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Misericordia University holds poinsettia sale

Letter to the Editor: UPS Store patrons thanked for contributions to Christmastime charitable campaigns

<p>Luzerne County taxpayers are wishing Gov. Tom Wolf a happy and more productive new year.</p><p>The state budget &#8220;crisis&#8221; in newspaper headlines late last year was 100 percent avoidable and, sadly, 100 percent manufactured. It&#8217;s still not over.</p><p>Six months of inaction in Harrisburg caused state reimbursements owed to Luzerne County to fall $22 million behind. In our budget of nearly $130 million, it crippled Luzerne County&#8217;s spending capacity. The unprecedented veto of the entire state budget by Gov. Wolf and four subsequent denials by his proxies in the Legislature to override his veto by passing 274 state budget line items out of 400 (they were not only agreed upon by both parties, but also would have funded county government) left counties with no logical alternatives.</p><p>In November, council took out a $20 million loan that 1) puts Luzerne County on the hook for approximately $600,000 in interest to borrow money that was already ours 2) nullifies a large part of more than $1 million in budget cuts council identified in this budget cycle and 3) covers up the failure of the governor to fund county mandated services. My refusal to vote for this loan was indeed the correct vote.</p><p>In my four years on council, I have made difficult and unpopular decisions to get Luzerne County out of debt while maintaining county services. County workers, as one of the papers put it, were not &#8220;pawns&#8221; in this scenario: We all were. Luzerne County is a pawn in a game of state politics. Council was coerced to take a loan out for a state-created mess-up. This game has been going on for decades: The state mandates a county service (most recently, new child trial laws), yet it doesn&#8217;t allocate the corresponding money to pay for it.</p><p>What&#8217;s different this year, however, is that the governor unnecessarily ratcheted up the stakes to an all-or-nothing situation. I would like the newspaper that likened me to a shoe-slamming angry Nikita Kruschev print a story showing all the unfunded state mandates that are covertly passed on to county taxpayers, and perhaps the wise opinion board &#8211; dare I say politburo &#8211; will see that this issue is something to be upset about indeed.</p><p>Gov. Tom Wolf has orchestrated that Luzerne County government, and all counties and school districts across the commonwealth for that matter, be the state&#8217;s fall guy by taking out loans to launder his failure to govern.</p><p>The only entity more shameful than the governor and the paper&#8217;s opinion board is Standard and Poor&#8217;s Rating Services. Their downgrade of Luzerne County&#8217;s hard earned BBB rating to BB+ citing &#8220;political instability&#8221; and doubts about meeting its debt payment issued on the day of the vote is the worst collusion among people in high places I&#8217;ve seen in four years of trying to get our county back on track. It was shared through an email from a higher news outlet and then a call to our council from the state treasury secretary&#8217;s office rather than a direct communication.</p><p>Are you kidding me, S&amp;P? A negative credit report is issued on the day of the vote by an agency that has traditionally ignored those council members who on a consistent weekly basis purposefully sack home rule, belittle the manager and burn down the government, yet when a councilman correctly points out where the fault lies and from where the solution must come, you try to bully him into taking out more debt? This colossal failure by the state and arm-twisting from S&amp;P has already set back years of small-step victories for Luzerne County. The $600,000 interest payment on this loan will be the first of many inflated payments from the taxpayers to pay the county&#8217;s creditors.</p><p>Lastly, will the state receive a credit downgrade for its political instability? Will the governor lobby to fully fund the annual $3 million state portion of the courts it owes to Luzerne County? Will gaming revenues finally be allowed to offset county property taxes instead of funding Harrisburg&#8217;s legislative pet projects? Will the governor seek to reimburse the county taxpayers their $600,000 that he cost them for his delay tactics? Of course not.</p><p>S&amp;P might as well call Gov. Tom Wolf&#8217;s destructive politics &#8220;fresh,&#8221; just like a local paper complimented some of the stone-throwers on council while demonizing me.</p><p>On this issue, I have nothing but contempt for the local editorial boards, credit rating agencies and Harrisburg. All three of you hung us out to dry, and you all won: more papers were sold, more taxpayer money will roll into the banks and more blame will shift away from the capital.</p><p>If the appropriate pressure were put on the appropriate people, things might have turned out differently for the taxpayers of Luzerne County. Shame on all of you.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Harry Haas</p><p>Contributing Columnist</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Harry Haas, a Kingston resident, is a member of the 11-person Luzerne County Council.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Harry Haas: Luzerne County taxpayers ‘hung out to dry’ amid state’s baloney budget ‘crisis’