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First Posted: 5/12/2014 The wheels of justice have nothing on property tax reform and education funding in this state. Both grind away at a snail&#8217;s pace.
In the meantime, senior citizens and others on fixed incomes struggle to meet the bane of the Pennsylvania homeowner, the yoke of paying for public education on the backs of those who deign to own property.
Gov. Tom Corbett insists he&#8217;s gotten a bad rap, that the real culprit in recent education funding crises are local school boards that ignored warnings not to use federal stimulus funds for recurring projects. When the federal money dried up, the local boards hit up taxpayers to make up the difference.
Everybody agrees education funding is a critical issue. That&#8217;s the easy part. Where to get it is harder. There is a growing push to tap into the state&#8217;s burgeoning Marcellus Shale regions for new revenue. Corbett remains steadfast against any such move, fearful that it will drive the drillers &#8211; and the economic boom &#8211; out of the state.
Senate Bill 76 would eliminate property taxes. The bill&#8217;s sponsor, Sen. David Argall, R-Schuylkill County, believes he has the votes to pass the measure, which would make up the revenue from property taxes by hiking both the personal income tax and sales tax.
Not everyone is a fan. State business groups have lined up against the plan, wary of the hit small businesses would take in terms of the sales tax. Not surprisingly, the Pennsylvania School Boards Association blasted the bill in advance of the expected vote.
The state did not get in this mess overnight, seeing the state&#8217;s portion of education spending fall from 50 percent in the mid-1970s to where it stands today, a miserly less than 34 percent. That leaves Pennsylvania in a lowly 47th position nationwide in education funding. Getting out of this hole will not be easy, or without pain. All of which leaves us a bit mystified as to why Corbett and state officials abandoned an important shift in how education funds were allocated a couple of years ago. The result of a costing-out study, that shift had done something not always popular in Harrisburg, directing money where it was needed most.
Might we make this one small suggestion: Why not use as a starting point returning to the funding formula already put in place by the costing-out study and Act 61. It proved effective in getting more money into the hands of those districts that needed it most. The property tax reform questions are not going away any time soon. This would be a good place to start.
The Mercury
Pottstown

OTHER OPINION: PA. EDUCATION FUNDING To pay for schools, adopt old formula