Harrisburg – July 2, 2012 – Senate Democratic Leader, Sen. Jay Costa sent a letter today to Lt. Gov. Jim Cawley asking that he not call a special election in the 37th Senate District to replace Sen. John Pippy (R-Allegheny) who resigned over the weekend.
Costa (D-Allegheny) said that a special election would be costly and unwise.
“Holding an election a month or so before a regular election at a significant cost to the taxpayer is not ‘in the public interest,’ ” Costa wrote.
In the letter, Costa said that the estimated costs of a special election range between $200,000 to $400,000. Costa also noted that the Senate only had eight scheduled session days before the General Election.
Text of the Letter:
July 2, 2012
Dear Gov. Cawley:
On Saturday, June 30, 2012 Sen. John Pippy submitted his resignation as state Senator representing the 37th senatorial district. As you know, Sen. Pippy announced earlier that he was not seeking re-election for another term after years of honorable service. The voters of the 37th Senate District will elect a senator for a full, four-year term at the General Election on November 6, 2012.
I am respectfully requesting that a special election not be called due to the prohibitive cost to the taxpayers and the fact that the voters will select their new senator at the November 6th General Election. Under current law – Section 628 of the Election Code– you are not compelled to call a special election. In fact, the language of the code specifically says that “if the vacancy shall occur less than (7) months prior to the expiration of the term, a special election shall be held only if in the opinion of the presiding officer the election is in the public interest.”
Holding an election a month or so before a regular election at a significant cost to the taxpayer is not “in the public interest.” Given the pending General Election, taxpayer money would be wasted for no legitimate reason. The cost of a special election – estimates ranging between $200,000 and $400,000 borne by taxpayers – is too steep given Pennsylvania’s tight fiscal situation. A regularly scheduled election at no additional cost will occur within a few weeks.
The Senate has scheduled only eight session days before the General Election. Thus, the taxpayers would have to pay $25,000 to $50,000 per session day, for a Senator whose term would expire in a few months. I remind you that the taxpayers already were forced to incur these excessive costs when the special election in the 40th Senate District was scheduled in August, 2012, rather than on November 6, 2012, when the General Election is scheduled.
The scheduling of a special election in the district immediately prior to the General Election would be quite distracting to the Allegheny and Washington County Election Departments, which are currently involved in the preparations for the General Election. Needless to say, these preparations have been compounded by the new Voting ID Legislation. As you can appreciate, with so much taxpayer money at stake, and so few remaining session days in the Senate, it would be inappropriate to pursue a partisan objective, when the voters already are scheduled to select their new 37th District State Senator on November 6, 2012.
Thank you for your consideration.
Harrisburg, June 30, 2012 – Two measures introduced by Sen. Costa have been rolled into related legislation that has cleared the Senate.
Costa’s SB 519 was amended as provisions of the sweeping sentencing reform bill SB 100. The provisions of the bill now included as a part of SB 100 clarifies the burglary statute as it relates to three-strike sentencing. The bill was presented to the governor for his signature on June 26.
A second Costa measure, SB 593, was added to the Tax Code and passed by the Senate. This provision exempts transfers between a step-parent and a step-child from realty transfer taxes. The bill, with Costa’s language, passed the Senate 43-6.
Check back for additional updates on these measures.
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Harrisburg – June 29, 2012 – The state Senate passed a revised $27.65 billion state budget today that includes a number of initiatives authored by Senate Democrats and $775 million more for key line items above Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed budget, state Sen. Jay Costa (D-Allegheny) said today.
Costa voted in favor of the budget bill. The measure cleared the Senate on 32-17 vote.
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“The revised state budget includes funding that Senate Democrats sought for Accountability Block Grants, higher education and mortgage protection,” Costa said. “Significantly, the plan is a stark departure from the harsh budget proposed by Gov. Corbett in February.
“The plan does not increase taxes and resources are stretched to try and cover some critical needs.”
Costa said that the governor’s plan called for a $267 million cut for higher education, the stripping of funds for specialized hospital services, human service programs and no new real dollars for education.
“The final budget includes more dollars for Accountability Block Grants and a rollback of severe budget cuts that were part of the governor’s budget outline,” Costa said.
“If the governor’s plan were rubber-stamped, school districts, hospitals, social services and many other vulnerable programs would be in jeopardy.”
The final budget nearly flat funds basic education but adds $100 million for Accountability Block Grants, $50 million for distressed schools and funding for hospital services such as obstetric and neonatal care, trauma, burn centers and critical-care access. It also adds another $25 million for education tax credits already created in law and provides another $50 million for a new tax credit program to help students in underperforming schools.
Despite voting in favor of the plan, Costa said that the budget has major problems.
“Unfortunately, key county human service funds, welfare department programs that touch individuals directly and General Assistance grants aimed at helping those in dire need were eliminated or severely reduced,” Costa said. “This will hurt 70,000 Pennsylvanians who rely on the program.”
Costa noted that child care monies and county human service program funds were partially restored.
He said that the framework for the budget came from a spending plan worked on and passed in the Senate in early June. Senate Democrats were able to take part in those discussions then work through the process to defend the restorations as the bill wound its way through the legislative process.
“The state budget that we considered today is not the one that I would have crafted were Senate Democrats in charge of the process – these are not our priorities,” Costa said. “However, given the constraints set by the governor and the resources that were available, it is a tight budget.”
The state’s fiscal year ends June 30.
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HARRISBURG, June 28, 2012 — Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa issued the following statement on the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:
“The Supreme Court made the correct decision. The reform provides access to health care for millions of Pennsylvanians, from college students, to those with pre-existing conditions, seniors who have high prescription costs and others. The reforms provide life-saving access to health care for all Americans.”
Millions of Pennsylvanians benefit under the law, including 1.4 million uninsured Pennsylvanians; 2.1 million Pennsylvanians who have pre-existing medical conditions; and 4.5 million Pennsylvanians who have had lifetime limits on benefits removed.
Nationally, more than 54 million individuals with private health insurance, including more than 20 million women, have received preventative health care at no cost, and 5 million seniors on Medicare have saved an average of $635 each on prescription drugs.
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HARRISBURG, June 15, 2012 — Senate Democrats today said that a prison reform measure swiftly moving through the legislature with bipartisan support is a solid step toward improving the corrections system and includes a number of ideas promoted by their caucus.
Senate Democrats said the initiatives they’ve pushed include increased programming for release for non-violent offenders to reduce technical parole violations, expediting programming for short-time non-violent offenders to help effectuate their timely release and aggressively utilizing alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders and the increased use of treatment programs.
State Sen. Shirley Kitchen, a longtime proponent of prison reform and second chance initiatives, has worked closely over the years with the bill’s prime sponsor, state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R-Montgomery) on promoting more sensible corrections policies.
“Building more prisons is not the answer. We must be smarter about corrections spending and use alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders so this legislation is a good step forward,” said Kitchen (D-Phila.). “The majority of prisoners will be released back into the public and they should have the tools to get a decent job, be productive members of society and stay out of jail.
“If we implement this reform correctly and use what is available in the plan regarding the management of non-violent prisoners as they are absorbed into society, then all taxpayers save money,” she said.
Senate Bill 100 offers several provisions to help reduce the prison population without risking the safety of the public. The bill makes more nonviolent offenders eligible for Pennsylvania’s alternative sentencing programs, including county intermediate punishment, state intermediate punishment, state motivational boot camp, and the recidivism risk reduction incentive.
The bill also establishes the Safe Community Reentry Program and requires the Department of Corrections to establish a comprehensive program to reduce recidivism and ensure the successful reentry and reintegration of offenders into the community.
Senate Bill 100 is back under consideration in the Senate after receiving unanimous approval, first in the Senate, then in the House with amendments.
“We need to shift our fundamental way of thinking when it comes to corrections. Too many incarcerated men and women can be monitored and reformed with alternative sentencing initiatives and smarter parole policies,” said state Sen. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery), the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee. “Measures like Senate Bill 100 will help Pennsylvania enact smarter and more cost-effective corrections practices that will ease spending without jeopardizing public safety.”
Senate Democrats are generally supportive of prison reforms and have sought over the years to make changes.
“As part of the Senate Democratic budget priorities this year, we outlined a detailed plan that would have lessened the burden on our prison system and reduced costs,” said state Sen. Jay Costa (D-Allegheny), the Democratic leader. “We believe that corrections reform dealing with non-violent offenders is a fundamental step toward reducing prison costs and recidivism. It will save taxpayer dollars in the long run.”
Costa served on the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing for many years. He was appointed to the commission in 1997. Sen. Leach currently serves on the commission.
State spending on corrections has exploded in the past three decades, from $185 million in 1985 to $1.8 billion this year. Since the Special Legislative Session on Crime in the mid-1990s, Pennsylvania’s prison population has nearly doubled.
“The Department of Corrections is the fourth largest recipient of spending in the state budget and spending has increased with the dramatic rise in the number of prisoners in the past few decades,” said state Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Phila.), the Democratic chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It is common sense to enact reforms that ease overcrowding, reduce recidivism and provide non-violent offenders and ex-offenders with opportunities to move on a better path. The reforms offered in Senate Bill 100 are a solid step toward achieving those goals, and we must continue to seek innovative initiatives that will keep prison costs in check while maintaining public safety.”
The legislation passed the state House earlier in the week and now is headed back to the Senate for concurrence.
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Monroeville, June 14, 2012 — Education experts, labor leaders, area school administrators and school board members today laid out disastrous financial problems at a state Senate hearing on the impact of state public school funding cuts.
Held at Sen. Jim Brewster’s (D-Allegheny/Westmoreland) request, the hearing was aimed at gaining a better understanding of how state funding cuts are impacting schools and taxpayers. Testimony was also offered on ways to raise additional revenues or establish greater school efficiencies.
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“Despite the proposed state subsidy restorations, area school boards continue to struggle with dire financial challenges that have resulted in curriculum cutbacks, teacher lay-offs and steep local property tax hikes,” Brewster said. “This discussion enabled local school officials and educational experts to weigh in on their funding challenges, and ways we can adequately and reliably fund our public schools.”
Sen. Lisa Boscola (D-Northampton/Lehigh/Monroe), who chairs the committee, added, “As we finalize the state’s budget in the days ahead, school funding will be one of more crucial and controversial issues. Gaining input from school board members and administrators across the state who are actually in the trenches struggling with funding shortfalls will be invaluable to us.”
In his testimony, Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D-Chester/Montgomery), who serves as Democratic chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the state now provides $352 million less for public schools than it did in fiscal 2008-09. He said less state support has translated into higher property taxes, an “onerous tax that takes no measure of true wealth or income.”
He added that the Corbett Administration’s school funding shortfalls are leading children from “the school door to the prison gate,” will fail to prepare our children for the new world economy and threaten to “destroy Pennsylvania’s ability to compete economically for decades into the future.”
All of the area superintendents and school board members who testified sharply criticized the Corbett Administration’s education policies. Many predicted that a growing number of schools would soon be facing deficits and on the brink of financial collapse. Many pointed to dwindling state subsidies, unfunded mandates and being cornered into annually hiking property taxes, furloughing teachers and cutting educational programs.
Michael Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, told the senators there are very few incentives for young people to go into the teaching profession these days because of the widespread funding uncertainty and lack of respect for teachers.
Boscola commended Brewster for his “unrelenting efforts to find additional revenue sources to supplement stagnant school subsidies.
Last year Brewster introduced legislation that would dedicate half of a 7 percent natural gas drilling fee for public school funding. The bill would generate $280 million annually, but majority Republicans have buried the proposal in a senate committee.
In both of his first two years in office, Gov. Corbett proposed steep educational funding cuts in his budget proposals. Last year, the governor proposed cutting $1.1 billion before the legislature restored $200 million. This year, the senate version of the budget bill would level fund public school funding by restoring an additional $100 million. Boscola predicted that this year’s budget will be finalized in the next week or two.
Brewster said many school districts cannot absorb huge state funding cuts with growing personnel costs, rising energy and physical plant costs and skyrocketing employee pension costs.
“While the Corbett Administration boasts about holding the line on state taxes, they have fostered a tax shifting shell game that leaves our schools, students and taxpayers out on a limb,” Brewster said. “Our kids deserve an opportunity for a good education, not some cut-rate abbreviated mishmash that does little more than sound good in right wing stump speeches.”
Joining Boscola, Brewster and Dinniman at the hearing were Democratic Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny), and Senators Wayne Fontana (D-Allegheny), Vincent Hughes (D-Phila.), Rich Kasunic (D-Fayette/Somerset), and Tim Solobay (D-Washington).
Those who testified included: Senator Andrew Dinniman, Democratic Chairman of the Senate Education Committee;Michael J. Crossey, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA); Robert Pallone, president of the New Kensington-Arnold School District School Board; Richard P. Livingston, president of the Clairton City School District Board of Directors; Marilyn Messina, president of the Woodland Hills School District Board of Education; Dr. George Batterson, superintendent of the New Kensington-Arnold School District; Dr. Bart Rocco, superintendent of the Elizabeth-Forward School District; and Dr. Michael Panza, superintendent of the Sto-Rox School District
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