A packed house of about 70 was on hand, tonight, (Nov. 18) at the Newtown Square Knights of Columbus Hall to hear Leo Knepper give the latest regarding the various dramas occurring in Harrisburg in a talk before the Delaware County Patriots.
Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, an organization founded to raise the standard of living of all Pennsylvanians and battle government corruption.
Knepper pointed out that the sales tax hike being pushed by Gov. Tom Wolf is a 21 percent increase and noted that there are plenty of places the budget could be cut to more than make up for the $2 billion the proposed tax hike from 6 percent to 7.25 percent would be expected to raise.
Knepper said that the state is spending $250 million for race horse development alone. He said that besides the General Fund the state has $18 billion tucked away in fat-filled special and other funds.
The special and other funds are the playgrounds of special interests he implied and are never considered for pruning.
“We need to get them moving from other special interests because the taxpayers are special enough,” Knepper said.
Knepper said money is still being doled out in Harrisburg with favored agencies getting lines of credit. He said this included Gov. Wolf’s travel expenses. He said Wolf was selecting services not to fund based on how much suffering they would inflict on the populace so they would agitate for a budget agreement.
Knepper noted that Wolf had vetoed stopgap budgets passed by the legislature.
Knepper also described how regulations unnecessarily raise the burden on taxpayers. He cited specifically the prevailing wage mandate, the state law that requires any significant public project to pay a wage set by the state Department of Labor and Industry’s Bureau of Labor Law Compliance. Knepper described how one school district bidded out a project under prevailing wage and without out and found they would have shaved the cost by 40 percent but for the state law.
For Springfield residents, that means the approved $140 million new high school would cost just $80 million sans the burdensome law.
In other bad news, Knepper said that regarding Pennsylvania’s pension crisis the $50 billion officially claimed unfunded liability regarding the Pennsylvania State Employees Retirement System (SERS) and Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) is actually $120 billion if normal accounting standards are used.
Among those collecting a public-guaranteed SERS pensions are Gary Schultz and his pal Jerry Sandusky. Schultz’s yearly pension is $330,699. Yes, you working class person, you have to cover that.
Regarding the Syrians that Gov. Wolf is trying to bring in, Knepper said his group is researching the issue and that while they have not had time to come to any certain conclusion it appears that there is little a state can do to stop a federal resettlement program.
Agnes Trouillet was given an ovation at the meeting. Agnes is a Parisian who is teaching French at Penn and doing a paper on American Tea Party groups. While she didn’t know any of the victims of the Nov. 13 terrorist attack she had friends who did.