Harrisburg, July 6, 2012 – State Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa said that the Senate Democratic appeal of the Legislative Reapportionment Commission Final Plan was filed with the Supreme Court today. (View Sen. Costa’s Statement)
Costa, on behalf of his caucus, is asking the court to review the map that was approved by the commission June 8 on a 4-1 vote, with Costa voting no. Costa (D-Allegheny) says the partisan map has far too many unnecessary county splits in violation of the Pennsylvania Constitution and that the commission failed to heed the guidance of the court’s opinion when it rejected the first gerrymandered map.
In January, the Supreme Court threw out the first version of the redistricting plan saying that the map contained far too many unnecessary splits. It remanded the plan back to the Legislative Reapportionment Commission for reconsideration.
Costa’s comments on the filing are as follows:
“The Senate Democrats filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court asking that the redistricting plan adopted in June by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission be overturned. The partisan map the commission approved contained far too many county splits, was drawn to explicitly help Republicans retain their Senate majority at the expense of citizens’ rights, and was adopted in violation of due process.
“During commission consideration of the final plan, I offered a specific amendment that would have significantly reduced the number of the county splits while holding the population deviation steady. Despite the value of reducing splits and hewing to Constitution, the commission rejected my amendment thus validating my position that the final map contained unnecessary splits and was flawed.
The final map does an injustice to Sen. Ferlo’s district without an opportunity for Sen. Ferlo’s constituency to comment and contains unnecessary splits in Beaver, Cumberland, Dauphin, Montgomery, Washington and Allegheny Counties, among others, that are for political reasons and not grounded in constitutional law. The plan should be reviewed closely and rejected because it puts us back to where we started – with a plan that is unconstitutional.”
→ Click here to view the appeals that have been filed.
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 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.
[hdvideo id=40 ]
“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.
-30-
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.
###
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.
[hdvideo id=39 ]
“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
# # #
