Cut Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying, Lawmaker Says

Pennsylvania has no law to keep state agencies from hiring outside lobbyists.

By Melissa Daniels | PA Independent HARRISBURG — There’s no shortage of lobbyists making their cases around Harrisburg, but some may be getting paid with taxpayer dollars. Related story: Pa. Leads Nation in Federal Lobbying In Pennsylvania, there’s no law against taxpayer-funded agencies spending money on hiring outside lobbyists to take their respective cases to the Legislature. That means public money would be spent by public officials to persuade other public officials of their best interests. This session, one Bucks County Democrat said it’s time to end the waste. State Rep. Tina Davis, D-Bucks, is once again introducing legislation that would prohibit all state government entities from using public money to hire outside lobbyists to …

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Politically Uncorrected

7 Things That (Probably) Won't Happen in Pa. This Year

If we expect the unexpected in Pennsylvania politics in 2013, we aren’t likely to be disappointed.

By G. Terry Madonna & Michael L.Young In 2012, Pennsylvania had quite a year, not a year everyone will want to remember, but certainly a year few will be able to forget. Consider some of the highlights of a year filled with dramatic, often disturbing and frequently surprising moments. Read More: Bad Gamble: Pa. Lottery Privatization Early in the year, a beloved football icon dies in the midst of a messy investigation involving embarrassing questions about how his program may have abetted the decade’s long career of a notorious pedophile. Later in the year, that pedophile’s public trial and conviction attracted vast national attention, mesmerizing the state’s media and much of its citizenry more than any trial in memory. In electoral …

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Old Fights in New Session of Pa. Lawmakers

With Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget address less than two weeks away, tantalizing details about transportation, pensions and the push to privatize state liquor stores seem right around the corner.

By PA Independent Staff HARRISBURG – New session, but old fights. Both parts of the General Assembly were in session last week in Pennsylvania, and many of the issues look familiar as unfinished business from 2012 (or, in some cases, years earlier) bubbles to the top.  Read more: How Much is Your State Lawmaker's Salary? With Gov. Tom Corbett’s budget address less than two weeks away, tantalizing details about transportation, pensions and the push to privatize state liquor stores seem right around the corner. Corbett changes gears on transportation After promising last week that a statewide transportation funding package would be made public before his budget address, Gov. Tom Corbett shifted gears this week and told the Philadelphia …

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Closing 2 Prisons Will Save Pa. $23 Million Next Year

Pennsylvania will save an estimated $23 million next fiscal year with the closure of two older state prisons and the opening of a new facility.

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania will save an estimated $23 million next fiscal year with the closure of two older state prisons and the opening of a new facility. Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel announced Wednesday that state prisons in Cresson, Cambria County, and Greensburg, Westmoreland County, would be shuttered by the end of June. The two facilities will be replaced with a new state prison scheduled to open at Brenner Township in Centre County.   Staff and inmates at the two prisons targeted for closure will be transferred to the other 25 existing facilities in the state system and to the new prison, Wetzel said. No layoffs are expected. “This move isn’t just a financial move,” Wetzel said. “It’s also an …

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Amend Wun

8:13 am on Wednesday, January 16, 2013

@Ron- you and I are on the same page. Thanks for tge response.   more ›

Pa. Lawmaker Wants Spending Cap for State Government

At least one Pennsylvania lawmaker thinks the state should have a cap on its budget as a way to control state spending.

By Melissa Daniels | PA Independent   HARRISBURG — If there’s one thing governments seem to love, it’s spending other people’s money, state Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon, says. That’s why he said he wants the state to put a limit on how much it’s allowed to spend. For the second year in a row, Folmer introduced the Taxpayer Protection Act, which would create a budgetary cap linked to population growth and inflation. “If you want to get taxes under control, you have to get spending under control,” Folmer said. The concept is modeled after the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, a controversial state spending cap policy known as TABOR. It’s only been enacted in Colorado, where it was later suspended. Folmer points out that Pennsylvania is in the minority…

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Will Right-To-Work Movement Come to Pa.?

Gov. Tom Corbett said the Pennsylvania legislature lacks the will to pass right-to-work laws.

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent HARRISBURG — On the surface, Pennsylvania looks like it could be the next front in the ongoing battle between Republicans and big labor that flared up in Michigan this week as lawmakers there approved so-called “right-to-work” legislation. The Keystone State, like Michigan – and Indiana and Ohio, where similar battles have gone down — has a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled Legislature.  Like those other states, it has a long history of powerful labor unions. But all is quiet on the labor front in Pennsylvania, at least for right now.  And Gov. Tom Corbett indicated this week that he does not plan on changing that. During an appearance on the Dom Giordano radio show on WPHT-AM in Philadelphia on…

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Staberdearth

11:26 am on Sunday, December 23, 2012

My family was all union. However, the way that unions have become contorted for the left's direct gains, mostly the DNC, has got to go! It has become a hornet's nest for far left zealots. Not the union members per se, the union leaders where the adjective "THUG" flows freely attached to those positions. Coercing members in direct violation of what freedom and liberty stands for in the United …   more ›

Your State Lawmaker's Salary: $83,800

Pennsylvania lawmakers will get a 2.2 percent pay increase on Dec. 1, boosting their salaries to more than $83,000.

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania lawmakers will get a 2.2 percent pay increase on Dec. 1, boosting their salaries to more than $83,000. Russ Faber, chief clerk of the state Senate, confirmed to PA Independent that lawmakers would receive a 2.165 percent increase in their pay at the start of December, after the Patriot-News reported the increase Tuesday morning.  Legislators’ pay is linked to the consumer price index, or CPI, for the Mid-Atlantic States and is adjusted each December. With the increase, the base salary for lawmakers in both the state House and state Senate will increase by about $1,800 from the current base salary of $82,000. The median household income in Pennsylvania is about $50,000. Unemployment …

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Pension Costs to Wreck Pa. State Budget

Projections from the Pennsylvania's Independent Fiscal Office say pension costs will far outpace revenues in coming years.

By Eric Boehm | PA Independent HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania can expect modest economic growth over the next five years, but it will be surpassed by a surge in state pension costs that begin this year. An annual economic and budgetary projection from the state’s Independent Fiscal Office, a state equivalent of the Congressional Budget Office, forecasts 0.8 percent revenue growth this year and 3 percent annual growth for the state’s revenues in the next five year.  Pension costs are projected to climb by 46 percent in this year’s budget and 42 percent in next year’s budget. “The increase in pension contributions is estimated to be about $500 million per year for the next several years,” said Mark Ryan, deputy director of the IFO. According to …

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