Category: Guest Authors

Cut Cost First, Thank You Joe Gale

Cut Cost First

By Leo Knepper

Last year the CAP PAC made its first major foray into county politics and it just paid dividends for residents of Montgomery County. In his race for Commissioner, Joe Gale ran as an unabashed conservative. Earlier this week Commissioner Gale took a vocal stand for those principles and saved his constituents $3.5 million.

Due to a law passed in 2013, Pennsylvania currently has the highest gasoline taxes in the country. That same law contained a provision allowing counties to enact a $5 registration fee for vehicles. Seeing an easy source of revenue, Gale’s Democratic colleagues were set to extract more money from Montgomery County taxpayers. That plan was derailed when Joe brought media attention to the pending vote. Unlike his Republican predecessor, who would “go along to get along”, Gale went to the public to make sure they were aware of the tax increase.

Cut Cost First, Thank You Joe Gale
Joe Gale actually fights for the citizens.

There is a great deal of similarity between what is happening in Montgomery County, and what typically happens in Harrisburg. Rather than looking at how to save money, elected officials enact a new fee or tax and take the money from their constituents. In this instance, the $5 per vehicle fee would purportedly go to “infrastructure” projects. While infrastructure is arguably one of the few legitimate services government should provide, taxpayers are not getting the most for their money.

As Commissioner Gale points out, and we have been talking about for years, infrastructure and other construction projects are subject to wage controls that force taxpayers to overpay for labor. These wage controls come in two basic types, an artificially calculated “prevailing wage” and project labor agreements (PLA’s). Both of these wage controls benefit organized labor and PLA’s also exclude nonunion contractors from the bidding process.

Eliminating prevailing wage and PLA’s would drastically decrease the cost of public projects and make tax dollars go much further. However, it is politically easier for elected officials to take more money from taxpayers than it is to take on organized labor.

We applaud Gale’s willingness to stand up for taxpayers. His actions tell us that the CAP PAC made a good investment in his candidacy.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Cut Cost First, Thank You Joe Gale

Ghost Teachers Unnecessary Tax Burden

Ghost Teachers Unnecessary Tax Burden

By Leo Knepper

The Commonwealth Foundation undertook the monumental task of acquiring and analyzing teachers’ union contracts from 499 school districts. Their main findings were shocking, but not surprising. Two of items that caught our attention were the prevalence of release time provisions and the “generosity” of healthcare benefits.

Ghost Teachers Unnecessary Tax BurdenRelease time or “ghost teacher” provisions force taxpayers to foot the bill for union activities. Roughly 20 percent of contracts across the state allow for a full release. These teachers don’t set foot in the classroom at all. Instead, they are on the district payroll and can collect a variety of benefits while they work for the union. One of the most expensive benefits that ghost teachers had received, until recently, was a taxpayer funded pension.

On the issue of health insurance benefits, in 99 districts taxpayers foot the entire bill. The workers covered under the teachers’ union contracts don’t pay anything for their premiums. In instances where teachers are required to pay toward their premium costs, they pay far less than the Pennsylvania average of $3,598 per person.

A full summary of the Commonwealth Foundation’s findings can be found on their website; the district-by-district contract details can be found here.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Ghost Teachers Unnecessary Tax Burden

Pennsylvania Stable Rating Will Be But Temporary

Pennsylvania Stable Rating Will Be But Temporary

By Leo Knepper

Earlier this week, Moody’s upgraded Pennsylvania’s financial outlook from “negative” to “stable.”

The improvement stems from the Legislature and the Governor avoiding each other just long enough to get a budget passed.

No one in the Capitol is rejoicing, however. The looming public pensions crisis serves as a constant reminder that the Commonwealth’s credit ratings can fall at any moment. Pennsylvania Stable Rating Will Be But Temporary

Sadly, not every lawmaker in the General Assembly understands how precarious and downright dangerous this crisis is. Some lawmakers maintain their ignorance purposefully, while others simply don’t understand the math. Members of both parties, in collusion with public-sector unions and special interest groups, are all that stand in the way of genuine reform-reform that could potentially lift the Commonwealth’s financial outlook from “stable” to “positive.”

In an op-ed published last month in the Philadelphia Inquirer, actuary and business consultant Richard C. Dreyfuss provided a frank and compelling summation of the problem:

“Our $63 billion combined unfunded liability for the Public School Employee’s Retirement System (PSERS) and the State Employees’ Retirement System (SERS) is the result of underfunding, poor investment returns, and benefit enhancements. It’s measured in today’s dollars and based on a number of assumptions, including an optimistic annual investment return of 7.5 percent.”

He also provided a relatively straightforward, common-sense solution:

“Pension reform will truly be underway when all new [public employees] participate in a stand-alone, defined-contribution plan and we commit to paying off our pension debt over 20 years.”

Simple right? Well, not to House Speaker Mike Turzai.

In an op-ed published earlier this month in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Turzai laid out his reasons for supporting a watered down solution known as the “stacked hybrid bill.” He says the bill would maintain “elements of the current defined benefit system, while instituting the first 401(k) system in state history.”

“Unlike other ‘reform’ proposals, the stacked hybrid approach doesn’t include arbitrage gambles, funding reductions or gimmicky quick fixes. We fully meet our funding obligations to the retirement systems.”

The hybrid plan does not “fully meet” funding obligations. Even if we switched the entire system from a defined-benefit to a defined-contribution retirement plan, that merely stops the bleeding; it won’t do anything to address the massive unfunded liability that has already accumulated. The stacked hybrid plan being promoted by state House leaders doesn’t even stop the bleeding because it maintains a defined benefit component.

This attempt at reform is, itself, a gimmick. Keeping any elements of the defined-benefit plan virtually guarantees that the unfunded liabilities will not only go unencumbered; they will continue to build.

Political courage may be in short supply these days, but numbers don’t lie. Pennsylvania taxpayers need their representatives to protect them from the “fiscal cliff” Turzai and his fellow lawmakers should know is coming.

The only solution is to stop pretending this Band-Aid of a bill is the tourniquet that will stop the bleeding and finally pass meaningful reform. The General Assembly and Governor Wolf must stop ignoring reality and pretending that half-measure reforms will stop the problem.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Stable Rating Will Be But Temporary

IBEW Local 98 Backs Hillary

IBEW Local 98 Backs Hillary

By Leo Knepper

IBEW Local 98 Backs Hillary
The IBEW Local 98 choice.

You are probably not alone if you’ve never heard of IBEW Local 98, or John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty, Jr. However, they are names that are familiar to people who follow state politics closely, or the politics of Philadelphia. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 2014, IBEW Local 98 is Pennsylvania’s largest independent source of campaign cash.

According to the 2014 article, the Local 98 spent over $25 million on political races from 2000 through May, 2014. Since then, they have spent at least another $2 million. Recipients of Johnny Doc’s largess include Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty, John’s brother. The IBEW’s contributions to Justice Dougherty were over $1.5 million. Attorney General Kathleen Kane, Gov. Tom Wolf, Gov. Tom Corbett, Republican Attorney General Candidate John Rafferty, and a host of other candidates have also received contributions from the union.

According to the Inquirer:

“Federal authorities executed search warrants at more than half a dozen locations, including Dougherty’s house in South Philadelphia, his sister’s home next door, the Local 98 hall at 17th and Spring Garden Streets, and the Mount Laurel home of union president Brian Burrows.

“At midday at union headquarters, agents removed at least a hundred boxes of paperwork, along with several computer hard drives, loading them into a yellow Penske truck. The scene was repeated shortly after 3 p.m., as boxes, computer hard drives, and a laptop were carried from the union business office nearby.

“Seized were bank records, invoices, credit card records, and tax forms, a person familiar with the investigation said… a person familiar with the investigation said it focused on the union’s finances and its involvement in the political campaigns of Mayor Kenney and state Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty, who is Dougherty’s brother. Federal authorities are also scrutinizing Dougherty’s finances and taxes, the source said.”

A citizen reporter was quick enough to capture one of the raids on video.

It isn’t without irony that the IBEW office is emblazoned with banners extolling Hillary Clinton for President. In April, Hillary Clinton had a sit-down meeting with John Dougherty.

This investigation could have far-reaching implications for federal, state and local politics. We will keep you posted about further developments as they occur.
Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

IBEW Local 98 Backs Hillary

Revenue Scheme Failing In Pa.

Revenue Scheme Failing In Pa.

By Leo Knepper

In the search for revenue to cover the General Assembly’s insatiable need for more spending, the legislature looked for new sources of revenue and taxes. Ignoring the $200 million that they borrowed from other funds, the ill-conceived choices they made are already falling through. Revenue Scheme Failing In Pa.

Lawmakers thought they had a sure winner when they decided to sell casinos licenses to sell alcohol between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.; they were wrong. Casinos have scoffed at the $1 million license fee. One casino spokesman stated that they likely wouldn’t take the license if it was free. This lack of interest from casinos for the 24-hour liquor licenses creates an immediate $12 million hole.

The second hole opening up is even more tragic. In their abject greed, the General Assembly levied a 40 percent wholesale tax on electronic cigarette and “vaping” supplies. Adding insult to injury, the new tax applies to merchandise that is already in stock. As one small business owner noted:

“‘It’s almost as if the tax was designed to kill small business,’ said Chris Hughes, owner of Fat Cat Vapor Shop in Montoursville.

“Hughes estimated that he would have to cut the state a $40,000 check for the $100,000 in inventory he currently has on hand.”

Because Mr. Hughes does not have the ability to send the government a $40,000, he is liquidating his inventory and going out of business. Now the state will lose the tax revenue Mr. Hughes’s business was generating and the new taxes the General Assembly had counted on to fill in the budget deficit.

These problems could have been avoided if the legislature and the Governor had made an attempt to rein in spending. Instead, they added to the corporate welfare budget at the expense of small businesses. Now business owners like Mr. Hughes closing shop because of legislative greed.
Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Revenue Scheme Failing In Pa.

Ghost Teachers Lose, Taxpayers Win

Ghost Teachers Lose, Taxpayers Win

By Leo Knepper

It is fairly common and legal in Pennsylvania for teachers to engage in union activity while continuing to collect their teaching salary. The practice, officially known as “release time”, is written into union contracts all over the commonwealth. In addition to receiving a taxpayer-funded salary, these ghost teachers were also accruing time in the Pennsylvania School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS). In other words, some union officials who had not set foot in a classroom for years were increasing the value of their pension at taxpayers’ expense. That arrangement may finally be coming to an end. Ghost Teachers Lose, Taxpayers Win

In late June, PSERS revoked the pension credit accumulated by a ghost teacher in Allentown. Furthermore, PSERS ruled that the past two union heads had accrued more than $1 million in pension benefits illegally. An article published by Watchdog.org details PSERS findings:

“PSERS concluded, ‘an active member is permitted to receive retirement credit while working for a collective bargaining organization provided: (1) at least half the members of the organization are members of PSERS; (2) the employer approves the leave; (3) the collective bargaining organization reimburses the employer for the member’s salary and benefits; (4) the member works full-time; and (5) the employer reports only the salary the member would have earned as a school employee.'”

PSERS’s ruling is great news for taxpayers. Teachers who are working exclusively for the union have no business being paid by taxpayers or collecting a taxpayer funded pension. The union is appealing the decision; we will let you know what ultimately happens.

Ghost Teachers Lose, Taxpayers Win

Irresponsible Budget Indicates Incompetent Legislators

Irresponsible Budget Indicates Incompetent Legislators

By Leo Knepper

The irresponsible budget passed by the General Assembly became law without the Governor’s signature early Tuesday morning (July 12). Because spending exceeds revenue projections, the budget was not balanced. Pennsylvania’s constitution requires a balanced budget. The imbalance was corrected, at taxpayers’ expense, on Wednesday.

Irresponsible Budget Indicates Incompetent LegislatorsOn a somewhat positive note, the increased taxes on heating bills was not part of the tax increase. However, there was a lot not to like about the legislation. To satisfy the General Assembly’s insatiable need for spending increases, taxes were raised on tobacco products, e-cigarettes, and digital downloads (music, movies, apps, etc.) among other things. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has a full list of the tax increases and sources of additional revenue.

Here are the roll call votes for the House and Senate.

Ed Notes: Of the 31 Republicans in the 50-member Pennsylvania Senate, 17 voted against the tax hikes including Delaware County Republicans Tom McGarrigle (R-26) and Tom Killion (R-9). Andy Dinniman of the 19th District was the only Democrat to vote against the bill. Kudos to them.

Of the 118 Republicans in the 203-member State House, 54 voted for the bill including Delaware County Republicans Bill Adolph (165), Steve Barrar (160), Nick Miccarelli (R-162) and James Santora (R-163). Republican Chris Quinn, who won a special election, July 12, to fill the 168th District seat vacated by Killion for his Senate run, did not vote as he had not yet been sworn in. Of the 84 House Democrats, 11 voted against the bill including, believe it or not, Delaware County Democrat Leanne Krueger-Braneky (D-161).  Mr. Conservative Steve Barrar, mull that one around.

Mr. Knepper is executive director of Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania.

Trump Recycling Speech Exposes Progressive Hypocrisy

Trump Recycling Speech Exposes Progressive Hypocrisy

By Joseph B Dychala

One of the most seemingly mundane, yet simultaneously fascinating experiences of my academic career involved recycling aluminum cans in a General Chemistry class I took at Delaware County Community College. My family has always been “green”, even before it was fashionable. Turn off the spigot while brushing your teeth, compost table scraps, grow backyard vegetables, use only what you need, waste not want not – all valuable lessons taught to me by my parents and their siblings, the Greatest Generation. Perhaps this stems from their strong Faith as we are all us called to be good stewards of our resources, quite possibly because they lived through the Depression and truly knew what it was to want.

Trump Recycling Speech Exposes Progressive Hypocrisy
Progressive hipsters thought saving jobs and recycling waste was something to laugh at.

This week Donald Trump gave a speech at a recycling plant in Pennsylvania and that region of the Internet known as Twitter couldn’t contain itself. Garbage speech in front of garbage pile stated one user, countless Oscar the Grouch references, cheap shots at the folks running the campaign, at Trump himself, the list goes on.

Those bales of crushed cans represented many things to me: jobs at factories producing the nations beverages; the countless hours of enjoyment at picnics, parties, gatherings at pubs and Legion halls, quick refreshment on street corners and in office building alike and of course the refuse collectors who gather this material from our curbs and the men and women who work in these recycling plants to make the most of our natural resources. Those cans also represented human ingenuity, the will to produce something convenient and affordable, something many of us take for granted today yet didn’t exist at the country’s founding.

To read the negative comments from Twitter users was bothersome. I have to wonder how many of these people are the ones that don’t want the jobs supposedly Americans don’t want to do, to justify unfettered immigration and open borders. Are these the hypocrites that drone on and on about saving the planet yet don’t bother to throw their own trash in a receptacle let alone separate material for recycling while demanding more intrusive regulations from the EPA. Are we as a people so out of touch that we forget convenience comes with a price.

To read these comments stating this material was “garbage” and not useful material destined for re-purposing reinforces the sad notion we live in a throwaway society. Here were images of an business, providing a service not only for consumers but quite possibly to the health of the planet and a sizable number of comments were so crass the only garbage I witnessed were the comments of a spoiled bunch of elitist brats from their safe spaces.

The phrase one man’s trash is another man’s treasure comes to mind…

Trump Recycling Speech Exposes Progressive Hypocrisy

Open Letter Bernie Sanders

Open Letter Bernie Sanders

By Dave Lindorff

You ran a great race, achieving something that most of us thought would be impossible, running as an “avowed” socialist in today’s United States of America, against one of the most hardened and tested political machines in the country, the Clintons, and winning 22 primaries and caucuses with a total of over 11 million votes. And while Hillary and her minions threw everything they had at you, including voter suppression efforts, lies about your voting record in the Senate, unfair assistance from the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic officials, and manipulation of the media, you came excruciatingly close to knocking her off and winning the nomination. Open Letter Bernie Sanders

Okay, you didn’t make it to the finish line.

Now the pressure is on you, from the corporate media that originally ignored you, then attacked you and finally resorted to outright corruption the night before the June 7 primary by prematurely calling the race for Clinton in hopes of depressing your turnout in the last six primaries, and now to a meeting tomorrow with President Obama, who will try and convince you to give up, and to endorse Hillary Clinton.

But while it’s true that way back at the start of your seemingly Quixotic campaign, you did promise to endorse her if you lost, that campaign has since evolved beyond even your imagination into a powerful movement for “political revolution,” with millions of people behind it. Also over the intervening months, you have both seen how unprincipled your opponent can be, and have also done a masterful job of highlighting just how corrupted she has become as a person and politician. You’ve pointed out how she has been bought by the too-big-to-fail bankers, who have paid her legal bribes totaling millions of dollars, euphemistically calling them “speaking fees.” You’ve denounced her acceptance of hundreds of millions of dollars of legal bribes in the form of campaign contributions from key industries like the drug companies, the military contractors, the oil giants and even the for-profit prison industry. While you graciously declined early on and waited, in my view, way too long to go after Hillary for her improper and illegal use, for years, of a private email server during her four-year tenure as Secretary of State, late in the primary battle you finally did point out that she was acting in an illegal way (one that now has her as the first presumptive presidential candidate in memory running while being actively investigated by the FBI). You also intimated — correctly in my humble view as an investigative reporter — that this move of hers to avoid the Freedom of Information Act was linked to her efforts to peddle influence to US corporate executives and foreign leaders in return for cash going into the Clinton Foundation coffers — a sordid arrangement reeking of corruption and self-dealing.

You’ve been right in all of this campaign criticism, and you have successfully exposed Hillary Clinton as the bought-and-paid candidate of big money, a woman who will say whatever she thinks it takes to get herself elected but who, in the end, will be serving the interests of those who paid for her election, not of the American people.

How could you now even think about turning around and doing what you originally said you would do and endorsing her? How could you, after exposing Clinton as the candidate of big banks, big pharma, big military and rich people, ask your millions of supporters — including people who dropped their hard-earned $27 into your campaign, often multiple times, to the tune, I believe, of over $200 million — suddenly turn around and ask them to back her in the general election?

If you were to endorse Hillary Clinton at this point, you would be destroying everything you have accomplished in this amazing campaign. Many people — especially the young people for whom your movement may have been a first-ever experience at political action — would surely become cynical about politics. Others would just write you off as just another self-serving politician accepting a deal. Most would ignore any call for unity anyhow, making it doubly pointless and destructive for you to make it. So what would you accomplish then, except perhaps to be repaid for your submission with some offer of a plum post on an important Senate Committee (assuming that the Republicans, in a race against Clinton, don’t end up staying in control of the Senate, making such a promised plum into a prune)?

Fortunately there is another path, and I’m sure you’ve been at least thinking about it. That is to run in the general election, this time going up against both Hillaryand Trump (as well as the Libertarians and the Conservatives, who will be vying with Trump for the country’s right-leaning voters).

You could run as an independent. I’m sure you’d get plenty of financial backing again from your supporters, as in the primaries, and that you’d do creditably well, too if you did. But as Ralph Nader learned, the problem is you’d be wasting a lot if not most of your time and much of your funding fighting simply to get your name on state ballots — a process which the two established parties have conspired to make extremely difficult. In fact, many states’ deadlines for getting an independent name on the ballot have already, or are about to pass.

On the other hand, I know you have been approached about, but reportedly have yet to respond to, offers from people like Dr. Jill Stein, a leader of the Green Party and its presumptive nominee for this year’s presidential race as she was in 2012, and Seattle’s socialist City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant too, about seeking and accepting the Green Party’s nomination for president (the Green Party’s nominating convention is in early August). Stein has even said she’d let you have the top spot, running for president!

As I assume you are aware, the Green Party is already on the ballot in 21 states having a total of 310 electoral votes, which is 40 more than the 270 needed to win the presidency. The party is reportedly working hard to get on a number of other state lines too in time for November’s election and is already close to having 25 states with another 60 electoral votes. They’re not stopping there (and would do even better with some of your campaign money to pay for lawyers and petition gatherers). If you got that nomination, you’d be well on your way to being a viable national third-party candidate, and could work to get on the ballots of other critical states. This could be done in some states by getting smaller state parties, for example Peace & Freedom or the Working People’s Party to nominate you, and where no other option exists by fighting to get listed as an independent candidate.

Could you win in such a five-way race? I believe that in this unprecedented political environment, running against two candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, who have the highest negative polling numbers in the history of polls, you could indeed win. You start with the more than 10 million people who’ve already voted for you once in the primaries (who would surely vote for you again in November), and since you have already run in all 50 states, your name recognition is as high as it could possibly be. Unlike Ralph Nader in his campaigns, you are virtually guaranteed as a third-party candidate to be included in the nationally televised debates in the fall, which will only increase your chances of winning. And you know you will be deluged with campaign funds from your backers in even greater amounts than during the primaries if you are running for the White House for real in the general election.

But even if you didn’t win an outright majority of electoral votes, there’s a good chance you’d win the presidency. All you would really have to do is out-do Hillary Clinton. That’s because given the limitations of Donald Trump’s appeal, and the appeal of even the total right-leaning candidates’ votes, it’s a pretty safe bet that between the two of you, Clinton and yourself, you will win a combined majority of the electoral votes.

Dave Lindorff is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net and has asked that his letter be made viral.

Open Letter Bernie Sanders

Pension Debt Grows $15M Per Day

Pension Debt Grows $15M Per Day

By Rep. John D. McGinnis
$15 million of new pension debt each and every day over the last 15 years! That’s what our state government has dumped on the taxpayers of the Commonwealth, all the while falsely claiming to have had balanced budgets and making Pennsylvanians some of the highest taxed and most debt burdened citizens in America. No wonder the demographic projection for Pennsylvania’s future is dire.

The new pension bill that passed the House on June 14th does nothing to stop the increasing pension debt and, frankly, is a joke, albeit a cruel one. Even if all the assumptions baked into this convoluted plan hold true (and none of them likely will), the total present value of taxpayers’ “savings” over the next 35 years is about $1 billion. Compare that to the present value of the unfunded liabilities of the state pension systems, which is $70 billion and grows $1 billion every ten weeks, and you get an idea of how unserious elected officials are at addressing the single worst financial calamity in the history of Pennsylvania. Pension Debt Grows $15M Per Day

It is particularly disappointing that rank-and-file members were excluded from trying to improve the bill through the amendment process on the House floor. Using sleight-of-hand parliamentary maneuvers that would have impressed David Copperfield, and manipulating the requirement for actuarial analysis of all pension bills, House leadership shut out all meaningful reform. No House member even had a chance to look at the actuarial analysis for the stacked hybrid pension amendment before they voted on it. All other amendments were ruled out of order because the House wouldn’t wait two weeks (or two hours for that matter) to review legislation that will have a fiscal impact on the Commonwealth for more than 80 years.

In 2001 and 2002, legislators expropriated for themselves and other public sector employees a $15 billion pension surplus that belonged to taxpayers. In 2003 and again in 2010, legislators voted to divert taxpayer dollars intended for pension funding to other line items in the budget. These acts would be called theft and misappropriation of funds if it weren’t for the folks writing the law.

The upshot is that taxpayers, still shackled with paying for and indemnifying exceedingly costly public sector retirement plans, are also stuck with paying off $70 billion of pension debt. As private sector employees struggle to fund their own modest retirements, public sector employees are guaranteed the most generous retirement benefits anywhere. Who’s the master and who’s the servant in this relationship?

Supporters say the new pension bill is a step in the right direction. Folks, if you are on a beach when a tsunami is about to hit and you take one tiny step away from the ocean, it’s not going to make any difference. It is past time for the incremental approach to fixing the financial house of our state pension systems.

Supporters also say the bill will slow the deteriorating financial condition of the state pension systems. That’s not true, but even if it were, what difference would it make to drive off a cliff at 55 m.p.h. instead of 60 m.p.h.?

The governor and supporters of the stacked hybrid plan will claim that bipartisanship is alive and well in Harrisburg. The sad fact is it always has been with respect to public sector pensions. The party of stupid and the party of evil always find a way to agree to do what is both stupid and evil. Taxpayers today and into the distant future will have a hard time appreciating this “spirit” of cooperation. Or, as growing numbers of citizens are already doing, they will just leave the state.

John D. McGinnis represents the 79th District in the Pennsylvania House

Pension Debt Grows $15M Per Day