Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Pennsylvania’s newspapers:
Virus exposes poor policy
The Scranton Times-Tribune
March 4
Whether the United States can fend off serious short-term health damage from the threat of the COVID-19 virus remains to be seen. But the virus already has shown that long-term systemic problems with U.S. health care and economic policies need resolution.
More than 32 million American workers do not have any paid sick leave, for example. That means that as the government advises people to stay home if they feel ill, millions of workers will tough it out and go to work because they can’t afford to do otherwise. That workforce is heavily concentrated in service businesses, including restaurants and hotels, in which workers directly interact with customers.
And the potential for a pandemic has arisen as the Supreme Court prepares to consider whether to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. That program vastly has increased the number of people with health insurance, and the number of people who can access preventive care, since its passage in 2010. If the court strikes down the law, millions more Americans will be without coverage.
Congress also has failed to act against soaring drug prices. So, even if the pharmaceutical industry manages to fulfill President Donald Trump’s fanciful notion that a COVID-19 cure is at hand, untold numbers of Americans won’t be able to afford a vaccine or treatments.
The best defense against COVID-19 is not to catch it, which requires attention to hygiene and rapid identification, treatment and quarantine of people who are infected.
For the long term, the virus should instruct Congress that U.S. policy is dangerous.
Online: https://bit.ly/2VKrduY
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The people have a right to know
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
March 2
Elected officials are still employees.
A mayor may not be answerable to a council member. The governor might not have to get the attorney general to approve his vacation. The president doesn’t have to get Congress to approve a sick day.
But all of them were elected to do a job, and they have a boss. A lot of them, actually. The superior they answer to is the public.
That is why the state Office of Open Records told Westmoreland County officials that, yes, they did have to turn over electronic swipe card records for Register of Wills Sherry Magretti Hamilton.
It does not matter that the request for those records was made by Matthew Pecarchik, whose wife, Katie, is a Register of Wills employee and a former candidate for the office.
Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law doesn’t make a provision for why someone wants to have access to public information. It just states that public information should be made available to the public when they ask for it.
It doesn’t say who can have it and who can’t. It doesn’t draw lines around some people and cross out others. The who doesn’t matter. Just the what.
Westmoreland County officials shouldn’t fight that. But they are. On Wednesday, they asked a county judge to overturn the state agency’s decision.
It’s a bad move.
The county should support the idea of accountability in its employees, whether elected or hired. It should stand behind the idea that the people are paying a salary and deserve the work that goes with it.
And Magretti Hamilton absolutely deserves to have her reputation free from tarnish. Not giving the information requested doesn’t do that. It makes the questions linger rather than providing answers.
Elected officials are employees. They have a responsibility to their employers, and the law gives those employers - the people - a right to know.
Online: https://bit.ly/2Incmi8
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What does Philadelphia have to show for an extra $1 billion in spending?
The Philadelphia Inquirer
March 3
How much money would it take to solve Philadelphia’s most pressing problems?
That’s not an easy question, in part because not all problems respond to money, but also, the problems of this city are big and complex. Poverty, opioids, gun violence leading to homicides are among the biggest.
For the sake of argument, let’s say we had a billion dollars to throw at these problems. Surely, if that amount of money didn’t solve these problems, it would at least make a dent, right?
Based on recent history, the sad fact is it wouldn’t. The city has increased spending by $1 billion - most of that in the last four years. Homicides have increased. Neither poverty nor overdose deaths have seen significant decline.
When Mayor Jim Kenney delivers his budget address to City Council Thursday, he will undoubtedly be touting some of the investments the city has made, primarily in education, and will point to an increase in revenues to the city, primarily through property taxes and the soda tax.
Last week, reports from both the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) and the controller’s office released reports that raise red flags on some of the city’s spending trends. Two areas of particular concern: salaries and overtime. The city has hired more than 900 employees since Fiscal Year 2017. At the same time, overtime spending has increased, from $168 million in FY17 to $181 million in FY19. According to the controller’s report, the city spends about $8K per employee on overtime.
Staffing is supposed to reduce overtime costs. It’s baffling that this hiring spree - which is also a big driver in future pension obligations - has not reduced overtime.
When the recession hit in 2008, the city had to make drastic cuts from its $3.68 billion budget. Some argue that this current spending - matched, it must be noted, by increased revenues - is more a matter of restoring city government to pre-recession levels. The problem is that before the recession hit, the bloated city payroll and the size of government was a concern, and “streamlining” was the byword. We haven’t heard that word uttered for years.
The city isn’t spending money it doesn’t have. Tax revenues are up. And the city has made a big commitment to invest more money in the schools. That, and putting money in reserve funds, only accounts for a portion of the spending, though.
Cities across the country have seen increases in spending, so it’s not necessarily that Philadelphia is being reckless. But ours is a city with a history of economic turmoil - which led to the creation of PICA to begin with - and an already high tax base.
The bottom line: We should expect tangible results from this spending. In fact, in a survey of resident satisfaction the city conducted last year, the majority (67%) ranked city services as “fair” or “poor”; 31% ranked them as “good to excellent.”
If the investments the city is making are not strategically designed to make the city safer, more prosperous, and less lethal, then what’s the point?
Online: https://bit.ly/2VQO2gy
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State needs new process for redistricting
Reading Eagle
March 1
Back in 2018, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court plunged a knife into the heart of a bit of political skullduggery known as “gerrymandering.”
The majority of justices agreed with the plaintiffs in a lawsuit contending that the state’s congressional districts amounted to an unconstitutional “gerrymander.” In other words, politicians drew up the boundaries in a way that benefited their own parties.
Redistricting is performed every 10 years based on the results of the census. Now it’s census time again, and that means another redistricting is right around the corner.
In 2018 the court ordered the Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf to come up with new boundaries. When the two sides could not agree, the court carved out the boundaries itself.
Gone was the epic bit of political folly that was the 7th Congressional District, so bizarre it earned national scorn and the nickname “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck.”
The 7th was created by politicians to take what had been a toss-up district and make it solidly red. It zigged to include solid Republican turf, and zagged to avoid Democratic strongholds. The result was a bizarrely shaped gerrymander that touched on parts of five counties, ranging from eastern Delaware County to portions of Berks County.
Unfortunately, the court used its scalpel to treat the symptoms; it did not cure the disease.
Soon politicians will be tempted to stack the deck in their favor again. The key question now will be just who should be wielding the pen that redraws those lines.
Now that power lies in the hands of the Pennsylvania Legislature, which is controlled by Republicans. Before the high court’s order tossing out the old districts, Republicans held a 13-5 edge in the state’s congressional delegation. After the high court redrew the lines, the 2018 election produced an even split.
Any number of efforts to change the way Pennsylvania draws up congressional boundaries have been bandied about in Harrisburg. Most have failed, in no small part because it’s a tedious process that involves getting legislation passed by both the House and Senate in two successive sessions. And that only gets it on the ballot for a statewide referendum.
But that’s not the only way to skin the gerrymandering cat. Groups such as Fair Districts PA, a nonpartisan statewide coalition that has been working for years to change the system, want an independent commission to assume the duty of drawing up the congressional map.
Now that effort is getting a boost from state Sen. Tom Killion, a Delaware County Republican. Last week he introduced Senate Bill 1023, which would establish an 11-member Independent Redistricting Commission to draw congressional district lines.
In doing so Killion echoed the rallying cry of gerrymandering foes: “Citizens should pick their legislators, not vice versa.” Under his legislation, no longer would politicians gather to contort the lines to guarantee their party’s candidates roll to easy wins.
Killion will get no argument from Carol Kunilholm, the longtime chairwoman and co-founder of Fair Districts PA.
“When the outcomes of elections are pre-determined because districts are drawn to favor one political party, whether Republican or Democratic, you wind up with legislators more aligned with that party’s base rather than the interests of average voters,” Kunilhom said.
Killion’s plan would create a commission consisting of a randomly selected group of voters from both major political parties, independents and third-party members. Commission members and their spouses cannot have been lobbyists, political staff or federal or state employees within five years prior to their appointment to the commission.
Killion is right. Voters should pick their legislators, not the other way around.
An Independent Redistricting Commission would be a big step in that direction.
Online: https://bit.ly/2IiENOj
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Cost of drilling: Mount Rose shows PennDOT needs to change its contracting process
York Dispatch
Feb. 28
Five years.
In April, the Mount Rose Avenue interchange at Interstate 83 will have been under construction for five years.
When the work began in April 2015, Cherry Hill Construction told the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation that, for $58.3 million, it could completely redesign and rebuild the interchange by June 2018.
Today, the project cost has surpassed $60 million, and PennDOT can’t say when it will be finished.
“I’m hoping the project gets done by the end of this year or beginning of next year, the latest by spring 2021,” said Yassmin Gramian, PennDOT’s acting secretary.
State Sen. Kristin Phillips-Hill has had enough.
The York Township Republican, who we’re sure hears from her constituents constantly about the project, pointed her finger Tuesday at Cherry Hill Construction and its parent company, Tutor Perini, during a Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing.
“I’ve read countless articles and reports on the company where they (Tutor Perini) go in on the low bid and then submit additional cost overruns with lengthy project delays,” she said during a back-and-forth with Gramian.
Tutor Perini, the second-largest transportation construction company in the nation, stepped up to manage the Mount Rose project in 2018.
But Tutor Perini has been called a “change-order artist” by officials in California, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. According to an investigation by the newspaper, 11 major projects in the San Francisco Bay Area completed by Tutor between 2001 and 2013 cost local governments $765 million more than they expected, or 40% above the initial bids.
PennDOT has fined Cherry Hill $14,000 a day for failing to complete the job on time. The company now owes $7 million in fines and recently filed a claim against PennDOT with the state Board of Claims seeking $24.2 million in damages and a 598-day extension.
“Our statute states that our bids go to the lowest responsible bidder, and I have to say I’d hardly classify Tutor Perini as responsible,” Phillips-Hill said. “How can we safeguard against future PennDOT bids going to entities that specialize in change-order scheming?”
She went on to say that PennDOT needs to take the Mount Rose debacle into account when it awards bids for major construction projects in the future.
We couldn’t agree more.
PennDOT is bound by law to accept the lowest bid for projects from qualified bidders. But there needs to be a caveat to that to take into account a company’s history of finishing jobs on time and on budget.
In 2018, state Rep. Stan Saylor, R-Windsor Township, said he was considering introducing a bill to let entities such as PennDOT consider whether the lowest bid came from a company that has had projects that were completed late or over budget and move along to a slightly higher bid from a company with a better reputation.
That still seems like a sound idea that the Legislature needs to take up. In the Mount Rose project, the next-lowest bidder on Mount Rose Avenue/I-83 was York County-based G.A. & F.C. Wagman Inc. at $59.46 million. Would Wagman have finished the project by now, at that price? No one can say, but with a local office and knowledge of suppliers and such, we think they would have had a better chance.
Meanwhile, York County drivers continue to weave through a maze of signs and cones or just avoid Mount Rose Avenue altogether.
“This project keeps me up at night,” Gramian said.
You and a lot of other people, acting secretary.
Online: https://bit.ly/32QSBcq
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