Sunday, February 1, 2009
Not out of the woods in PA state taxes
From forbes.com
Imagine if Morrisville could somehow tack on a tiny little one penny tax per pack on all the tobacco that goes through our little borough.
Pa. gov says he wants dime-a-pack cigarette tax
By MARK SCOLFORO , 01.30.09, 01:44 PM EST
Cigarette smokers in Pennsylvania could soon be paying a dime a pack more as part of Gov. Ed Rendell's plan to balance the state budget.
Rendell revealed the idea and other details of his coming budget proposal during a conference call Thursday with about a dozen reporters at medium-sized newspapers around the state. He also has been conducting TV news interviews in advance of Wednesday's budget address.
The current cigarette tax is $1.35, and the additional levy should raise about $50 million a year. The governor said he also favors $50 million in taxes on smokeless tobacco and cigars, which are not currently taxed.
Rendell plans to seek $150 million a year in new taxes on the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale rock formation.
He will again push for a plan, known as the "pharmacy carve-out," to have the state reap savings in its various health care programs by directly purchasing pharmaceuticals from drug companies. The idea has previously stalled in the Legislature.
And he told the reporters the General Assembly should dedicate its entire $200 million surplus to the budget. That was a change from last week, when Rendell said the figure should be $175 million.
"Families are hurting and everyone needs to pitch in," Rendell said. "I will not be sympathetic to lobbyists and campaign contributors."
Comment On This Story
He noted the state faces an increasing unemployment rate and has a growing waiting list for subsidized adult health insurance.
The most recent estimates say current fiscal year revenue collections will end up $2.3 billion below projections, and that billions more will be needed to balance next year's spending plan.
"We can't tell Pennsylvanians that they're out of luck and on their own," he said. "We have $2.3 billion in red ink this year and there's more to come next year. This is something no Band-Aid can fix."
The governor says he expects to cut 100 of the state budget's 750 line items, including funding for anti-drug education, health literacy and a summer program for artistically and academically talented high school students.
Rendell spokesman Barry Ciccocioppo said Friday that some of those programs may not be permanently eliminated.
"He hopes that when the economy picks up that some of the line items that he'll propose eliminating on Wednesday will be restored," Ciccocioppo said.
The governor said the state appears likely to get about $7.6 billion from the federal stimulus package being negotiated in Congress. That would include $4 billion for health care, $2.4 billion for education and $1.2 billion for infrastructure, he said.
Rendell declined to disclose his proposed total budget for 2009-10; the current year's general fund budget is $28.3 billion.
In his budget address, Rendell is expected to specify how much of the $750 million "rainy day" contingency fund he wants to draw down this year and next. He may also delve further into the topic of state workers' furloughs or layoffs.
Earlier this week, his aides formally notified public employees' unions that furloughs could begin in a month. The administration also wants to draw nearly $200 million from a reserve in the state workers' health plan. The governor also recently announced that as many as 2,000 state jobs could be cut.
Imagine if Morrisville could somehow tack on a tiny little one penny tax per pack on all the tobacco that goes through our little borough.
Pa. gov says he wants dime-a-pack cigarette tax
By MARK SCOLFORO , 01.30.09, 01:44 PM EST
Cigarette smokers in Pennsylvania could soon be paying a dime a pack more as part of Gov. Ed Rendell's plan to balance the state budget.
Rendell revealed the idea and other details of his coming budget proposal during a conference call Thursday with about a dozen reporters at medium-sized newspapers around the state. He also has been conducting TV news interviews in advance of Wednesday's budget address.
The current cigarette tax is $1.35, and the additional levy should raise about $50 million a year. The governor said he also favors $50 million in taxes on smokeless tobacco and cigars, which are not currently taxed.
Rendell plans to seek $150 million a year in new taxes on the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale rock formation.
He will again push for a plan, known as the "pharmacy carve-out," to have the state reap savings in its various health care programs by directly purchasing pharmaceuticals from drug companies. The idea has previously stalled in the Legislature.
And he told the reporters the General Assembly should dedicate its entire $200 million surplus to the budget. That was a change from last week, when Rendell said the figure should be $175 million.
"Families are hurting and everyone needs to pitch in," Rendell said. "I will not be sympathetic to lobbyists and campaign contributors."
Comment On This Story
He noted the state faces an increasing unemployment rate and has a growing waiting list for subsidized adult health insurance.
The most recent estimates say current fiscal year revenue collections will end up $2.3 billion below projections, and that billions more will be needed to balance next year's spending plan.
"We can't tell Pennsylvanians that they're out of luck and on their own," he said. "We have $2.3 billion in red ink this year and there's more to come next year. This is something no Band-Aid can fix."
The governor says he expects to cut 100 of the state budget's 750 line items, including funding for anti-drug education, health literacy and a summer program for artistically and academically talented high school students.
Rendell spokesman Barry Ciccocioppo said Friday that some of those programs may not be permanently eliminated.
"He hopes that when the economy picks up that some of the line items that he'll propose eliminating on Wednesday will be restored," Ciccocioppo said.
The governor said the state appears likely to get about $7.6 billion from the federal stimulus package being negotiated in Congress. That would include $4 billion for health care, $2.4 billion for education and $1.2 billion for infrastructure, he said.
Rendell declined to disclose his proposed total budget for 2009-10; the current year's general fund budget is $28.3 billion.
In his budget address, Rendell is expected to specify how much of the $750 million "rainy day" contingency fund he wants to draw down this year and next. He may also delve further into the topic of state workers' furloughs or layoffs.
Earlier this week, his aides formally notified public employees' unions that furloughs could begin in a month. The administration also wants to draw nearly $200 million from a reserve in the state workers' health plan. The governor also recently announced that as many as 2,000 state jobs could be cut.
A lively first month for Pa. Open Records Office
From pennlive.com
Has anyone had any experiences with either the school board or the borough with the new open records law that they would like to share?
A lively first month for Pa. Open Records Office
1/31/2009, 12:33 p.m. EST By PETER JACKSON, The Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's fledgling Office of Open Records, defender of the public's interest in a transparent government, turns one month old this weekend.
It's been an interesting start.
Inmates at state prisons have written to the agency under the mistaken impression that it can help them obtain records that prove their innocence.
A man planning a tribute to the "Marlboro Man" of cigarette advertising fame was convinced there are Pennsylvania records that would help his cause and appealed to the office for assistance.
"We had people who've asked us if they can get the address of an old high-school buddy," said Terry Mutchler, the reporter-turned-lawyer who is the agency's director.
Of course, the office itself is not a record repository, but rather the agency that enforces the newly expanded state Right-to-Know Law and settles disputes over records scattered throughout state and local governments.
In the months and years ahead, after it finishes hiring its seven or eight staff lawyers and becomes fully operational, the office's appellate rulings will be instrumental in fine-tuning the boundaries of that law.
In the meantime, the staff spends a lot of time answering dozens of e-mails and phone calls that arrive daily from citizens, journalists and government officials.
It also has to weed out "appeals" that lack legitimate grounds. For example, the law allows agencies a specific time frame to respond to records requests, and some people have tried to appeal before the end of that period.
"There's a lot of confusion here at the beginning," Mutchler said.
More than two dozen legitimate appeals are pending, most of them filed by citizens whose requests for records have been denied by local agencies.
The office also issues nonbinding "advisory opinions" on specific questions.
For example, the Pennsylvania Recorder of Deeds Association questioned whether the law even applies to its members, who maintain real-estate records in each of the 67 counties, and, if so, whether they must comply with the 25-cents-a-page limit that the Office of Open Records has imposed on photocopying fees.
In her opinion, Mutchler noted that recorders of deeds are listed in the state constitution's definition of "county officers" and, therefore, covered by the law.
However, because other laws trump the Right-to-Know Law in the event of conflicts, the recorders may continue charging 50 cents per page because the state Judicial Code permits it, she said.
In a pending request from Allegheny County, the borough council of Franklin Park asked Mutchler whether tape recordings of council meetings that the borough secretary uses in compiling minutes of the meeting are considered public records under the Right-to-Know Law.
"The borough needs to know whether it is proper to continue to maintain the recordings only for the short amount of time needed to create the written minutes or if it needs to undertake a new practice of storing the tapes and making them available for the long term," wrote borough solicitor Robert Max Junker.
A request from Franklin County suggests that a number of elected county offices — district attorneys, sheriffs, registers of wills, clerks of court and prothonotaries among them — should be treated as "judicial agencies."
Using that interpretation, affected agencies could withhold all but financial records, instead of having to comply with the much broader disclosure requirements that apply to nonjudicial agencies.
The county solicitor cited state law and a Commonwealth Court ruling to buttress his argument that the offices in question should be considered part of the state's unified judicial system.
Mutchler said she hopes to issue an opinion in that case next week.
"We're overworked already," she said.
Has anyone had any experiences with either the school board or the borough with the new open records law that they would like to share?
A lively first month for Pa. Open Records Office
1/31/2009, 12:33 p.m. EST By PETER JACKSON, The Associated Press
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's fledgling Office of Open Records, defender of the public's interest in a transparent government, turns one month old this weekend.
It's been an interesting start.
Inmates at state prisons have written to the agency under the mistaken impression that it can help them obtain records that prove their innocence.
A man planning a tribute to the "Marlboro Man" of cigarette advertising fame was convinced there are Pennsylvania records that would help his cause and appealed to the office for assistance.
"We had people who've asked us if they can get the address of an old high-school buddy," said Terry Mutchler, the reporter-turned-lawyer who is the agency's director.
Of course, the office itself is not a record repository, but rather the agency that enforces the newly expanded state Right-to-Know Law and settles disputes over records scattered throughout state and local governments.
In the months and years ahead, after it finishes hiring its seven or eight staff lawyers and becomes fully operational, the office's appellate rulings will be instrumental in fine-tuning the boundaries of that law.
In the meantime, the staff spends a lot of time answering dozens of e-mails and phone calls that arrive daily from citizens, journalists and government officials.
It also has to weed out "appeals" that lack legitimate grounds. For example, the law allows agencies a specific time frame to respond to records requests, and some people have tried to appeal before the end of that period.
"There's a lot of confusion here at the beginning," Mutchler said.
More than two dozen legitimate appeals are pending, most of them filed by citizens whose requests for records have been denied by local agencies.
The office also issues nonbinding "advisory opinions" on specific questions.
For example, the Pennsylvania Recorder of Deeds Association questioned whether the law even applies to its members, who maintain real-estate records in each of the 67 counties, and, if so, whether they must comply with the 25-cents-a-page limit that the Office of Open Records has imposed on photocopying fees.
In her opinion, Mutchler noted that recorders of deeds are listed in the state constitution's definition of "county officers" and, therefore, covered by the law.
However, because other laws trump the Right-to-Know Law in the event of conflicts, the recorders may continue charging 50 cents per page because the state Judicial Code permits it, she said.
In a pending request from Allegheny County, the borough council of Franklin Park asked Mutchler whether tape recordings of council meetings that the borough secretary uses in compiling minutes of the meeting are considered public records under the Right-to-Know Law.
"The borough needs to know whether it is proper to continue to maintain the recordings only for the short amount of time needed to create the written minutes or if it needs to undertake a new practice of storing the tapes and making them available for the long term," wrote borough solicitor Robert Max Junker.
A request from Franklin County suggests that a number of elected county offices — district attorneys, sheriffs, registers of wills, clerks of court and prothonotaries among them — should be treated as "judicial agencies."
Using that interpretation, affected agencies could withhold all but financial records, instead of having to comply with the much broader disclosure requirements that apply to nonjudicial agencies.
The county solicitor cited state law and a Commonwealth Court ruling to buttress his argument that the offices in question should be considered part of the state's unified judicial system.
Mutchler said she hopes to issue an opinion in that case next week.
"We're overworked already," she said.
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