Twelve Days To Get It Right!

The Pennsylvania legislature has twelve days to pass an appropriate budget – one that respects revenue shortfalls of about two billion dollars.

It would be tempting to say that our national fiscal crisis is the cause of the Pennsylvania legislature’s last-minute approach to fiscal responsibility. But, Pennsylvania has not passed a budget on time for the past seven years. And, no one knows how to hold the legislature or the governor accountable for failing year after year in this fundamental legislative duty.

Activists who have been tracking the budgetary process tell me that fiscal conservatives are holding out to embarrass the governor – by failing to pass his budget on time for eight years in a row.

What folly! How can legislators who use “constituent services” as state-paid perpetual campaign operations possibly think they can embarrass a governor who takes limitless but perfectly legal campaign contributions from all sides of every legislative policy issue before him?

But, back to our main worry: given Pennsylvania’s history, sometime during the Fourth of July weekend, when voters and environmentalists are preoccupied with family gatherings, both the governor and legislators will pass another midnight oinker.

Remember the illegal pay raise of 2005? In 2005, elected officials voted for an illegal pay raise for themselves – in the middle of the night, during Independence Day celebrations. Never mind this august body already bought the love of state and municipal employees by voting outrageous pension increases for themselves and government workers (shadow campaign staff) in earlier years.

My fear: Instead of serious, deliberative across-the-board budget cuts and elimination of outdated state boards and agencies to close the $2 billion budget gap, they will yield to the temptation of liquid and black gold. The legislature and the governor will take the easy way out and close the budget gap by expanding gas and oil drilling. This would be a huge mistake – although in the short term, coal, gas and oil drilling will prove to be a cash cow for both local and state budgets.

I’ll cede one point to my friends who are part of the League of Conservation Voters: given the horrendous catastrophe along the Gulf Coast, that there is NO WAY the legislature or the governor could pass a bill that would expand drilling of the Marcellus Shale on a normal business day, when their words, their motives, their decisions could easily be scrutinized by voters and community leaders.

Of course, the legislature won’t dare to expand drilling in the Marcellus Shale while we are watching -- especially now that our eyes and ears are glued to media reports of the damage -- the evidence of recklessness by drilling operators and government inspectors who allowed the Gulf Coast catastrophe to happen.

But, studies have proven time and again that the Pennsylvania legislature is the least accountable state government in the United States. And, they make their most harmful decisions when they know Pennsylvanians aren’t watching.

If we stop watching, anything could happen.

So please, before you go on vacation, set your RSS news feeds to track the progress of the Pennsylvania budget process. Please be in touch with your state representative, your state senator, and the governor. And, tell all of these players you are taking your i-phones to the beach and to your mountain cottages.

Please ask the Governor, and all our elected officials to exercise a common sense budget: one that cuts across the board – including the salaries and perks of elected officials.

If voters don’t demand a fair, honest budget that reflects declining revenues, but still protects our forests, our water supplies, and our natural habitat, how can we expect our elected officials to do the right thing?

Marcellus Shale Drilling Accident Near Union Township Municipal Reservoir

I chatted with an environmentalist who lives in the heart of Pennsylvania's new boom economy: the Marcellus Shale.  She said that farmers are not running a farmer's market this year, because they make more money by leasing their land to gas drillers.  Hotels are packed with out-of-state contractors who are drilling with little accountability or oversight.  Will the BP disaster inspire Pennsylvania state senators to vote for HB 2235, a bill that will require strict oversight of drilling operations in the Marcellus Shale? 
Maybe stories about gas drilling accidents that are polluting our local water supply make a difference.  In Union Township,  municipal reservoirs are in danger of contamination because of gas leaks such as the gas drilling accident that recently occurred in Clearfield County:  http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10164/1065304-455.stm

Marcellus Shale: Pennsylvania Must Prevent a Repeat of the BP Drilling Disaster

In hard economic times, state legislatures are prone to take the path of least resistance. You can't raise taxes on people who lost their jobs. You can’t collect taxes from businesses that are going bankrupt. You can’t collect property taxes from homes that are in foreclosure.

Too often, rather than face necessary cuts to luxurious benefits and bureaucratic programs, we let our state legislatures give energy corporations unrestricted access to our natural resources in exchange for handsome revenue streams in the form of royalties and other taxes.

The Louisiana legislature did this - allowing unregulated offshore drilling in exchange for free-flowing revenues to pay for school reforms and community development. When the sweet crude behaved itself, the state treasury overflowed.

Sadly, as Gov. Bobby Jindal advocated -- these revenues would have paid for post-Katrina coastal restoration if the BP catastrophe had not occurred.

How do I know this? Shortly after Governor Jindal was elected in 2008, he spoke to community leaders on the West Bank and in Plaquemines Parish. In his talk, he argued passionately that part of the state’s oil tax revenues had to be “invested” in coastal restoration, because this was desperately needed to protect the way of life in the southern part of the state. He worked to convince the legislature to earmark oil and gas tax revenues for coastal restoration.

But now, because of the disaster, the coastal marshes can’t be restored. They are being destroyed by the very liquid gold that was supposed to bring Louisiana’s coastal communities to prosperous times. Louisiana's fishing, farming, energy, tourist and other industries are now threatened with extinction.

Tragically, in Pennsylvania, the governor and state legislators have not been able to sit down at the table to make prudent expenditure cuts to bring the state budget in alignment with declining tax revenues and a shrinking working population.

The governor and state senators are vulnerable to the same temptation that is destroying the Louisiana coast: they want to strike it rich by turning the Marcellus Shale over to unregulated drillers and frackers.

Sure, as long as there are no accidents, the state will be flush with cash. But, can we afford to repeat the BP catastrophe, and allow our beautiful forests, farming communities, rivers and habitat to be destroyed?

Fortunately, there is legislation on the table that will prevent reckless drilling in the Marcellus Shale.  HB 2235, championed by Rep. Greg Vitale, requires that rigorous safety and environmental standards be enforced whenever explorations or drilling is conducted in the Marcellus Shale. 

If you want to do something to save Pennsylvania from the fate of the Gulf Coast, then, you can contact Governor Ed Rendell and tell him to live up to the endorsement he has enjoyed from the League of Conservation Voters.   He has to turn down the easy cash, and do everything in his power to preserve the forests and habitat that are part of the Marcellus Shale.

You can reach Governor Rendell’s office by following this link:   http://www.governor.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/contact/2998

Now is the critical time to tell Pennsylvania state senators that safety comes before profits and easy tax revenues. Every state senator in Pennsylvania needs to be told to vote for HB 2235. You can help with this by contacting your state senator through this link: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/member_information/email_list.cfm?body=S

My Birthday Wishes

So yesterday, I celebrated my 56th birthday. My sister Lucille greeted me with “may all your wishes come true!”


Here’s my wish list:

1. That our elected representatives in Harrisburg and in Washington set aside their fears and put the needs of our people and our environment first. If they imagined their children, their grandchildren on the receiving end of tar balls, oil-slick bayous, contaminated fisheries, birdless wildlife preserves, and ruined coastal communities, I believe they would reject the path of expedient profits and unregulated extraction of our precious resources AND they would vote to protect our communities, our habitat and wildlife.

2. That we abandon the politics of extreme ideology – whether on the left or on the right – and center our efforts on pragmatic strategies to solve the gravest problems of our time. When I talk to people, I am amazed that so many folks think that our poisonous political culture makes it impossible for us to solve our human-created problems. As a child of the 60's, I was raised to believe in the power of the dream, the art of the possible, the vision of Camelot -- John F. Kennedy’s metaphor for inspirational governance that stressed:

-Service over personal gain,

-The common good over private privilege,

-Eradication of human poverty over the hording and financial chicanery that is devastating our economy,

-Physical fitness and wellness over self-indulgent lifestyles that contribute to our very expensive health care system.

3. That we relearn the arts of collegiality, cooperation, and compromise in our public dialogues. We don’t have time for all of the self-righteous posturing that passes as “political discourse” in the media. Between the suffering of our soldiers and the human communities who are still embroiled in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the devastation of the Gulf Coast wrought by the BP Deepwater Oil Rig Disaster, and the ongoing economic downturn that is hurting most states – we need leaders and media commentators who can model problem-solving, mutual respect, and compassion for all who have been hurt by these tragedies.

4. That we challenge our elected representatives and favorite media commentators to take a pledge to pull themselves out of the fray, to rise to the occasion and lead us out of these very dark times. We need leaders who can vision, strategize, and implement real human and technological fixes to the ecological and economic crises we created for ourselves.

5. That our national and local leaders model selflessness, generosity, and compassion for our young people today who want to serve, but who don’t want to get caught in the quaggy mire of sludge politics. Our young leaders have the same idealism, the same capacity for greatness and inventiveness that was galvanized by John F. Kennedy and other great leaders of the 20th Century. Will we encourage them to achieve their potential, or will  we undermine the talents and imagination of those who could do so much to heal our world?