Local Governments

By Michael Pakenham A governance grab is afoot in Pennsylvania. If approved by the state legislature, it would constitute the most volatile graft accelerant since the plain brown envelope. It would balloon the payrolls of the state's 67 counties. It would obliterate more than 2,500 local governments. And it would generate massive new state and county agencies. If you have never been terrified by gobbledygook, you haven't read the title of the state Senate's version of the proposal: "An Act amending Title 53 (Municipalities Generally)

One of the biggest unreported stories in America concerns how the economic meltdown is affecting local governments. It's a huge story because it has implications for every American family. While the media camp their satellite trucks in Washington and New York, the real story is in the heartland. It's not about some ambiguous $700 billion bailout that many Americans don't understand. It's about regular taxpayers who are going to see significant changes in their local governments - changes unlike any they've seen before.

U.S. companies have been slowly hiring more workers. But home prices are still slipping and tax-assessment values are down, so local governments and school districts that rely on property taxes are still under pressure. "We may still be in the early innings of the deterioration in municipal finances," Ryan Connors , utilities analyst at Janney Capital Markets in Philadelphia, warned in a report to clients last week. "Political resistance" is keeping towns from raising tax rates as valuations and tax collections fall, Connors wrote.

It paid for street lights in Upper Darby Township, kept the police force in Delran Township, N.J., on the payroll, and provided fire hydrants in Rockledge Borough in Montgomery County. It provided treatment for mental patients in Camden County and paid hospital employees' salaries in Burlington County. In Montgomery County it supported programs ranging from ambulance service to prison work-release. Now it's gone. Revenue-sharing, born in 1972 under the Nixon administration, died in October, a victim of efforts to reduce the federal budget deficit.

The U.S. Department of Justice should investigate the potential misuse of federal grants for lobbying purposes by officials in Philadelphia and other local governments. Since March 2010, $230 million in federal grant money has been given to 30 states under the Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative. Nearly $400 million more has been dedicated to the initiative for fiscal 2012. The grants were designed to educate the public on the hazards of tobacco use and obesity. Instead of using the grant money to teach and inform citizens about those risks, though, some state and local governments may have wrongly spent it on lobbying, using federal tax dollars to influence policymakers and promote legislation and new taxes, according to an investigation by Cause of Action.

Despite intense opposition from unions representing public safety workers, the state Senate yesterday approved a Whitman administration proposal to slow the growth of salaries for police and firefighters. State Sen. Peter Inverso (R., Mercer), the sponsor of the bill, said that because salaries for police and firefighters are one of the biggest costs for local governments, the measure would go a long way toward controlling the growth of local property taxes. "Ultimately, the real beneficiaries of (the bill)

Gov. Kean signed legislation yesterday extending through 1989 the controversial law that places a spending maximum on the budgets of New Jersey counties and municipalities. The 10-year-old law, designed to hold down local property tax increases, prohibits local governments, including school boards, from exceeding their previous year's budgets by a certain percentage. The law had been due to expire at 12:01 a.m. today. There are a few exceptions to the rule, such as appropriations for police vehicles, library and hazardous-waste expenses and 50 percent of solid-waste costs.

It's one of those problems easy to define but almost impossible to fix. Simply stated, Pennsylvania has too much local government - almost 2,600 local governments and a few thousand other semi-local government units. Only Illinois and Minnesota have more. What may be worse is that 60 percent of the local governments here have populations under 2,500. It's not that local officials don't work hard, care about their communities, or keep government close to the people. They do. And it's not about a willingness to serve.

Pennsylvania lawmakers' work on natural-gas legislation has stirred up local governments on the front lines of the state's Marcellus Shale boom who are afraid of losing municipal powers over how the industry operates. The state must have broad powers to regulate drilling, but the local governments make some valid points. Both the state House and Senate are considering measures that would set some new drilling rules and charge an impact fee, most of which would go to local governments.

Former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio said yesterday that he had formed a company to help local governments use high technology to manage assets and cut costs. The firm's profits will come from a share of the money it saves its governmental clients, Florio said. He said the venture, Xpand Inc., is based on his last eight years of private-sector work, after 30 years in public office - as governor, U.S. representative, and state assemblyman. "We've developed patented software that will allow communities to manage their assets better," Florio said.

Too much of our state and local government is still only crawling toward the 21st century. Yesterday a City Council committee considered legislation that would require the Bureau of Administrative Adjudication, which handles parking-ticket appeals, to allow citizens to fight tickets online or by phone. Shouldn't these options have been available, like, yesterday? Especially since for most of us, fighting an unfair parking ticket means taking a day off work and spending it in a waiting room — or else just deciding,"screw it, it's not worth it" and paying up. Concerned BAA administrators fear that these changes would lead to a flood of appeals and that face-to-face conversations are more "satisfying" for members of the public.

The U.S. Department of Justice should investigate the potential misuse of federal grants for lobbying purposes by officials in Philadelphia and other local governments. Since March 2010, $230 million in federal grant money has been given to 30 states under the Communities Putting Prevention to Work initiative. Nearly $400 million more has been dedicated to the initiative for fiscal 2012. The grants were designed to educate the public on the hazards of tobacco use and obesity. Instead of using the grant money to teach and inform citizens about those risks, though, some state and local governments may have wrongly spent it on lobbying, using federal tax dollars to influence policymakers and promote legislation and new taxes, according to an investigation by Cause of Action.

Pennsylvania's long-awaited Marcellus Shale legislation, signed by Gov. Corbett this week, reflects an approach to managing the state's resources that is reminiscent of the Wild West-style energy extraction of the late 19th century. The state governments of that era sought to minimize limits on energy extraction and assist developers wherever possible. Pennsylvania embodied that model in the decades following Edwin Drake's discovery of oil in Titusville in 1859. In recent generations, American governments have almost uniformly abandoned that laissez-faire approach.

Gov. Corbett's new budget proposal makes drastic cuts to state funding for education and other services while attempting to shroud them in false claims of more flexibility for local communities. The governor's spending plan does nothing to address Pennsylvania's ranking among the 10 states that spend the least on public education. But by collapsing public education line items into one final (and misleading) number, the governor claims to be giving school districts choices. In fact, what the governor is allowing them to pick is their poison.

U.S. companies have been slowly hiring more workers. But home prices are still slipping and tax-assessment values are down, so local governments and school districts that rely on property taxes are still under pressure. "We may still be in the early innings of the deterioration in municipal finances," Ryan Connors , utilities analyst at Janney Capital Markets in Philadelphia, warned in a report to clients last week. "Political resistance" is keeping towns from raising tax rates as valuations and tax collections fall, Connors wrote.

By Timothy Potts Our politics have devolved into a contest to confuse insult with insight and rhetoric with reality. Read enough polls, though, and you begin to understand how reasonable most people really are. Take taxes, for example. The prevailing political rhetoric suggests that people are uniformly opposed to tax increases. But recent polls of Pennsylvanians have found that: 57 percent are willing to pay higher fees for driver's licenses and registration if the money goes to road and bridge repairs.

By Kathryn Z. Klaber Pennsylvania has more than 2,500 township and municipal governments, more than California, Texas, New York, or Florida - all of which have significantly larger populations. These local governments are critical to the delivery of basic services and, being close to the people, can be more responsive and accountable to them. But if local government is where everything begins in this state, it can also be where it comes to an end. Unfortunately, vague statutes and conflicting court rulings have created a situation in which two or three officials from a single township or borough can stand in the way of economic development even when they're in direct contravention of state law. This is posing a threat to the already tightly regulated natural-gas exploration industry in the state.

Pennsylvania lawmakers' work on natural-gas legislation has stirred up local governments on the front lines of the state's Marcellus Shale boom who are afraid of losing municipal powers over how the industry operates. The state must have broad powers to regulate drilling, but the local governments make some valid points. Both the state House and Senate are considering measures that would set some new drilling rules and charge an impact fee, most of which would go to local governments.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Taiwan is legalizing the sex trade in special red-light districts and ending a ban that penalized prostitutes but not their patrons. The island's Parliament passed the law Friday. Protesters have decried the decades-old ban as unfair to women and called for a law to reflect today's relative gender equality. Local governments can set aside the special districts. The new law says any sex-trade participant caught outside the zones can be fined up to $1,000. Pimps could be fined up to $1,660.

WASHINGTON - In a healthy economic recovery, state and local governments start hiring, expand services, and help fuel the nation's growth. Then there's the 2011 recovery. The U.S. economy is moving ahead, however fitfully. Yet state and local governments are still stuck in recession. Short of cash, they cut 28,000 jobs in May, the seventh straight month they shed workers. The effect is being felt nationwide in reduced services because there are, for example, fewer teachers, police officers, and firefighters.