WEEK IN REVIEW — Dec. 9, 2011
By PA Independent
HARRISBURG — It was a treadmill week in the state Capitol, with lawmakers rushing to finish several key issues before the end of the year, but ultimately going nowhere.
The state Senate inched forward with a plan to impose an impact fee on natural gas drillers in the state, and state House Republicans held behind-closed-doors discussions on school vouchers and other education reforms, but broad deals between the two chambers and Gov. Tom Corbett were still unsettled by week’s end.
The state Senate has three more days of session scheduled before the end of the year, while the state House has five.
The General Assembly is inching closer to agreeing on a natural gas drilling fee and environmental rules for natural gas companies operating in the state, but the key sticking point is who will collect the fee.
Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, said state senators still were divided over Gov. Tom Corbett's plan to have counties that host drilling collect the fee. That proposal is included in a House-passed impact fee bill.
A separate, Senate-passed measure would have the state collect the fee, which proponents argue allows for more uniform taxation.
“Many of our members believe that a county-by-county fee is not good policy,” Scarnati said Wednesday. “If we want to be business friendly, we have to do it statewide.”
Republican leaders of the state Senate and state House, along with Corbett’s staff, are working out the details of the final bill in closed-door meetings before it is put into legislation.
Reforms intended to improve Pennsylvania’s taxpayer-funded public school system by giving more educational options to low- and middle-income families and holding teachers more accountable may not be resolved until next year.
Proponents of the school choice voucher measure said discussions continue to move in a positive direction, while the state Senate considered changes to the state's teacher evaluation system.
House Republicans indicated this week that they wanted to limit the number of schools eligible for the vouchers to 100 or perhaps only 50, down from 143 in the state Senate-passed measure. Senate Education Committee chairman Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin, threw cold water on that idea.
“We don’t want to pass a bill that is vouchers in name only. We want a bill that is vigorous,” Piccola said. “You can pick any number you’d like, but it has to be a meaningful number, and the lowest 5 percent picks up a dramatic number of failing schools.”
Also this week, the state Senate considered a plan to overhaul the way Pennsylvania evaluates public school teachers, but that bill did not move forward.
Like their big city brethren, Pennsylvania's smaller municipalities are feeling the pain of an economic downturn that has left them financially distressed and with few solutions.
Too frequently, they get lost in the shadows of the problems of big cities like Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Reading and Scranton — all of which have filed for “distressed” status with the state. But, of the 26 municipalities that the state has declared distressed since 1987, 17 had populations of less than 10,000. The population figures are based on the most recent census data.
Unfortunately, more small towns might be headed in that direction.
“Pennsylvania’s once-thriving town centers and county seats are at risk of insolvency, if we don’t come up with a solution to fix the most common problems,” said state Sen. John Wozniak, D-Cambria, who hosted a hearing in November in Johnstown to discuss the smaller municipalities that are either financially distressed or on the brink of it.
Those problems include a dwindling property tax base, an increase in expenses while tax revenue has nosedived and, because of the Great Recession, slowed state-level assistance, Wozniak said.
As populations have moved from the core community to the suburbs, the tax base has exited, but service needs remain and property values have declined, resulting in lower revenue from property taxes. At the same time, costs for services, personnel and pensions have continued to climb.
The sex trafficking of minors in Pennsylvania could become a first-degree felony under new legislation that targets traffickers and protects their victims.
Sex trafficking is the recruitment, transportation or harboring of people for commercial sexual exploitation through deception, threat of or use of force, and other forms of coercion. Specific statistics on sex trafficking of minors in Pennsylvania is not available.
"The issue of human trafficking certainly is one that not a lot of people are aware of, but it is happening right here in Pennsylvania," said state Rep. Brian Ellis, R-Butler.
The state House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved Butler's proposal, House Bill 2016, that would make sex trafficking of youths younger than 18 a first-degree felony.
Currently, it is a third-degree felony, according to the Pennsylvania Crime Code.
HB 2016 also would allow for second-degree felony charges to be filed against parents who sell or transfer custody of a minor, or simply make a child available for sex trafficking. Pennsylvania law only allows for third-degree felony charges in such cases.
The bill now moves to the state House for consideration later this month.
Senate GOP revises new district map
Late Thursday evening, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, announced changes to the new state Senate district map that had been introduced at the end of October.
The most significant changes are in the greater Harrisburg and Scranton areas. The current district of state Sen. Jeff Piccola, R-Dauphin, which was criticized widely for being drawn to favor Republicans by cutting Harrisburg out of the district and stretching it across portions of four counties, has been reconfigured on the new map to be more compact.
Though the district only includes two counties now, it still removes Harrisburg from Piccola’s district and moves the capital city to the district of state Sen. Mike Folmer, R-Lebanon.
Piccola has announced he will not run for re-election, but said he did not have any influence on the way the district was drawn.
The new map still is in the preliminary stage, where changes are allowed, until approved by the five-member redistricting commission, of which Pileggi is a member.
The commission has a meeting scheduled for 3 p.m. Monday, when it is expected to approve the state House and Senate maps for the next decade.
