liquid passes completely through…like the old septic system drain fields, no longer functional in terms of cleansing the water.

Liquid waste enters the ecosystem via outflow, which is treated by municipalities, or by the earth in small home-systems. Liquid also enters the ecosystem via runoff. Herein lies the greatest danger. Toxins from many sources are carried directly into the ecosystem complete with their chemical cocktails picked up along the way, during a rain storm, or perhaps during the spring melt. Car washes, gas stations, trucking terminals, highways, all are places of chemical spills, and contamination. Those toxins then get washed away during a summer thunderstorm. Everyone loves the look and sparkle after a summer storm, how it cleanses the air, and the ground. But those toxins did not just disappear. They went somewhere. Into the ground, and over it, into the water supply, and into the streams. The runoff in one area goes to one small brook, which is one of ten that feed one creek, which is one of five that feeds one river, which is one of twenty that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Do the math.

It is not something one can turn off. Once development occurs, this continues, The more development that occurs, the amount of toxins entering the system multiplies. Humans are users, consumers, and therefore, waste makers. From the dawn of man we have been squatting in streams to relieve ourselves of our own waste, and sending it downstream to whichever poor creatures might be attempting to live with the aid of that water source.

It cannot be turned off except in one way. Stop development. Measures such as townships demanding a certain percentage of every development be maintained as green space are defeatist. They are a series of diminishing returns away from no green space at all.

The populace must become actively involved in what happens to their area. In Pennsylvania, developers and their investors have become so politically powerful that the state now controls what the townships and municipalities can and cannot do in their own areas. And the townships and municipalities are so heavily controlled by those same developers and investors, that they willingly go along with any plan for development, and if it is not up to snuff with the local ordinances, well, reject it, and have the developer re-submit it.

State, county and local governments that are fully developer friendly have been elected to office by an unwitting public for over half a century. And now Adams County, for example, faces the construction of a propose 20,000 new homes over the next 5-10 years. Developments are currently approved or under construction for as many as 2,000 homes in a development.

In order to stop development, or at least curtail it drastically from its current rate, new, eco-friendly township, municipal, and statewide officials must be elected. The current rate of eco-destruction occurring in Adams County will result in a disaster of epic proportions unless it is halted soon. The disaster will be one of economic, and ecological and social scope, and will affect every citizen in the county, and those downstream from it.

The shortsighted elected officials who so easily approve mega-developments see increased tax revenues flowing in. What they ignore is the costs of doing municipal business increasing at twice the rate of revenues. Infrastructure, and municipal services costs will rise to exorbitant rates. What looks like a nice orderly plan on County maps will eventually lead to overcrowding. People will not be able to afford their taxes, and those taxes will not support the amount of services their local and state government are responsible for providing. Crime will skyrocket, as will bankruptcies, divorce, and the inevitable growth of the counter culture.

Lest you think this is over the top, note two news stories from tonight’s cable news: garbage riots in the city of Naples, Italy, where the city is drowning in its own garbage as it lies in the streets uncollected, and the processing of sewage water into clean drinking water for Orange County, California. Orange County’s water supply, the Colorado River, is in a drought condition. These are but two examples of what will be the outcome of the development of the Adams County area.

Citizens of the Mid-Atlantic area should be alarmed -- very alarmed at what is happening around them. If they care for their children they should be scared to death at the degree to which the area upstream is being developed, and its projected effect on those who live downstream in addition to the effect it will have on themselves.

Our civic leaders have abandoned us. Business is more important than history, and profit more important than the culture that supports it, and that will eventually die from it, finally, when there is no more profit to be had. The land, and the water are not a bottomless pot of gold. Our civic leaders have failed us. Where are the crusading newspaper editors? Where are the investigative reporters? The local Fourth Estate members have, in their absences, defaulted on their role as protector of the people. The newspapers in the Adams County area are too consumed with political motivations to have any thoughts for the welfare of the area, for the very culture they are supposedly such an integral part of, that they have long since abandoned any pretense at caring what happens around them, let alone downstream. Being good to business is the principle motivators for the news organs in the area. And being involved directly with the elected officials removes them from their societal roles. They are no longer the guardians of the culture, they are part and parcel of the problem, not the solution.

What we write here will not stop the Walmarts, the Targets, nor the 20,000 homes from being built. But it might just provide enough advanced warning for those who plan to stay to perhaps band together somehow and take matters in hand, wrest power from the monied interests and stop the trend.

We have made the point on numerous occasions in the past few years here, that two industries keep a kind of economic stasis here in Adams County. But now, the Fruit industry is withering on the vine, and the tourist industry is starting to stay away. Why? Because development is robbing the area of its natural resources, natural splendor, and its future.

THE CENTRIST

We support the Roadmap to Reform!

“Be steadfast in your anger, be sure in your convictions, be moved by the right and certainty that abuse of power must be defeated at every turn; uphold Liberty as the just reward of a watchful people, and let not those who have infringed upon that Liberty steal it away from you. Never loosen your grip on Liberty!" -- GettysBLOG

“Legislation without representation is tyranny.” -- GettysBLOG

Remember in May and November! Before you vote, GettysBLOG!

Copyright © 2005-2008: THE CENTRIST; All Rights Reserved.

Doing the Right Thing? Developers, Social Responsibility and the Environment

Here is the final installment of our short series from the Bay Journal News Service. We will follow in a day or two with a summation.

Doing the Right Thing?
Developers, Social Responsibility and the Environment
By John R. Wennersten
11/27/2007

Do developers have a responsibility to protect the environment beyond their legal obligation? They may not, but it seems increasingly true that working with communities and protecting the environment are in developers' interests.

This idea will get a real test in the coming decades on Maryland's rural Eastern Shore. There, according to a recent study by the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, as much land may be developed during the next 25 years as has been in the past 400 and environmental and community groups are working to protect their region's heritage.

Rob Etgen, Executive Director of the land conservancy, says the role of social responsibility in determining economic growth is intertwined with the idea of saving green spaces - landscapes and seascapes that serve as residential and public amenities. When communities have a roadmap delineating which lands and resources should be preserved and protected, it becomes easier for developers to concentrate on projects in areas where they are "the most appropriate," Etgen believes.

Ideas like "sustainable communities," "new urbanism" and "energy and transit-friendly planning" are becoming tools of the developer's trade. Companies that pursue them get a break from the environmental activists and hedge their actions against what might be a tougher regulatory atmosphere in the future.

Elm Street Developers, a Mclean, Virginia-based realty firm, routinely pursues green technologies in building smart growth communities on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Elm Street has been widely recognized for its willingness to invest in environmental protection to reap a more dependable long-term profit. Developers at Elm Street believe that green amenities, coupled with walkable towns with coherent centers, are what modern homebuyers want. Research conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency seems to confirm this. It indicates that only 25 percent of today's renters and buyers want large-lot houses in sprawling developments.

Architect John Torti of Torti Gallas Partners of Silver Spring, Maryland, has long been in the vanguard of what has come to be called "the New Urbanism." As a young architect, Torti grew disenchanted with designing unimaginative subdivisions. In the 1980s he began to design communities that would offer "green" housing mixed with park-like settings - a practical blend of community and environment. Torti and like-minded architects and planners were determined "to clean up the mess in the suburbs that we had helped create."

He and other green architects and developers have been able to infuse their work in projects like the King Farm Community in Rockville, Maryland or Town Center in Germantown, Maryland. Torti's success has enabled his firm to win contracts for developments in more than 47 American cities.

Real estate studies have also confirmed the demand for such developments by looking at how their prices have held up. Between 1997 and 2005, notes Lee Sobel of the EPA's Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, there were 4,744 resales in the Kentlands and Lakelands developments, two early new urbanist communities in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Kentlands' houses commanded a 16.1 percent price premium over other houses in the area. Lakelands' achieved a 6.5 percent price premium. "Kentlands has sustained its premium year after year, and Lakelands has seen its premium grow - reaching 9.5 percent between 2002 and 2005," Sobel said.

Building infrastructure such as roads and stormwater systems for sprawling big lot developments is also increasingly expensive for developers. Developers know that ignoring trends is not smart, says Sobel, "especially those trends that affect the bottom line."

As developers increasingly look to places such as the Eastern Shore of Maryland for land on which to build new communities, they will be confronted by heightened environmental consciousness and community concern. Many environmental groups as well as established communities with a strong rural heritage do not want to see their region "sprawled and suburbanized." Towns such as Chestertown on the Eastern Shore struggle to protect themselves against sprawl, and are using litigation and political pressure to force developers to recast their vision.

"While builders, environmentalists, and planning commissioners will never see eye to eye on everything, these groups have much in common," notes Smart Growth expert, Edward T. McMahon. Developers who accept social responsibility in their decision making have everything to gain if they recognize this and work for the community's interest to create walkable, energy saving places that protect the environment.

John R. Wennersten is the author of numerous books on the Chesapeake Bay and regional environments in the Mid-Atlantic. His most recent work is Chesapeake Bay: An Environmental Biography.

Distributed by Bay Journal News Service

THE CENTRIST

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST; All Rights Reserved.

Gift of water, gift of life

We continue in a short series of posts courtesy of the Bay Journal News Service.

Gift of water, gift of life
By Liza Field
12/24/2007

The world river has no water in it.
Come back, springs!
Where water is, there bread arrives.
But not the reverse.
Water never comes from loaves.
--Rumi

When I was seven, I wanted a creek for Christmas. I could picture it cracking through our old, dry neighborhood, splashing noisily between boulders and rhododendrons, ushering up sweet airs of minerals, roots and the creeks we camped beside in the national forest.

Water attracted me more than dolls or games, perhaps because it was alive-enchanted and changing. Cool cow-pasture ponds in July. Jewels of winter hoarfrost popping out of brittle mud. Blizzards. Rainpuddles. Sycamore-vapored rivers. Clouds. The clinging fog in our old Virginia mountains. Cold mineral springs pouring inexplicably out of dry ground.

Water was a visible sign of the invisible world-like elves and angels. So my brother's report that Santa Claus couldn't haul in a creek felt more stunning than his addendum that Santa wasn't real-that gifts were bought by people at the department store.

"-Which doesn't sell creeks," Tombo added.

The news felt desolate and appalling that December. But in the childhood years following, whenever I came upon a woodland creek, a river, a rainstorm, I knew I'd found something valuable-more real than Santa Claus, more rare than money.

The drought of 2007 evoked that old childhood understanding, as Eastern water-historically plentiful-grew scarce. When Atlanta nearly drained the dregs of its reservoir, even the wealthiest suburbanites, who'd formerly bought whole creeks to run through lawn sprinklers, faced the same water restrictions as the poorest. Nobody's money could make it rain.

"You don't miss the water 'til the well runs dry," countless old-timers remarked to me, as our own Virginia creeks turned to dry cobble, and wells did run dry.

That bygone expression has grown unfamiliar here, where few residents still depend on wells. Our water comes from spigots. Our spigots work because we pay the water bill. Water is not a priceless gift, therefore, but a commodity earned.

Drought, for all its desolation, does bring an offering: the awareness that money cannot buy water. Indeed, it reminds us that money comes from water. Not vice versa.

This is news in the Eastern United States, where we've long taken water for granted, able to squander or impair it freely to benefit "the economy." I can't remember a single local land-use decision, in the past two decades, that placed water quality above "economic growth." Globally, meanwhile, the United States dallies in answering the call to reduce greenhouse gas emissions-though we know global warming is causing droughts-because climate protection would "hurt the U.S. economy."

"Your money or your life?" is the universal question that has pervaded philosophy and religion throughout the ages.

Ancient cultures considered water the symbol of life. Native American, Hindu, Arabic, Asian, Hebrew, Celtic and African wisdom traditions thus considered water a sacred gift, more vital than any kind of wealth.

But humankind has a track record of forgetting its wisdom in times of plenty. Money seems to provide life (we call our income our "livelihood"), and thus takes first priority.

The Hebrew prophet Jeremiah, who considered drought a reflection of human values, saw "the fruitful land" become "a desert," because his people "forsook the fountain of living waters" and ran after idols.

The mythical Greek King Midas ran after gold. When granted his wish for a "golden touch," the parched king found that amidst his own gilded drought of a landscape, he could not obtain one drink of water. His priorities turned even his beloved daughter-for whom he'd wanted all these riches-into a chunk of dead gold.

That "the Midas touch" connotes a business compliment, today, says something humorous about our own values. The problem with making wealth our highest priority is that we, too, try to turn everything into money-including life.

And so drought comes. With its age-old, humbling effect, it returns us to the ground. But such a lowering can raise our values, the sage Lao Tzu implied.

"The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and its occupying the lowest place."

When we regain gratefulness for water, the "low" will take high priority. We'll stop asphalting the landscape, work hard to plug run-off back into the water-table, and reforest our region to attract and receive rain.

Meanwhile, winter precipitation has revived a joyful creek in my present-day backyard, a creek which the drought had nearly extinguished. I don't know about the power of Santa and the mall, but receiving the impossible-a creek for Christmas-implies something hopeful and unsettling to me. What humankind wants most, on earth, is possibly what we'll get

Liza Field is a hiker and conservationist. She teaches English and philosophy in the Virginia Governor's School and Wytheville community College.

Distributed by Bay Journal News Service.

THE CENTRIST

We support the Roadmap to Reform!

“Be steadfast in your anger, be sure in your convictions, be moved by the right and certainty that abuse of power must be defeated at every turn; uphold Liberty as the just reward of a watchful people, and let not those who have infringed upon that Liberty steal it away from you. Never loosen your grip on Liberty!" -- GettysBLOG

“Legislation without representation is tyranny.” -- GettysBLOG

Remember in November! Before you vote, GettysBLOG!

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Vanishing Acts: The mid-Atlantic's disappearing landscapes

We reproduce this column here from its original source, the Bay Journal News Service:

Vanishing Acts: The mid-Atlantic's disappearing landscapes

By John R. Wennersten
12/31/2007

Sprawl continues at an unprecedented rate in the mid-Atlantic. Despite efforts at "Smart Growth," almost everyone has seen negative changes to his or her local environment.

Growth occurs principally along transportation corridors. Real estate development and urban sprawl have a silent ally in the federal highway system. Interstates, like I-81 that traverses the mid-Atlantic, have channeled exurban development. New developments along the route often have larger populations than the town or village with which they share a zip code. And "countryside" increasingly is being replaced by "mallside," with homogenized stores from coast to coast.

As suburbs spread outward in all directions from cities, farmland is increasingly in demand for development. In Virginia and West Virginia, sheep and cattle farms have given way to burgeoning neighborhoods of commuters who clog country roads and drive hours each way to their workplace. In Maryland, the State Highway Administration recently removed more than 250 miles from its scenic roads program, thanks to sprawl.

The orchard belt of the Chesapeake region, which once included hundreds of peach and apple farms in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, is being swallowed. The land is worth far more than the fruit that it produces. In Adams County, Pa., the site of the Gettysburg National Battlefield, apple farmers acknowledge they are a vanishing species, and the range of agribusinesses associated with orchards and general agriculture is disappearing as well. Ironically, the citizens of Gettysburg, until recently, thought themselves too far away from urban centers to be affected by sprawl.

But it is no longer only our countryside that is being transformed out of existence. According to the U.S. Geologic Survey, our rivers and seascapes are being changed forever. As sprawl destroys forests and fields, the connectivity of wetlands, forest and wildlife habitat and waterways is being ruined. Small wonder that suburbanites are surprised when hungry black bears forage in their garbage and deer eat their flowers.

People with roots deep in Chesapeake soils are displaced as well. The once sleepy docks lined with oyster packing houses in Crisfield, Md., give way to fancy, expensive, high-rise condominiums owned by people who apparently neither care about nor understand the local maritime culture and what is being lost.

You know that a way of life is vanishing when the memorabilia collectors arrive. Throughout the Chesapeake, collectors are avidly scooping up the remnants of Maryland's oyster industry: packing cans, dredges, photographs, shucking tools and packing house invoice books. What was once a vibrant industry has succumbed to disease, pollution and development. Hundreds of packing houses from Kent Island to Oyster, Virginia have disappeared. Only a few remain to process oysters trucked from Louisiana. Oysters, which sold for $1.50 a gallon in 1974, now sell for almost that much apiece in Washington, DC restaurants. Soon people will have difficulty understanding why a village was named Bivalve.

Economic change adds to the transformation. Tobacco reigned for four centuries as southern Maryland's cash crop. Since the state bought out Maryland's tobacco farmers, their numbers have diminished from 1,000 to about 150. With tobacco fast fading from the Chesapeake landscape, the old tobacco curing barns become relics.

There is more truth to the cliché, "You can't stop progress," than we care to admit. The population of the United States that demographer and social analyst Leon Bouvier argued was "sustainable at 175 million people" has nearly doubled that amount. In the midst of the Shenandoah Valley or up the Susquehanna River, one can get into traffic jams that resemble the worst urban gridlock.

What is the main force that threatens our lifestyle? It is political power, the force of domination. When a Chesapeake waterman finds his crabs or oysters overwhelmed by pollution, he feels the rough hand of lobbyists who have worked behind the scenes to keep stronger regulations at bay. When orchard owners discover that their aquifer is being hijacked by new zoning regulations and developments, meaning that they can't irrigate their trees during summer drought, they feel the blunt instrument of real estate interests that want to grow houses rather than crops. When the state forces tobacco farmers out of business, we see political decisions turning people into museum pieces. Thus, our treatment of our lands and waters raises serious questions about political power and its social uses.

Not everything that is disappearing is just quaint or archaic. Not everything that is disappearing should be thoughtlessly dismissed. In the process of changing our landscape and seascape, we risk losing the essence of what defines us as a culture. As social critic James Conaway wrote in his recent book, Vanishing America, "We have to protest against our seeming national willingness to wreck nature and neighborhoods."

John R. Wennersten is the author of numerous books on the Chesapeake Bay and regional environments in the Mid-Atlantic. His most recent work is Chesapeake Bay: An Environmental Biography.

This column is distributed by Bay Journal News Service.

THE CENTRIST

We support the Roadmap to Reform!

“Be steadfast in your anger, be sure in your convictions, be moved by the right and certainty that abuse of power must be defeated at every turn; uphold Liberty as the just reward of a watchful people, and let not those who have infringed upon that Liberty steal it away from you. Never loosen your grip on Liberty!" -- GettysBLOG

“Legislation without representation is tyranny.” -- GettysBLOG

Remember in May! Before you vote, GettysBLOG!

Copyright © 2005-2008: THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Rendell cooking job numbers again

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics," according to Benjamin Disraeli.

Mr. Disraeli must have had Pennsylvania under Gov. Ed Rendell in mind when he coined his famous phrase.

The Rendell administration routinely touts job growth in the state, bragging about how a record number of Pennsylvanians are working.

Recent news accounts showing job growth in Pennsylvania is at its lowest level in three years is but the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sorry state of Pennsylvania's economy under Gov. Rendell.

The Allegheny Institute for Public Policy has issued its latest Policy Brief, "New Year, Same Old Jobs Rhetoric," offering an independent review of the Rendell's job growth claims.

"The Governor's Mid-Year Budget Briefing brags that the number of non-farm jobs in Pennsylvania hit an all-time high of 5,811,100 in October 2007 (the latest data available). While the administration continues to pat itself on the back for this achievement, the number needs to be viewed in proper perspective," the Policy Brief states.

The Rendell administration is massaging the numbers to make it appear that the state's economy is growing at a health pace, according to the Allegheny Institute.

"The Governor has spent billions on economic development, but in many industries where the money has been spent, such as retail and manufacturing, there have been no net job gains," the Policy Brief concludes.

"Over the last seven years (October 2000 to October 2007) Pennsylvania's total private jobs has grown a scant 1.9 percent," according to the Policy Brief. "During the same period, national private sector employment climbed more than 4 percent and well over twice as fast as Pennsylvania. Many states including West Virginia (3.4 percent), Virginia (6.6) and North Carolina (4.4) have done considerably better than Pennsylvania."

The Policy Brief offers a stark conclusion about Rendell's tenure as governor: "Weakness in job and career opportunity increases continues to drive Pennsylvanians out of state to find better job opportunities."

In other words, when it comes to Pennsylvania's business climate under Rendell, the governor has no clothes.

You can read the full Policy Brief by Frank Gamrat, Ph.D., Sr. Research Associate, and Jake Haulk, Ph.D., President of The Allegheny Institute, online at http://www.alleghenyinstitute.org/

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Russ Diamond: Why the "Year of Reform" Wasn't

Last year at this time, Pennsylvanians were filled with hope for big changes in state government coming to pass in 2007. Who could blame them? After replacing an astonishing 55 legislators, all signs pointed to movement in the direction of reform. But the great "Year of Reform" turned out to be mostly a bust.

Admittedly, there was some progress. Internal rules changes were made in both chambers of the General Assembly. The Senate performed the task rather effortlessly while the House took a few months of deliberation. Those rules can be suspended, however, and as soon as it's expedient for members to do so, they will be suspended.

An effort was made to craft a new open records law, a process that is not yet complete. The House and Senate versions differ, which means that those differences must be hammered out, likely in a conference committee. Pennsylvanians should play very close attention, as a conference committee is where good bills can be transformed into bad bills (think: pay raise). Even without any shenanigans, the proposed legislation is barely better than what we had before in some areas and falls short of giving us the most transparent government in the nation.

Nothing else has been accomplished on the reform front, though. Newspaper editors, pundits, journalists and citizens are asking: Why? The answer is quite simple: There has been no movement on serious structural reforms in Harrisburg because elected folks don't want serious structural reforms. They like things just the way they are.

We can't blame the freshman class entirely. Although some of them appear to have been sucked into the Incumbent Protection Plan and business-as-usual, most of them are still wet behind the ears and frustrated. And let's not forget that there are only 55 of them, hardly a majority among 253 members.

We can't entirely blame leadership, either. Their job is to do what the rest of the membership wants them to do. If they don't follow the will of the membership, they won't be in leadership for very long. If a majority of members were actually pushing for reform, leadership would certainly be obliging them.

In the legislature, most of the blame lies at the feet of those who have been there for a few terms but are not yet in positions of leadership. If they really wanted reform, we'd have it already. They could have bridged the gap between freshmen and the leadership to point Pennsylvania in the right direction. But they haven't.

The Governor dropped the ball as well. Although at one time he touted a reform agenda, he's been silent on the issue ever since. One would think that a governor in his second term would understand that creating a better system of government is a positive legacy that could last for decades to come.

Some have claimed that 2008 will be a better year for reform. Considering it's an election year for over 90 percent of the General Assembly, however, it's hard to believe that systemic reform will be at the top of anyone's agenda. Let's face it: For many legislators, this is the best job they've ever had and they will focus most of their energy on keeping it.

Perhaps, though, that is the key to obtaining actual reform. If legislators consider getting re-elected their primary objective, then the people of Pennsylvania should make structural reform an election issue. Whether our favorite reform is term limits, the size of the legislature, part-time status for members, redistricting or the holy grail of structural reform - a constitutional convention - Pennsylvanians should begin extracting promises now from candidates seeking elective seats in 2008.

Additionally, those legislators who promised reform as part of their electoral bid in 2006 should be asked what they have done to make it happen. How many reform bills did they introduce or co-sponsor? How many meetings did they have with colleagues on reform issues? How many phone calls did they make on behalf of reform? What will they do for reform if re-elected? Exactly which particular reforms do they support?

It truly is a simple equation: When the people clamor for reform via phone calls, letters, visits to their legislators and electoral pressure, candidates who wish to get elected will also support reform. Once elected, continued pressure will make it happen.

Pennsylvania will only get structural reform when Pennsylvanians demand it. It didn't happen in 2007 because the people didn't focus on specific changes during the 2006 election cycle. Demanding specific reforms in 2008 is the only way to move us closer to actually getting those reforms.

Permission is hereby granted to reproduce text from this article with attribution to PACleanSweep.

Constitutional Footnote #1
Article II Section 4 of the Pennsylvania Constitution mandates that the General Assembly "shall meet at twelve o'clock noon on the first Tuesday of January each year." In 2008, the first Tuesday falls on January 1st. How many legislators do you suppose will show up? That may be our first indicator of which legislators care about constitutional rule and systemic reform.

Constitutional Footnote #2
Two and one-half years after the pay raise, many legislators are still collecting per diems just for showing up for work, receiving extra pay for service on committee, benefiting from lavish health care plans, driving taxpayer-funded cars and building comfortable pensions, despite Article II Section 8's specific language allowing only "salary and mileage for regular and special sessions as shall be fixed by law, and no other compensation whatever, whether for service upon committee or otherwise."

In addition, quite a few never returned the money received through "unvouchered expenses," despite the Supreme Court's finding of the practice as unconstitutional. Go figure.

About PACleanSweep
PACleanSweep is a non-partisan effort dedicated to reforming state government in Pennsylvania. For more information, please visit

www.PACleanSweep.com.

For More Information:
Russ Diamond
717.383.3025
chair@pacleansweep.com

Russ Diamond

Russ Diamond is the founder of PACleanSweep and an avid believer that government should do what's best for all citizens, not just the privileged few.

Copyright © 2008, Pennsylvania Order of Liberty Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST; All Rights Reserved.

Tim Potts: Help us Ring in the New Year with Good Government

Dear Friends of Democracy Rising,

We've made some New Year's Resolutions for Pennsylvania state government.

1. Enact the best open records law in America.
2. Best lobbying control law in America.
3. Best campaign finance law in America.
4. Best election laws in America.

Democracy Rising PA is resolved to make Pennsylvania the best of all fifty states in every category of good government. This isn't wishful thinking on our part. We've already nailed legislators on their secret salary hikes. We've called them on the millions of tax-payer dollars they've spent on partisan polling, and the appalling lack of "openness" in their proposed open records legislation. We've exposed lots of other infractions, too, all fueled by the fact that our government currently has the worst quality laws on matters of public integrity than any other state in America.

Now is the ideal time to make the most of this momentum for change. You've seen our emails about our year-end fund-raising campaign. Since starting our campaign, we have raised close to $30,000. If we raise $100,000 by December 31, we'll get matching funds, ponied up by donors across the political spectrum. That's serious money that can have a serious impact on our ability to make 2008 the year of integrity, value, transparency, and citizen confidence in government.

With just 4 days left to meet this $100,000 challenge, every contribution counts. If you haven't already donated, we urge you to do so now. Click donate to double the impact of your donation.

Working together, we can ring out the rampant corruption and waste in our current legislature, and ring in the New Year with the promise of good government.

Thank you for your support!

- Tim Potts

P.S. At the risk of overstating what we've already overstated - time is running out fast on our year-end $100,000 challenge. Click donate before December 31, and double the impact of your donation!

P.P.S. Democracy Rising PA is a 501© (3) organization, so your contributions are tax-deductible.

Tim Potts
Co-Founder & Chair
Democracy Rising Pennsylvania

© Democracy Rising Pennsylvania 2001-2008. All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008, Pennsylvania Order of Liberty Blog; All Rights Reserved.
Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Can the Montgomery County Republican Party be saved from itself?

Over the next two weeks, we'll find out the answer to an important question. Is the Republican Party in Montgomery County bigger than three men? Who is in charge of the party? The voters, the elected committee members, the financial contributors? Or is the party owned by three men who have their own agenda?

This message is for Republicans, specifically those living in Montgomery County. Will you allow the party to be hijacked by three men?

I see the actions of Jim Matthews, Ken Davis and Bob Asher as no different from those of playground bullies. They want their way. They're willing to step on anyone to get what they want. They think nothing of mortally wounding the Republican Party that gave these men their power in the first place. They’ve spit on the Republican Party Committee members who helped Matthews get elected as a county commissioner, helped Davis win two terms as the county party chairman and helped Asher, a convicted felon, get elected as a national committeeman.

It's time for the GOP faithful —- all 247,000 — to put this trio in its place.

The revolt from the rank-and-file is already brewing.

Here's what a Montgomery County Republican Party committeeman said in an e-mail: "Matthews' enmity for Bruce must be stronger than his desire to succeed, and he's thrown away all his work over the last several years, and will never be elected to any office again. But more than that, if we think about the future dynamics for the next four years, what Republican will listen to him, or respect him as a leader? And what Democrat will care about an ineffective turncoat Republican. In effect, Matthews will doom himself to a position with no power — indeed the emperor will have no clothes."

Here's what one Republican Party committeewoman said in an e-mail: "There has and will always be some power struggles within the party. But, in the past these issues were settled by the county chairman and never in public. That is where the problem starts and ends. Mr. Davis, in my opinion, as chairman has never demonstrated any leadership and has only won re-election by appointing new committee people at the 11th hour. This is despite his repeated promises to change the by-laws. He is and will always be a puppet for Mr. Asher, who by the way has lost all is sound political wisdom. Mr. Davis has led the Republican Party down the tube and now with his blessing Mr. Matthews will do the same to county government. The Matthews/Hoeffel team was not chosen to lead our county, but I agree Mr. Matthews must never have passed Politics 101. Mr. Asher, at one time, was a sound thinking politician who served well as county chairman. It is a known fact he does not like Bruce Castor for whatever reason. And, the look on his face when Bruce won the endorsement said it all. However, Mr. Asher has always found a way to get even and the Matthews/Hoeffel team is it. Thank goodness for the wisdom of the Montgomery County voters when they elected Bruce Castor. At least there will be one sound thinking voice on the board."

Can the Montgomery County Republican Party be saved?

It can if Republican voters by the thousands tell Matthews, Davis and Asher that the party is bigger than the egos of three men. If Matthews, Davis and Asher aren’t willing to do what the voters decided Nov. 6 — entrust Montgomery County government to a Republican majority headed by Bruce Castor — then the trio has to step aside.

If that doesn't happen between now and Jan. 7, when the Montgomery County Commissioners hold their reorganization meeting and select a chairman and vice chairman, then the Republican Party must sever all ties with Matthews, Davis and Asher. They've left the party by their renegade actions. It’s time for 247,000 registered Republicans to walk away from them.

Without your votes, your willingness to volunteer for the party's candidates and your financial generosity, there is no Montgomery County Republican Party. Matthews, Davis and Asher are nothing without you.

If you want to send them a message, here's how to contact Matthews, Davis and Asher. (And you might want Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Rob Gleason to know that Montgomery County will not be part of a Republican Party that has been hijacked by three megalomaniacs.)

Contact Jim Matthews at Jmatthew@montcopa.org or call the commissioners’ office at 610-278-3020

Contact Ken Davis at kdavis@dmga.com or kdavis@montcogop.org

Contact Bob Asher at rbasoud@aol.com

Contact Robert A. Gleason, chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, at the party’s Web site, http://www.pagop.org/ or call 717-234-4901 ext. 126

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: GOP backstabbers: Matthews, Davis, Asher

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less to fear."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero,Roman orator, statesman 42 BC

George Washington had his Benedict Arnold. Julius Caesar had his Brutus. Bruce Castor has his Jim Matthews.

Matthews, a Montgomery County commissioner in suburban Philadelphia who ran as a Republican in November, stunned political observers by announcing a pact with Democrat Joe Hoeffel to form a voting majority on the three-member Board of Commissioners.

The odd man out of the equation is Castor, the top vote-getter in the Nov. 6 election. More than 85,000 voters supported Castor and his efforts to keep Republican control of the board.

Matthews slapped every one of the 85,000 voters in the face Tuesday when he outlined his deal with the devil.

Matthews is the brother of Chris Matthews of MSNBC's "Hardball" program and was the unsuccessful candidate for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor with Lynn Swann in 2006.

When the new commissioners' board takes office in January, Matthews will serve as chairman and Hoeffel, a bust as county commissioner in the early 1990s, will serve as vice chairman. Tradition and the spoils of politics dictate that the majority party holds chairman and vice chairman titles.

Matthews decided his own lust for power supersedes the wishes of the voters.

How is Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Ken Davis going to explain this one? Your party wins control of the commissioners' board and you now hand power to the minority party? There is no place for Matthews, Davis (and their puppet-master, GOP financier Bob Asher) to hide. Asher is also a national Republican committeeman, which might help explain why the GOP is in such trouble.

Montgomery County voters made it very clear last month they want the Republican Party to continue running the county, as it has for the past 138 years. Matthews' decision to elevate Hoeffel to vice chairman negates the results of the election. It countermands the will of the people.

This is bigger than Matthews, whose legacy is now one of a political traitor. The county, state and national Republican Party have to intervene because this is an assault on the political process.

Voters need to have some sense that the people they elect will attempt to stand behind their promises. When you vote Republican, you want Republicans to hold power, not hand it to the election losers on a silver platter.

Matthews may think he’s won something by giving Hoeffel a say in county government, but Matthews has lost what little credibility he had with voters. He has also set in motion the Democratic takeover of county government in four years. Matthews will never win another election — in Montgomery County or anywhere else. Voters simply can't trust this guy.

You don't make a deal with Democrats when your party wins majority control. This is Politics 101 and Matthews has flunked. We’re dealing with liberal Joe Hoeffel, Ed Rendell's pal. Hoeffel ran on a platform of big government and higher taxes.

During the campaign, Matthews accused Hoeffel of "picking your pockets with higher taxes." In one campaign ad, Matthews said "Hoeffel is proud he raised our taxes." What's going to happen when Hoeffel wants to raise taxes? Will Matthews provide the second vote?

And didn't Joe Hoeffel accuse Matthews of influence-peddling and corruption? What does that say about Hoeffel's character if he’s now willing to work with Matthews?

It appears Matthews and Hoeffel were made for each other. Career politicians without a shred of integrity between them.

The only person dealing with a full deck in this latest Matthews-Davis-Asher debacle is Castor.

"The consequences to the (Republican) Party would just be devastating," said Castor, noting that residents had placed control of county government in Republican hands with their votes, not a Republican and a Democrat. "It would just be insanity."

It's time for rank-and-file GOP to step in and save the Republican Party from the enemy within.

Matthews, Davis and Asher should be drummed out of the Republican Party. They want to get into bed with a liberal Democrat? Fine. Let them change their party registration. Don't pretend you're Republicans. The trio has already insulted 85,000 Republican voters by making the deal with Hoeffel.

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: More promises of tax relief by Rendell

Excuse me if I don't jump up and down at the news that Gov. Ed Rendell's budget secretary says there is enough revenue coming in from casinos to begin offering property tax cuts in 2008 or 2009.

We've heard these promises before.

In 2002, Rendell, candidate for governor, promised to cut everyone's property taxes by 30 percent standing on his head.

In his first year in office, Rendell developed amnesia about property taxes. Instead, he increased the state income tax by 10 percent.

In 2004, Rendell promised property tax relief when he signed Act 72 into law. It didn't happen.

In 2005, Rendell developed amnesia again, but he did impose the $52-a-year payroll tax on just about every worker in the state.

In 2006, Rendell promised property tax relief when he signed Act 1 into law. Act 1 would have raised the income tax in return for lowering property taxes. Voters didn't buy into the tax-shift scheme. Another failed attempt at tax relief.

Here we are at the end of 2007 — five years into Rendell's term — and not one penny from gambling has been returned to Pennsylvania residents as property tax cuts.

The Legislature, which has House Bill 1275 (the School Property Tax Elimination Act of 2007) before it, failed to act on it before adjourning for its 32-day Christmas vacation.

Now we have a prediction from Rendell's budget chief that some homeowners will see property tax cuts at the end of 2008 or sometime in 2009 because gambling revenues have reached the minimum level to trigger tax cuts.

The operative word here is minimal. The state's six operating slot parlors have kicked in $506 million so far into a fund set up for property tax relief. The fund needs to reach $570 million by April in order for the state to begin distributing money to homeowners.

But Rendell promised $1 billion in tax relief when he signed the bill bringing casino gambling to Pennsylvania.

It will take several more years to reach that level. And we're talking about a few hundred dollars in tax reduction. So if you pay $3,000 in property taxes each year, you might get back $300. In the meantime, there's nothing to prevent your local school district from raising property taxes by hundreds of dollars ... year after year.

So pardon me if I don't do a jig. The promise of property tax cuts through gambling revenues is a mirage.

The only way to reform Pennsylvania's antiquated property tax system for funding public education is total elimination, which is what House Bill 1275 proposes.

Only 44 legislators (mostly Republicans) in the 203-member House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of HB 1275 so far.

If you live in any of the following Southeastern Pennsylvania counties, you might want to ask these legislators why they won't support the elimination of property taxes. None of the following are listed as co-sponsors of House Bill 1275:

BERKS COUNTY — David Kessler (D-130); Doug Reichley (R-134); Tim Seip (D-125)

BUCKS COUNTY — Paul I. Clymer (R-145); Gene DiGirolamo (R-18); John T. Galloway (D-140); Chris King (D-142); Anthony J. Melio (D-141); Bernie O’Neill (R-29); Scott A. Petri (R-178); Marguerite Quinn (R-143); Katharine M. Watson (R-144)

CHESTER COUNTY — Thomas Killion (R-168); Duane Milne (R-167); Chris Ross (R-158); Carole Rubley (R-157

DELAWARE COUNTY — William F. Adolph Jr. (R-165); Mario J. Civera Jr. (R-26); Robert C. Donatucci (D-185); Thomas H. Killion (R-168); Thaddeus Kirkland (D-9); Bryan R. Lentz (D-161); Nicholas A. Micozzie (R-163); Ron Raymond (R-162); Greg Vitali (D-166); Ronald G. Waters (D-191)

MONTGOMERY COUNTY — Lawrence Curry (D-154); Michael Gerber (D-148); Robert Godshall (R-53); Kate Harper (R-61); George Kenney Jr. (R-170); Daylin Leach (D-149); Kathy Manderino (D-194); Jay Moyer (R-70); Thomas Murt (R-152); Josh Shapiro (D-153); Rick Taylor (D-151); Mike Vereb (R-150)

For more information about HB 1275, visit the Pennsylvania Taxpayers Cyber Coalition Web site at http://ptcc.us/

If you want to see genuine property tax relief in Pennsylvania, you have to pressure your state legislators (especially the Democrats) to support House Bill 1275.

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Matthews caves in

Somebody must have knocked some sense into Jim Matthews.

Less than 24 hours after a prominent Montgomery County attorney and longtime Republican Party activist switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat to protest what he called vindictive behavior on the part of the Montgomery County commissioner, Jim Matthews caved.

The dispute centers on a planned transfer of Marcy Toepel, Montgomery County Clerk of Courts first deputy, to a new post in the county Recorder of Deeds office.

Toepel lost the race for Clerk of Courts in November and was going to be out of a job once Ann Thornburg Weiss, the incoming Democrat who won the election, is sworn in.

Toepel was hoping to move into a new job in the Recorder of Deeds office, which is still controlled by Republicans.

But Matthews removed Toepel's name from a list of approved job transfers under review by the county salary board, which includes the three county commissioners.

Insiders said Matthews was pissed at Toepel because she would not support his bid for reelection to the Board of Commissioners.

That prompted Norristown lawyer John I. McMahon Jr., who is the solicitor for the Clerk of Courts office, to send a letter to Matthews calling his tactics "vindictive" and "ruthless."

It didn't hurt that the letter found its way into the hands of veteran Norristown courthouse reporter Margaret Gibbons, who wrote a story about the infighting within Montgomery County Republican circles.

Matthews and McMahon sat down Tuesday for a meeting and apparently resolved their differences. Matthews will not object to Toepel's transfer when the commissioners meet next week, according to Gibbons.

After talking with Matthews on Tuesday, McMahon said all is forgiven.

"He (Matthews) has indicated to me that Ms. Toepel's removal from the salary board list was an 'inadvertent mistake' on his part," McMahon said in a letter he sent to Gibbons. "Accordingly, to the extent that this statement is true, I believe my strong words directed to Commissioner Matthews may have been overly harsh."

Spoken like a true lawyer.

Although they've kissed and made up, McMahon said his decision to switch his party registration to Democrat will not change. Hmmm.

That does not bode well for Matthews or his handlers, Montgomery County Republican Chairman Ken Davis and moneyman Bob Asher, the de-facto party boss.

Davis and Asher have worked hard over the past four years to divide the Republican Party. As a result of their political bungling, five Democrats were elected to Montgomery County row offices on Nov. 6.

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Jim Matthews plays hardball with GOP

For a man who barely won re-election last month, Montgomery County Commissioner Jim Matthews is turning into Hugo Chavez.

Matthews came in third place for three open seats on the Montgomery County commissioners' board, but he's acting like a dictator in the final days of 2007.

He's playing political hardball within his own party. Somebody should remind Jim Matthews he's not his brother, Chris Matthews, the loudmouth MSNBC TV host.

Jim Matthews has been accused of going after a longtime county worker who did not support his re-election effort. Matthews, as a member of the county salary board, does have a say in who gets hired or transferred within county government.

GOP foot soldier Marcy Toepel, a Republican who lost the race for county Clerk of Courts last month, is trying to hold on to a county job by seeking a transfer to the Recorder of Deeds office, which is still controlled by Republicans.

Under the leadership of Montgomery County Republican Party Chairman Ken Davis and his benefactor, Bob Asher, the GOP lost five county row offices in the Nov. 6 election, which has left many Republicans scrambling to find new jobs. Row offices are used by both sides to reward party faithful.

Matthews decided to get Toepel back by taking her name off the transfer list at a recent salary board meeting. (Courthouse insiders say that Toepel is a hard worker and would bring a wealth of experience to the recorder of deeds office, so there's no question that she is qualified to do the work.)

Matthews' action has angered many Republicans. One prominent GOP attorney, John I. McMahon Jr., who has worked for the party and raised thousands of dollars on behalf of GOP candidates in past 30 years, was so incensed by Matthews' vindictiveness that he switched his party registration to Democrat on Monday.

"Your own vindictive and ruthless actions in removing her name from the salary board, thereby blocking her from maintaining employment in the courthouse after her recent election upset in the clerk of courts' race, speaks volumes about your leadership," McMahon said in a letter fired off to Matthews.

"Your actions clearly highlight yet another example of the sickening political infighting and personal agendas which has characterized the leadership of the Montgomery County Republican Party in recent years," McMahon said in the letter. "It only gets worse!"

Matthews, who is controlled by Ken Davis and Bob Asher, has already alienated half the Republican Party members in Montgomery County. He's not exactly bosom buddies with the other GOP Commissioner-elect, Bruce Castor, who is a longtime critic of Davis and Asher.

Let's not forget that Matthews failed to deliver Montgomery County for the GOP when he ran as lieutenant governor on the Lynn Swann ticket in 2006. Matthews has aspirations for statewide office, but that's not going to happen when he's becoming a political pariah in his home county.

What will Matthews do in January when the new commissioners' board is sworn in? Will he make a deal with Democrat Joe Hoeffel?

If Matthews continues to burn bridges within his own party, how can Castor support Matthews for the influential post as commissioners' chairman? Will Matthews work out a secret power-sharing deal with Hoeffel, the liberal Democrat who finished second in the voting behind Castor?

Is that why Montgomery County voters kept Republicans in control of county government for another four years? To give Joe Hoeffel more a role? Would voters support Matthews had they know he'd settle old scores against his own party and possibly give Hoeffel a bigger role in county government?

When will Montgomery County Republicans realize that the Matthews-Davis-Asher wing of the party is leading the GOP over a cliff?

Read the full story on the growing GOP rift in today's edition of The Mercury at http://www.pottsmerc.com/

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Rendell threatens to hold doctors hostage

Somebody should put a call into SWAT. Gov. Ed Rendell is planning to take hostages again.

Rendell is threatening to withhold state aid to help doctors pay for malpractice insurance unless the Legislature approves the governor's plan to offer government-subsidized health insurance for the state's 800,000 uninsured residents.

Rendell's "Cover All Pennsylvanians" proposal has been languishing in the Legislature since the governor first floated the idea in February. Lawmakers refuse to consider Rendell's 3-percent payroll tax on employers who do not provide health insurance to fund health coverage for the uninsured.

Rendell always has something up his sleeve. When the Legislature balked at leasing the Pennsylvania Turnpike to a private company to help raise money to bail out mass transit, Rendell went to Plan B: Making Interstate 80 a toll road.

The governor now wants the Legislature to use part of the projected $500 million surplus in the state's medical malpractice fund (known as MCare) to pay for the uninsured. That won't cover all the costs of providing health coverage to 800,000 people. The rest of the money would come from an additional 10-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes and taxing cigars and smokeless tobacco.

This is not the first time Rendell has threatened to hold hostages to get his way. He did it earlier this year when he threatened state workers. And we all know how well that worked out.

It just five months ago when Rendell and the Legislature could not agree on a $27 billion General Fund budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year, which began July 1.

Rendell's bargaining chip was 24,000 "non-essential" state workers. Rendell went ahead with the furlough, but when the Legislature wouldn't budge and public sentiment turned against Rendell, he brought the workers back the next day (and ended up paying them for the extra vacation day). That little stunt cost Pennsylvania taxpayers about $3 million.

As I said back in July when I wrote about Rendell's bully tactics, when you take hostages, you have to be prepared to follow through with the threat to harm them. Rendell blinked on the furlough of state workers and lost the fight over the budget. He didn't get his health insurance plan or any of the $2.5 billion in new or expanded taxes Rendell wanted to include in the 2007-08 budget.

Taking the state's doctors hostage is an even dumber move on the governor's part. Unlike state workers, doctors have more resources at their disposal. They are a powerful lobbying group that can do a lot of harm to politicians. Doctors like having the state pick up part of their malpractice payments and are not going to give it up without a fight.

Rendell and the lockstep Democrats in the House have overreached several times in 2007. Pennsylvania residents want lower taxes, not more taxes and expanded government control of health care, transportation and energy.

In a story published by the Allentown Morning-Call, state Rep. Mike Sturla, a Democrat from Lancaster County, was quoted as saying he is willing to shake down Pennsylvania taxpayers even more to get the governor’s initiatives passed.

"I don't care if we stand people on their heads and shake pennies from their pockets," Sturla said. "All I want to do is make sure Pennsylvanians have access to health care in a reasonable, rational manner."

What a pleasant site. Rendell and Sturla holding an elderly Pennsylvania taxpayer upside down and shaking him until every penny falls out of his pocket.

Ask Sturla's constituents in Lancaster County if they'd like to pay more in taxes to people in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh can get health insurance. I think not.

Sturla may have talked his way out of a job when he faces re-election next year.
Let's say Rendell gets enough votes in the Legislature to raid the MCare fund.

Rendell is notorious for spending every dime that comes his way. What happens when the MCare fund is drained down to zero?

Where will Rendell get the money to replenish the MCare fund? The basic economic concept that Rendell has operated under is "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul."

Peter is tired of giving and Paul is in no mood to give anything back.

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Pa. economy in the dumps

I've learned not to trust any economic news released by Gov. Ed Rendell since he is notorious for twisting and turning numbers into something unrecognizable.

I consider information from third parties more credible, especially when the source is a group like the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association, which has a vested interest in the condition of the state's economy. The group's motto: "Business in Pennsylvania Is Our Business."

The latest edition of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association Bulletin, available online this week, offers a sobering look at how sluggish the state's economy is under Gov. Rendell. Pennsylvania ranks 44 out of 50 states in economic growth.

I guess it's safe to conclude that higher taxes and corporate welfare is not the way to go to stimulate the state's economy. But that's been Rendell's strategy since taking office in 2003.

You can't blame the state's sad-sack economy entirely on Rendell. The Pennsylvania Legislature has turned into a doormat when it comes to economic stimulus.

House Democrats are kept on a short leash by Rendell and Republicans (especially in the Senate) have a short attention span. They can't concentrate long enough to make a convincing case that the state is headed in the wrong direction.

The four-page PMA Bulletin features these headlines:

2006 PA ECONOMIC GROWTH ONLY HALF OF U.S. RATE

Ranked 44th in Gross Domestic Product growth; Pennsylvania loses out on $7.25 billion

"This is price all Pennsylvanians are continuing to pay for Harrisburg’s misplaced priorities," says David N. Taylor, executive director of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers' Association. "All of the state government policies that make Pennsylvania less business-friendly than our competitor states – whether it's chronic overspending, high business taxes, rampant lawsuit abuse, or regulatory overkill – are robbing our citizens and undermining our quality of life."

To read the Bulletin online, visit http://www.pamanufacturers.org/

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.

Tony Phyrillas: Paterno salary defines open-records debate

The world now knows how much Joe Paterno makes as head football coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions.

My life hasn't changed since I found out that Paterno earns $512,664 a year. I graduated from Penn State but I wasn't the least bit curious how much Paterno made when I attended school in State College or in the years since I left Happy Valley.

Paterno's salary was one of the best-kept secrets in Pennsylvania, a state where keeping the public in the dark is one of the primary missions of government. Pennsylvania ranks 49 out of 50 states for having the worst open-records law in the country.

The State Employees' Retirement System released Paterno's salary a week after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that his salary and those of other top Penn State officials are public information.

How much the 80-year-old coach makes isn't as important as the fact that so many government and university officials worked so hard for so long to keep the information out of public sight.

The revelation that Paterno makes $512,000 was almost anti-climatic. Most people were under the impression that Paterno was making more than $1 million a year based on his longevity at Penn State and the success he has brought to the school’s football program.

"I'm paid well. I'm not overpaid," Paterno told reporters. "I got all the money I need."

What a refreshing statement from a public figure in a state where greed has become the norm. Pennsylvania legislators, already among the highest paid in the country, voted themselves pay raises of 16 percent to 54 percent during a middle-of-the-night session on July 7, 2005. Gov. Ed Rendell signed the pay grab into law. It took a backlash from Pennsylvania residents to get the Legislature to rescind the pay raise.

And let's not compare Paterno's salary to that of some other coaches who run big-time football programs. Alabama's Nick Saban is the highest paid coach at $4 million a year. Oklahoma's Bob Stoops makes $3 million. Ohio State's Jim Tressel, Florida's Urban Meyer and South Carolina's Steve Spurrier each make $2 million annually.

Paterno, the second winningest college football coach ever, is "underpaid" compared to other coaches. Paterno is Penn State. His value to the school cannot be measured in dollars and cents. And it's common knowledge that Paterno and his wife have donated $4 million to Penn State over the years.

It's hard to argue that Paterno isn't worth every dollar Penn State pays him. The salary revelation should put renewed focus on the current debate in the Pennsylvania Legislature over open records.

The reason the Harrisburg Patriot-News had to fight so hard in the courts to get the salary information is because Pennsylvania law presumes that all government and quasi-government agencies are entitled to keep secrets.

The public, through newspapers and other media outlets, have to persuade courts that the information should be public. This presumption is backwards. The burden should be on the government to show why information associated with how it spends the public's money or conducts the public's business should be kept from the public.

Political commentator Lowman Henry has an interesting take on the Paterno salary disclosure:

"Why then would Penn State's power brokers fight so hard to keep such information confidential? In a word: arrogance. It has become apparent they simply believe, despite the fact PSU receives hundreds of millions of tax dollars each year, We The People have no right to know what they are doing with our money. Clearly the Paterno salary is not untoward, and the university is generally perceived as one of the finest in the nation. Why then the secrecy?"

The Paterno salary story, which made the front page of every newspaper in the state, should be a wake-up call to Pennsylvania residents. They need to be engaged in the current debate about revising the state's open-records laws. This is not about giving newspapers special access. This is about giving the people of Pennsylvania the right to know how their elected officials are conducting the people's business.

A vote on revisions to the open-records law could come any day now. Make sure your elected representatives know you’re paying attention and will not tolerate any more secrecy.

Tony Phyrillas

Tony Phyrillas is a columnist for The Mercury in Pottstown, Pa. He received a first place award for Best Opinion Column in 2007 by Suburban Newspapers of America. He was also honored for column writing in 2006 by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Copyright © 2005-2008, THE CENTRIST Blog; All Rights Reserved.