Congressman Jim Gerlach (R-Pa6) has ended his quest for governor but two other Republican candidates remain besides front-runner Attorney General Tom Corbett, and today’s Philadelphia Inquirer has a story about how the supporters of one of them — state Rep Sam Rohrer who holds the seat for the 128th District in Berks County — feel the GOP establishment is unduly dismissing their man.
Which is probably true and is a shame since Rohrer, who has held his seat since 1992, has some interesting ideas and is not afraid to take on the special interests about the most pressing problems facing this state such as the ever increasing school property tax.
Rohrer has introduced House Bill 1275 — the School Property Tax Elimination Act — in every session since 2004 which would replace the $6 billion to $8 billion in lost
residential school tax revenue by broadening the state sales tax to
include more goods and services, such as nonprescription drugs and the
fees that a home plumber charges.
If you think about it, it is more sensible to tax the plumbing work than the home itself.
Still the better means of attacking the threat to home ownership would be on the expense side — such as ending prevailing wage requirements for municipal projects, allowing school districts to hire outside the educational establishment for administrators and, most importantly, ending the right to strike for teachers which would curtail the ever increasing cost of salaries which is by far the largest part of any school district’s budget and takes the largest bite from the taxpayers wallet even including county and township/borough/city expenses.
The primary election is May 18. The third candidate on the GOP gubernatorial ballot is National Guardsman Sgt. Robert Allen Mansfield.