Gov. Tom Wolf this Halloween afternoon came to Media, Pa. to try to get a Philly union boss’ brother elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court but was instead met with a crowd demanding he “sign the budget” and “give us books.”
The Democrat rally held on Veterans Square was probably more than half Wolf opponents. At least 100 persons attended.
One protester from Saint Dorthy’s School in Drexel Hill noted that the children have no textbooks and teachers are mimeographing lessons.
Penn Delco School Director Lisa Esler expressed anger and disgust with the governor’s political actions.
“I don’t think it’s fair or even ethical for state law to require a school district to pass a budget on time, collect our money and then hold the money hostage,” she said.
That’s what your ego has wrought Governor.
The state legislature passed $30.179 billion budget on June 30 that was a 3.6 percent increase over the previous year and would have increased education spending by $100 million.
Little children plead for Gov. Tom Wolf to set his ego aside and get them school books.
Wherever one stands on the political spectrum one must be ashamed of this governor and his ego-driven agenda.
Attending the rally with Wolf and those seeking local office were the Dem Supreme Court ticket and U.S. Senator Bob Casey Jr. significantly adding to the embarrassment.
It should be noted that Wolf was the only speaker that got significant grief from the crowd.
Wolf Delco Rally Dem Fiasco As Budget Becomes Issue
Think of the children, Governor, and stop playing politics.
The Pennsylvania Council of Children, Youth and Family Services has filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services seeking to compel them to perform their duty to continue to fund the critical and essential services necessary to care for and protect the most vulnerable populations of this Commonwealth – abused, neglected and dependent children, their at-risk families and juvenile offenders.
The legal action, filed today, Sept. 15, with Commonwealth Court by Lamb McErlane, PC, seeks to ensure that child safety and community protection services are designated as being essential even during budget disputes. PCCYFS, which represents more than 100 private providers of child welfare and juvenile justice services in Pennsylvania, believes that children, youth and their families must be able to access needed and defined services without fear of delay or disruption, even in the absence of state budget decisions.
“Since July 1, PCCYFS has tried to work in a proactive and positive manner with the Wolf Administration to have the state’s child welfare and juvenile justice services designated as essential services to ensure that public dollars flow despite the current budget impasse,” said Bernadette Bianchi, Executive Director of PCCYFS. “Unfortunately the Governor’s Office has failed to acknowledge the Commonwealth’s responsibility to financially support funding for these mandated services. We wish we did not have to take this legal action, but it is necessary to ensure that children, who are entitled to these services, continue to have uninterrupted access to these crucial services.”
“In the vast majority of cases, these child welfare services – which include in-home supports, foster care, and residential placements – are court-ordered. Children requiring placement out-of-their own homes due to abuse or neglect need protection, but the Administration has nonetheless refused to classify these interventions as ‘essential’,” said attorney Joel L. Frank, legal counsel for PCCYFS.
“Juvenile offenders requiring rehabilitation to keep communities safe are also not included on this essential services list,” Frank said. “That the state receives federal money for many of these programs, but the Administration is refusing to make those existing federal funds, or the necessary state funds, available to counties to pay counties and service providers is frustrating, improper and violates a comprehensive federal and state statutory scheme enacted to protect and serve this specific population”.
“The state has a responsibility and a duty to fund these critical, essential programs,” said Alex Rahn, Wanner Associates and Government Affairs Consultant for PCCYFS. “The Administration’s failure to fund these programs – while at the same time claiming that child daycare subsidies are “essential” — is unacceptable and irresponsible public policy. This court action is designed to protect these vulnerable and at-risk populations. We will not stand by and allow the safety of children or our communities to be held hostage in this budget debate.”
Federal and state laws define the entitlements of children who have been abused or neglected. Services to ensure their ongoing safety, as well as the supports to be available to their families, are often also put into court orders. Many of these supports, including programs offered in the child’s home, foster family care and residential placement, are delivered through contracts between counties and private provider agencies. These services are clearly intended to be funded with designated public tax dollars.
Juvenile offenders who have been declared by the court to be in need of rehabilitation are another population of youth with entitlements to interventions. Those youth who present a threat to the safety of their community require placement interventions and are again primarily served through the private provider network. Although funding continues for some youth served in the State Youth Development Centers, services for youth presenting the same behaviors placed in private facilities are not.
Private agency staff are working every day to meet these legal and ethical expectations – many programs are staffed round the clock, seven days a week. The additional pressures of worrying about how to pay for the care, supervision, food and transportation for these children and youth by exhausting agency resources, taking out loans and staff layoffs are an unfair consequence to the agencies committed to this work. These services are absolutely essential to the health, safety, and protection of Pennsylvania’s children, are certainly required by federal and state laws and must be funded. PCCYFS is confident the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania will agree.
Over the last few weeks I have repeatedly read articles in various newspapers saying government-funded non-profit organizations and social programs are running out of money because the PA State budget did not pass on June 30.
These articles are misleading and deceptive.
As a small business owner, I know for a fact that cash continues to flow into Harrisburg.
How do I know this?
Since June 30, PA state taxes have continued to be deducted weekly from employee paychecks at my various companies.
In addition, these companies also continue to pay corporate and federal taxes.
I know for a fact that the cash flow into Harrisburg continues to be very strong and has not stopped because we are REQUIRED by the state to wire transfer Pennsylvania state taxes withheld weekly from our employees’ paychecks to Harrisburg.
Last Friday, August 14, one of the businesses I own issued 345 payroll checks and deducted $8,170 in employee withholding taxes.
Those withholding taxes will be wire transferred to the State of Pennsylvania today.
So far for 2015, we have sent $266,177 in employee deducted state taxes to Harrisburg.
In July, we purchased four waste collection trucks for a total of $918,477.
We paid Pennsylvania sales tax in the amount of $53,718 for the trucks which went to Harrisburg immediately.
We also paid $104,540 in federal excise taxes on those trucks.
The misleading information that is being fed to Pennsylvanians by the Wolf Administration makes me extremely angry and is an insult to Pennsylvanians that have payroll taxes deducted from their paychecks and it is also insulting to business owners all across Pennsylvania who continue to generate tax revenue each and every day.
It is a poor attempt to get the general public to think Governor Wolf’s budget proposal is the only option we have.
Guess what – there was another option.
Governor Wolf could have chosen to approve 270 line items for passage so cash flow would have continued to these agencies and organizations – he made the decision to veto the entire budget despite that option.
Governor Wolf made a huge mistake.
It is time Governor Wolf takes responsibility for his poor decision and put an end to the political games.
I’m curious – did you stop paying taxes on June 30?
By Scott Wagner
I am writing to respond to the June 25 Op-ed from Frances Wolf, first lady of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
It’s unfortunate that nearly a half-year after his inauguration Gov. Tom Wolf remains in campaign mode, crisscrossing the state with Mrs. Wolf and others making absurd claims about education spending.
Mrs. Wolf writes that King Elementary school, part of the Lancaster Area School District, has a library filled with 30-year-old textbooks and Mrs. Wolf is quoted saying, “They don’t have the funds to replace them with updated versions.” She leads readers to believe it’s the result of “devastating cuts” in state funding.
A quick check by my office reveals that the school district is sitting on a funding balance of $15.24 million.
And while the governor promises a windfall of new spending to help schools, he ducks action on the number one cause of school cutbacks and property tax hikes: skyrocketing pension costs.
That same school district the First Lady visited will see their pension costs go up by $4 million in 2016, which alone wipes out all of the promised new funding from the governor.
The fact is, Pennsylvania spends more on schools today than it ever has in the history of the Commonwealth, $27.4 billion.
That’s more than all but five other states in the nation. Pennsylvania is ranked 12th in per-pupil spending, at around $15,000, while the U.S. average is $11,300.
Obviously, if commitment to education was measured by dollars spent, Pennsylvania is among the most committed states in America.
But, if we measure that commitment by reining in the skyrocketing costs that are placing a crushing burden on schools, such as pensions and unchecked union dominance, then we have work to do.
Wolf wants to raise taxes – personal income taxes, sales taxes and impose a natural gas extraction tax. But in seeking his tax hikes, he should get off the campaign trail and make an honest appeal for his priorities.
State Sen. Scott Wagner, a Republican, represents the York County-based 28th District.
A flyer has been mailed to homes in Pennsylvania’s 165th Legislative District accusing its representative, Bill Adolph, of all sorts of vile things like keeping $183,650 i.e. chump change from the Marple Newtown School District and keeping $268,807 from the Springfield School District.
Gov. Wolf is trying to pressure Rep. Adolph to help him in his plan to put a crushing tax burden on the gas drillers responsible for whatever economic sunshine that has come Pennsylvania’s way over the last seven years.
All, of course, without recognizing that the state has a major spending problem, not a revenue one. Pennsylvania already taxes the drillers 2.7 percent — on top of salaries, sales and the other usual economic activity that occurs during production. Increasing the taxes will either mean more cost passed onto the consumer — how much was your electric bill last month? — or curtailing production.
Addendum: The $268,807 Adolph allegedly kept from the Springfield School District would not be a blip on the radar concerning lessening the impact of the recently approved $140 million new Springfield High School. On the other hand, repealing the state’s prevailing wage law could see a 20-percent cost drop i.e. $28 million i.e. not chump change in the price. If you are inclined to contact Adolph about something contact him about that. You would actually see your standard of living improve — or at least not drop so much — if that law was gone.
Gov. Tom Wolf has a tax plan that would place an additional $4.7 billion burden on Pennsylvania’s citizens.
Yesterday, June 1, legislation went before the State House that would have started the process of enacting it.
It failed 193-0. Yes, not one Democrat could bring himself or herself to vote for it.
The Democrat leadership is angry. They are calling the legislation “gamesmanship.” Maybe they should ask instead that government officials like Wolf refrain from pandering and making impossible promises and seriously consider the effect of what they propose.
Of course, that would mean that a Democrat would never again get elected.
For Pennsylvania’s unthinkers who punched button for Tom Wolf last November, be told: Our new governor wants to tax funerals.
That’s right, he wants to expand the sales tax to previously exempt items including caskets, burial vaults, services provided by funeral homes and grave stones.
This would raise the cost of the average funeral, which is $6,500, by $429.
Wasn’t Gov. Corbett’s historic gas tax enough to solve our money problems? It would have been if the goal wasn’t to create a feudal system were we serfs are expected to support lifestyles of wealth and leisure for the lords and ladies in the political class.
Has there been any talk of cutting public spending? LOL.
How about a tax on public pensions? That’s a tax we can support.
Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget proposal expands the size of government and shrinks the size of your wallet.
The governor argues that his property tax relief plan would offset the brunt of these tax hikes, but this relief is delayed until 2016-17. In the meantime, the state will collect higher taxes and retain those funds.
Should Gov. Wolf’s property tax plan pass the General Assembly, there’s no guarantee school districts will stop raising property taxes. Even if local governments did manage to hold the line on property taxes, Pennsylvanians would suffer a net tax increase of $4.3 billion in the 2016-2017 budget.
These tax hikes will grease the wheels for record levels of spending. Under Gov. Wolf’s plan, true General Fund spending in 2015-16 would reach $31.6 billion (Governor Wolf moves $1.75 billion in school pension payments to a new fund, which makes the General Fund increase appear smaller). This amounts to the largest spending increase in 25 years.
Of course, the General Fund is only a portion of Pennsylvania’s total operating budget. If each of Gov. Wolf’s proposals were enacted, Pennsylvania’s total operating budget would surpass $78.6 billion—the highest spending level in the commonwealth’s history.
Unsustainable spending growth and tax increases have been the prevailing trend in Pennsylvania since the 1970s. As a result, Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom in job, income and population growth. Governor Wolf’s proposals would accelerate this trend despite evidence of its harmful consequences.
There is a better alternative.
We need to grow the economy by limiting government. This means unleashing innovators and protecting working families—not weighing them down with higher taxes.
Gov. Tom Wolf mocks Philly parents with his charter school opposition.
Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf, a man bought and paid for by the teachers unions, stripped Bill Green of his chairmanship of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, Sunday night, March 1. Why? Because Green heard the pleas of Philly parents and allowed for five new charter schools.
This was in defiance of Wolf and the unions who wanted no new ones.
Of the school district’s, 206,567 pupils, 64,301 now attend charter schools.
There is a waiting list of thousands more that has been estimated at 40,000.
The objection of Wolf and his cronies is that the charter school’s take money from the Philadelphia School District. The answer to this is that the Philadelphia School District prevents parents from sending their children to schools where they won’t be pushed around, threatened, mocked for “acting white” and actually get an education.
When are the residents of Philadelphia going to wake up to the reality that the Democrat Party is anything but their friend?
And what are corporations but entities created by a legal process? Good lawyers and accountants can minimize net income by creating marketing and administrative expenses that would other otherwise not be considered. These invariably benefit the lifestyles of those running the corporation.
So good for Wolf.
But we kind of wonder about his priorities. Pennsylvania has the highest gas tax in the nation — thank you Tom Corbett. It has an extremely burdensome property tax, which puts disproportionate pain on the elderly and unemployed, which to Wolf’s credit he says he wants to address. It also has a sales tax, which, while on the low end does not account for the reality that the most populated part of the state is a half-hour ride from tax-free Delaware.
Gov. Tom Wolf this Halloween afternoon came to Media, Pa. to try to get a Philly union boss’ brother elected to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court but was instead met with a crowd demanding he “sign the budget” and “give us books.”
