| 1001 Reasons Why Canned Cocktails are Getting More Attention than the Constitutional Crisis in Public Education!
 The annual June stroll to a stalemate in Harrisburg was in rare form this week when Senate leaders found a long list of excuses to do anything other than reach agreement on the state budget, which the constitution requires they do by June 30th.
For most of this week, one of the hottest topics under the dome can be summed up for a SNL script as “gettin’ liquored up and takin’ our glocks to school.” Yes, as gross as that sounds, state lawmakers are trading an expansion of what kind of booze can legally be sold in PA for a bill to arm school personnel.
Senator Mike Regan (R-Cumberland, York), the champion of both measures, agreed to drop his demand that beer distributors get control of the skyrocketing ‘cocktails in cans’ market for his real number one priority: a state mandate that every school district hire at least one, fully armed, security officer.
Keep in mind, the month started out strong, focused on solving the greatest challenge in the state with a bipartisan vote in the House for the historical education funding bill, HB 2370. But since then, not a peep from the Senate on the biggest sticking point in state budget negotiations.
Case in point, earlier this week the Senate passed SB 1001, aptly named for all the reasons there is no budget agreement with two days left in the fiscal year. It is an empty shell of a General Fund Appropriations bill, devoid of any state funding allocations for any state agencies or programs, including public schools.
What’s especially perplexing is that the Senate Majority Caucus is not rallying behind HB 2370 since it delivers in big ways for school districts they represent. For instance,
- 56% of school districts represented by the Senate Majority Caucus would benefit from nearly a billion dollars in state aid on a recurring basis because the new school funding formula holds districts harmless from losing state funds as they lose students because of local population decline.
- Of the $200 million proposed for the base funding for every district, 56.2% would go to school districts represented by the Majority Caucus.
- Twenty-one of the 28 members of the Senate Majority Caucus would bring home new funds to address the funding shortfall and/or high tax property tax burdens to 75% of their school districts.
If the state surplus wasn’t so hefty, with more than $14 billion in the bank, we might be able to understand the reticence to embrace this package. But senators must be seeing the unusually high property tax increases now approved by their own school districts, which the Senate’s own estimators predict will grow by $800 million for the upcoming school year.
HB 2370 and the appropriations supported by the Governor and the House offer the Senate Majority a real reason to take victory lap and render these local tax increases unnecessary. |
