Tom Barnes Reports

CAMP HILL, Pa. — Presidential candidate Rick Santorum addressed a friendly crowd of several hundred conservatives, nearly all of them white, this morning at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference at a hotel here.

Santorum is one of the four remaining GOP presidential candidates, two of whom will speak to the group today, with Newt Gingrich arriving this afternoon. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley spoke yesterday on behalf of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner in the race.

Santorum said the best thing anyone can say about him is that he’s an “underdog” in the current GOP race for president. The same thing was said in 1990 when he won his first term in the U.S. House and then again in 1994 when he beat Democratic incumbent Sen. Harris Wofford for the Senate.

“Being underestimated is the greatest gift a politican can have,” he said.

He said the top issue in this year’s presidential race is “Obamacare,” meaning President Barack Obama’s health care program, under which the federal government is mandating that all Americans have health insurance by 2014. Santorum said the federal government is slowly taking over all aspects of Americans’ lives and said he is the one who can best fight this trend — better than Romney can .

He said Romney can’t effectively fight the Democratic push for national health care because Obama patterned his federal health care plan after one that Romney enacted while governor of Massachusetts.

Santorum said he was elected to the Senate in 1994 while Romney lost that same year, because Santorum said he wasn’t afraid to tout his conservative credentials.

Santorum appeared at the symposium with his daughter Sarah Maria, now 14, who was just 8 when Santorum lost a race  for re-election to the Senate in 2006. Santorum said he learned valuable lessons from that defeat, which have helped him succeed in the current race for the GOP nomination for president.

He said that losing gave him a perspective of Washington, and the dangers of the government running all aspects of our lives, that being in Congress didn’t give him.

He asked the crowd, what politician lost his last race before being elected President, and the answer was Abraham Lincoln, which got great applause. He lost to Stephen Douglas in 1858 for an Illinois Senate seat but then won the presidential election in 1860.

The Pennsylvania primary is April 24. Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas will be competing for the state’s electoral votes.

HARRISBURG — Several Democratic senators and one Republican were tough on state Environmental Secretary Michael Krancer at his budget hearing today.

Some senators wanted to know why two top legal officials of the southwestern office had resigned; others were upset that no money was included in the proposed 2012-13 state budget for flood control; another questioned if DEP is adequately inspecting the 4,900 drilling areas for Marcellus Shale natural gas in the state.

Sen. Larry Farnese, D-Philadelphia, mentioned a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article about the resignation of William Darr from the Pittsburgh office – done to avoid a conflict of interest issue. That followed the “forced resignation” of former counsel Diana Stares, the paper reported.

Referring to Krancer’s call to “reform” the DEP after eight years of Democratic rule, Farnese said, “Reform doesn’t mean cutting the heck out of government.” He urged Krancer to “stop the cutting of staff that is going on in this administration.”

He suggested the administration of Gov. Tom Corbett “sure as heck listens to special interest groups,” such as the Marcellus shale companies.

“People will lost faith in what they see us doing up here (at the Capitol) when they see an article like this” in the Post-Gazette, Farnese said.

Krancer replied that he likes to read nonfiction boods, “That is why I don’t read a lot that’s in that publication.” He added that newspaper articles “are always difficult as the base for policy. I say that as a caution.”

He insisted that the DEP is now doing “more with less,” and said that inspections of Marcellus shale gas drilling sites have increased, even though the DEP budget has decreased under Corbett. 

 ”We have the resources to regulate the Marcellus shale industry and protect the public health and safety,” he said.

Other senators, including Democrats John Blake of Lackawanna and John Yudichak of Luzerne, plus Republican John Gordner of Columbia, questioned the lack of funding proposed for flood control projects in the new state budget. They said their areas of northeast Pennsylania suffered greatly from flooding due to heavy rainstorms last September.

Krancer said the state is dedicated to repairing dams and making sure that flood control projects are in place.

Gordner said it looks like the state has “abdicated its role” on flood prevention by not funding that line item in the DEP budget, but Krancer said that’s not so.

HARRISBURG — Harry Barnes, an Army artillery veteran, one-time drug user and one-time homeless person, captured the attention of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee today.

Mr. Barnes, about 40, said he’d been in the Army in the 1980s, then returned to his north Philadelphia home and “my downfall started, addiction started, and I was homeless.”

But friends told him about a program to aid returns vets run by the YWCA of Greater Harrisburg, which he said turned his life around.

He went from living in a homeless shelter in Harrisburg to education courses at the Y, which led to computer courses and finally, now, to a job at the Naval Supply Depot in New Cumberland, near Harrisburg.

When he left the Army and got into drugs, “I knew I was defeated by life’s challenges. I knew my homelessness was really a problem.”

But now he is a success story, said William Reed, a 26-year Navy vet and director of economic development at the Harrisburg YWCA, which also helps returning female veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and sexual attacks. A disturbing high percentage of female vets, perhaps as much as 25 percent, suffer from psychological problems caused by sexual attacks while in the military, the committee was told.

Sen. Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, told Mr. Barnes, “You have come a long way in our life.”

She said today’s hearing was aimed at finding new and better ways to help returning vets re=enter civilian  life. With many vets returning from Iraq and the U.S. gradually disengaging from Ahghanistan, more and more vets will be coming home and will need services for jobs and places to live.

She said that according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, at least 1,400 homeless vets now live in Pennsylvania and need attention.

HARRISBURG — Most freshmen in the Legislature keep their mouths shut and just vote the way their leaders tell them to.

But the new Republican guy from Lancaster, Rep. Ryan Aument, isn’t like that. He’s become point man for one of the most controversial ideas floating around the Capitol — creating a new system that would “grade” public school teachers and get rid of the “bad” ones.

Figuring out who’s a bad, or lazy, or ineffective, teacher, is a bit like identifying pornography — everybody pretty much knows it when they see it, but coming up with an exact definition is tricky.

“I came to the conclusion that a strong, meaningful, comprehensive teacher evaluation system was needed after numerous conversations with constituents, families, teachers, school administrators and education policy experts,” said Mr. Aument, who just took office in January and whose wife is a fifth-year teacher.

Currently, there’s only two categories of public school teachers: “satisfactory” — which, in the 2009-10 school year, contained than than 99 percent of existing teachers, Aument told a House Education Committee today.

It was holding a hearing on his legislation to change things, House Bill 1980. He said the two existing categories are meaningless, since so many teachers are now in the satisfactory area, when many of them clearly aren’t.

So he’s come up with a new, four-part classification system for teachers: distinguished, proficient, “needs improvement,” and “fails.”  A more drastic rating system would grade teachers as A, B, C, D or F, the same way they grade students, but that isn’t considered likely.

He would based about half of a teacher’s evaluation on student performance, meaning how an instructor’s students scored on tests in class and on statewide standardized tests, such as the PSSA and Keystone exams. The other half of the evaluation would be based on what principals observe about teachers in a classroom, plus their “planning and preparation” techniques, and possibly community service.

Critics fear his system would make teachers “teach to the test,” meaning teach students the subjects likely to show up on standardized statewide exams, rather than develop a love for learning.

Critics, who include the Pennsylvania State Education Association (a large teachers union)  also say there are many factors involved in a student’s success that occur outside a classroom and that a teacher has no control over — how well fed a student is, how much sleep she or she gets, his or her family environment, support from parents for doing homework, “security” (meaning threats from other students) and other matters.

These factors play as large a role, if not larger, in how much attention each student pays to what a teacher says in class and thus how well a student does on a test. critics say.

“It’s not fair to hold teachers responsible for outcomes that are beyond their control,” said Linda Cook, a teacher in the Penn Delco School District.

It isn’t known yet when the committee will vote on Aument’s bill.

State Reps. Daryl Metcalfe and Babette Josephs were sitting right next to each other at a House committee hearing today, but they were miles apart in their views of what to do about immigrants who enter Pennsylvania illegally.

Mr. Metcalfe, an extreme conservative Republican from Butler County, was supporting a package of 15 Republican bills aimed at denying state-funded education, medical, unemployment and welfare benefits to folks that Mr. Metcalfe calls “illegal aliens,” referring to people, many of them Hispanic, who have entered Pennsylvania without legal immigration papers from the federal government, or, in some cases, with stolen Social Security numbers.

“We have to shut down the magnet that draws illegals into our state. We have to protect our taxpayers and our citizens from crime,” he said.

Ms. Josephs, an extreme liberal Democrat from Philadelphia, said, “Let’s not call people names. I don’t call anyone an ‘illegal’ — that is an insult. These people are here without papers or documents.”

On that contrary, Mr. Metcalfe retorted, “Most of them have documents, but they’re false or fraudulent.”

His committee, the State Government Committee, is discussing 15 bills aimed at identifying and deporting illegal immigrants, or denying them financial benefits funded by taxpayers. One bill would require employers to use the federal E-Verify system to make sure all their employees’ Social Security numbers are valid.

Another would require police to check the citizenship and immigration status of people charged with felonies and misdemeanors.

Another would have penalties for companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Some firms, in fruit-picking and other agricultural industries, have said it’s hard to find American citizens willing to do the difficult physical job of picking fruit, but illegal immigrants are willing to do so.

Georgia has passed similar legislation cracking down on immigrants, Josephs said, “and crops are rotting in the fields because there is no one to harvest them.”

But critics have charged that some construction companies hire illegals because they are willing to work for low wages and no benefits, while depriving jobs to U.S. citizens who need them.

Another bill would require government agencies to verify the citizenship of all people who seek public benefits.

The committee has heard testimony, for and against, on the bills twice so far, and is expected to vote on the package soon. It probably will pass the committee, because Republicans control it, as well as the full House, and Republicans generally favor the measures. 

 ”We have a right to control our borders, and to  expect that people who come here will follow our laws,” said Rep. Brad Roae, R-Crawford. “Pennsylvanians who need jobs should get them, not people who have snuck in here illegally.” 

 The bills are House Bills 858, 799, 798, 439, 809, 355, 865, 810, 738, 856, 857, 474, 801, 41 and Senate Bill 9. They can be found at www.legis.state.pa.us.

The Capitol is in its traditional July-August doldrums, with legislators on a well-deserved (pardon the snarkiness) recess.

But busier days seem all but certain for September-October, as at least four major issues are likely to be batted around.

House Majority Leader Mike Turzai has leaked to reporters that next week he will be introducing his long-awaited bill to privatize the state’s 80-year-old state-owned liquor/wine system. He and Gov. Tom Corbett, also a privatization supporter, have been talking about the idea for several months.

Mr. Corbett will soon hear from a Philadelphia consulting firm, Public Financial Management, on the financial pros and cons of having 750 privately owned liquor stores (plus 100 private wholesalers) instead of the current system of 600-some state-owned stores with 5,700 employees.

The unions that represent those workers, possibly aided by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, will mount strong opposition to the privatization plan.

The second major issue will be how to generate scads of transportation funding — needed to fix ailing roads, bridges and mass transit systems around the state. A report under the previous Rendell administration said the state needs $3.5 billion a year to fix the problem, a figure that almost certainly won’t be generated anytime soon.

Ideas include seeking federal permission to toll interstates that are not now tolled; higher fees for renewing drivers licenses and vehicle registrations; or shifting the $500 million from the Motor Vehicle Fund that now funds state police back over to roads, but that creates a new for higher general fund taxes or fees to pay for state police.

Corbett has a commission looking into the problem, which should give a report by early August and generate a lot of talk.

Then there’s the controversial idea of slapping an municipal impact fee or outright new staste tax on the millions of cubic feet of natural gas being freed from huge areas of underground Marcellus shale found in three-fourths of the state.

Corbett flatly opposes a tax, which mystifies many critics, who note that all other shale-gas states, even Texas and Oklahome, have such a tax. He denies that the nearly $1 million in campaign funds he got from shale interests in 2010 has affected his decision.

Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati favors an impact fee, to help municipalities with the costs of damaged roads and environmental impacts of the drilling.

And finally there’s the school choice issue — i.e., taxpayer-funded vouchers for students in poorly performing public school districts or in private schools, church-run schools or cyber schools.

Conservatives strongly support the vouchers, as does Corbett, saying it will give both inner-city students and middle-class students better choices for education. But public school teacher unions don’t, obviously, fearing that diverting state funds to private schools will hurt public schools.

So newsies should have a lot to keep them busy this fall.

The bad-boy troublemakers, the citizen activists who keep an eye on state legislators, were back at the Capitol today, the sixth anniversary of the infamous 16 to 54 percent pay raise that legislators voted themselves on July 7, 2005.

Eric Epstein of Rock the Capital, Tim Potts of Democracy Rising PA and Gene Stilp of Taxpayers and Ratepayers United (and creator of the inflatable “pink pig”) released information on how much the pay raises have cost state taxpayers, even though they were repealed in mid-November 2006 after a huge public outcry.

Even though some legislators gave back the raises, many didn’t, and the pay raises increased pension levels for many lawmakers, Epstein said. His whole report on how much it’s cost taxpayers is available at www.rockthecapital.com.

He calls legislators who accepted the pay raises “payjackers,” and said here are the “five highest payjacker pensions” in the House:

– retired Rep. Frank Oliver of Philadelphia, a whopping $235,686 per year.

–retired Rep. Elinor Taylor of  West Chester — now deceased — got $130,896 per year.

–retired Rep. William Rieger of Philadelphia — also deceased — got a $114,900 pension.

–former House Speaker John Perzel of Philadelphia, who lost his re-election bid last year, gets a $104,700 pension. That should take the sting out of the defeat.

–former House Speaker Keith McCall, of Carbon County, gets $100,300; that pension is in addition to his current annual salary of $145,000 as a member of the state Gaming Control Board. Who says being a so-called public servant doesn’t pay well?

When annual pension payments for two retired senators, Robert Mellow and Raphael Musto (both of the Scranton area) are thrown in, it costs taxpayers $1.6 million a year, just for those seven people, Epstein said.

Potts had a separate statement on the so-called Bonusgate scandal, which started in early 2007 after then-Attorney General Tom Corbett read newspaper stories about questionable bonuses.

About two dozen legislators and their aides were eventually charged with giving or getting illegal, taxpayer-funded bonuses for political work that (state officials said) was done on public time. One former powerful House member, Mike Veon of Beaver County, is in state prison because of the illegal bonuses.

Potts said the illegal bonuses given out from 2004-06 were “born out of the political hubris” that led to the 2005 pay raise and “revealed a deeply entrenched culture of corruption and entitlement with the General Assembly.”

 But he wondered if any more officials will be charged before the five-year statute of limitations runs out. “Without further prosecutions by the attorney general before sometime in November, those in the General Assembly who may be guilty of crimes will simply laugh all the way to the bank,” he said.

His Web site is www.democracyrisingpa.com.

If you ask state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe almost any question about the ongoing process of redrawing the district lines for Pennsylvania’s congressmen, the answer is, “It will be constitutional, legal and fair.”

Will some of the new districts be wildly gerrymandered, with odd shapes and all sorts of crazy lines going in all directions, like the existing 12th District (once represented by Cong. John Murtha)?

“The process will be constitutional, legal and fair,” Metcalfe, a Butler County Republican, said today, after an hour-long hearing where a few citizens commented on the redistricting process.

Are he and other lawmakers on a joint House-Senate State Government Committee (which will draw up the new congressional map) getting pressure from current congressmen to give them politically safer districts, where voters have historically supported them? Same answer.

Since Pennsylvania is losing one congressional district, going from 19 congressmen to 18 due to population changes, will the Democrats lose a seat, since the General Assembly is run by the GOP and the governor is a Republican? Well, you get the point.

Mr. Metcalfe, House chairman of the State Government panel, did say one thing else — that the map of the new 18 congressional districts will be ready for a legislative vote by “mid to late fall.”

The state House and Senate must both approve a bill containing the new map and then GOP Gov. Tom Corbett must sign it. There has been much speculation that two Democratic congressmen from western Pennsylvania, Mark Critz and Jason Altmire, will be lumped into the same district and left to fight it out in a primary.

Barry Kauffman, director of Common Cause/Pennsylvania, said the process for redrawing congressional and General Assembly districts leaves much to be desired, and it should be done by an independent commission containing non-politicians. But that can’t happen for another 10 years, after the 2020 census.

HARRISBURG — Do I support the right of people to vote on proposed tax increases that would hit their pocketbooks? You bet I do.

Do I also support the chance for parents of high school athletes to watch their children compete in football, baseball, basketball and other sports? You bet I do.

These two seemingly disparate concepts may soon be coming into conflict. A bill by Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, would make a major change to a 2007 law that, supposedly, already lets school district voters vote on tax increases above a state-set limit of 2 percent or so(based on inflation and some federal guidelines.)

But there are 10 exceptions in the current law that let a school board raises taxes beyond the limit, taking away people’s chance to vote. Pension increases, unusual increases in enrollment and other factors allow a board to get around the referendum requirement.

The Grove bill would eliminate those 10 exceptions, giving voters much greater ability to vote on higher school budgets. But school districts are already warning (threatening?) dire consequences if school budget increases are voted down, such as curtailing or even eliminating sports programs, or art instruction, or home economics or foreign languages or other things students have gotten used to.

Some of those cuts students would probable welcome, but cutting sports? I don’t think so. Friday nights in the fall without football? Unthinkable in Pa.  I saw a picture this week of boys dressed in their baseball uniforms at a school board meeting in northeast Pa., clearly telling the board not the cut sports. Charging parents a special fee for sports or other programs that are now free is another option, but that sort of defeats the purpose of lowering taxes.

The state House added back some kindergarten-Grade 12 funding this week before sending the 2011-12 budget to the Senate. That softens the $500 million plus whack that Gov. Tom Corbett took from K-12, but school boards are still on edge.

The Senate is expected to add more money back, perhaps from the projected $500 million surplus in the current budget, but a lot of existing school programs could still be at risk.