Who's Picking Taxpayers Pockets Again?

WHO’S PICKING TAXPAYERS’ POCKETS AGAIN?

            Do you know anybody who gets an automatic pay raise every single year, no questions asked?  Whether the business does well or poorly, where do employees get an automatic raise without even a performance evaluation?   Harrisburg – that’s where.

At Representative Joe Emrick’s Friday Town Hall meeting Community First asked what is being done to stop the annual automatic pay raises that legislators began pocketing in 1995?  Back then their base pay was $47,000.  This year’s additional 1 ½% hike brings their base salaries well over $84,000.  Bills to halt the raises get introduced, go nowhere, and die.

Representative Emrick spoke about Pennsylvania’s multitude of deficient bridges, a transportation bill, and the state’s giant pension problem.   Beginning with Governor Tom Ridge’s 2001 pension mismanagement, a fund that was 130% solvent is now $47 billion in the red.   Representative Emrick also distributed a bar graph justifying the Corbett administration’s severe education funding cuts. 

Still, no matter the year or the deficit, or what critical programs got the axe, Pennsylvania state legislators religiously voted themselves another raise in every June budget.  From $79,623 in 2010, their base pay rose to $83,802 in 2012 while thousands of Pennsylvania teachers were laid off.  In 2011 Governor Corbett actually urged all Pennsylvania teachers to give up their pay raises during the budget crisis, but no such request was asked of lawmakers.  Though pension reform is a serious issue across the Commonwealth, a July RocktheCapitol.com investigation revealed how many Harrisburg politicians are vested in one, two, three or more state pensions derived from various politically-connected jobs.

Community First brought to Representative Emrick’s attention the recent national report funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation showing a decline in the well being of Pennsylvania’s children.  The Partnership for Children study ranks well being by rating areas like health, early learning and economic security.  Pennsylvania’s 2.8 million children are not making measurable gains since Governor Corbett and a Republican-dominated legislature in Harrisburg took control. 

Pennsylvania is one of only five states to fall three or more spots in the national rankings, falling from 14th to 17th overall.  But in the essential area of health, Pennsylvania children sank from 8th last year to 22nd!    Partnership CEO and President Joan Benso called Pennsylvania’s drop in national rankings “a warning sign that we can’t keep deferring investments in programs that benefit our youngest citizens.”

When the Harrisburg legislature is more devoted to privatizing the lottery and state liquor stores, wasting millions on a mandatory photo ID voter suppression scheme and slashing education funding, is it any wonder the well-being of our children is the last thing on their minds? 

Do you wonder why so many Republican legislators’ highest priority isn’t our children’s well being or putting Community First?   If it was, they’d quit picking taxpayers’ pockets every June for yet one more undeserved pay raise.

Lilly Gioia and C. David Howell, Editors

Community First