Altoona Mirror. June 11, 2024.

Editorial: Don’t dismiss hurricane warnings

Blair County residents can be excused for not becoming very concerned about the worst-ever Atlantic hurricane season predicted last month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Seldom is this county affected seriously by those weather events, witnessed most often in southern states such as Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana.

However, Blair has not always escaped impacts from such storms, as looking back, especially to 1972, can attest. That was the year when Hurricane Agnes, “downgraded” to tropical storm status, wreaked havoc in Pennsylvania, causing $2.3 billion in losses.

According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, Agnes, whose effects were widespread from the Caribbean to Canada, destroyed more than 3,000 businesses in the Keystone State alone, as well as 68,000 homes, while damaging numerous others.

The damage to Pennsylvania businesses exceeded $1 billion; damage to roadways totaled $500 million; and damage to crops and school districts was $120 million and $40 million, respectively.

Then there was what Wikipedia described as Agnes’ “devastating effect on the already-bankrupt railroads in the northeastern U.S., as lines were washed out and shipments delayed.”

The former Penn Central Railroad, important to the Blair County economy, sustained nearly $20 million in damages.

Many older Blair residents can recall clearly the damage that county population centers such as Altoona, Williamsburg and Tyrone experienced.

A ride eastbound on Route 22 east of Blair County revealed sights along the Juniata River that once seemed unimaginable. And Blair emerged from Agnes very lucky. Again, according to Wikipedia:

“Hundreds were trapped in their homes in Wilkes-Barre due to the overflowing Susquehanna River. At the historic cemetery in Forty Fort, 2,000 caskets were washed away, leaving body parts on porches, roofs and in basements. In Luzerne County alone, 25,000 homes and businesses were either damaged or destroyed. Losses in that county totaled to $1 billion.”

In Harrisburg, then-Gov. Milton Shapp and his wife Muriel had to be evacuated from the Governor’s Mansion by boat due to the flooding in the state’s capital city. Indeed, Agnes was a horrific watery experience unlike what Pennsylvania ever had to endure prior to 1972 — or which it has had to experience since.

Hopefully, 2024 will produce nothing to mimic 1972 but, nevertheless, even residents of Blair and other area counties should not pooh-pooh what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted for the current hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through Nov. 30.

According to a May 24 report in the Wall Street Journal, “this season will see between 17 and 25 named storms with winds of 39 miles an hour or higher (and) of those, 8 to 13 are forecast to become hurricanes with winds of 74 miles an hour or higher. Four to 7 major hurricanes of Category 3 or above with maximum sustained winds of 111 miles an hour or higher are expected to form.”

Each of those numbers is the highest NOAA has ever forecast since the federal agency began issuing seasonal hurricane outlooks in 1998. Ocean heat between 2 and 3½ degrees Fahrenheit above normal is the reason for NOAA’s prediction.

Ocean heat is the source of energy for hurricane formation. Local residents shouldn’t lose sleep over NOAA’s latest prediction, but 1972 provided an important lesson that always should be heeded.

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. June 11, 2024.

Editorial: Paid parental leave could make Pennsylvania competitive

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade did more than just upend reproductive health law. It also made back-burner issues take on more urgency.

If limits on abortion result in more pregnancies, more policies will be required to respond to the resulting children’s needs.

States will need plans to handle more child care. Schools that have been shrinking in enrollment may see that change, possibly meaning more demands from school districts for buildings and staff.

Then there are the requirements of pregnant and postpartum parents who will need to adjust to their newborns.

America has long been behind many other countries when it comes to maternity and paternity leave. Sweden provides 69 weeks at a sliding scale of payment. The United Kingdom gives a year of leave and 39 weeks of pay at 90% of average wage. In Canada, a new mother gets 50 weeks at 55% pay.

But the U.S. is in a small minority of countries that doesn’t provide or require paid leave. Collectively, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau have a population half the size of Pittsburgh. The only other country with no paid parental leave is Papua New Guinea with a population of 10 million — still about 76% Pennsylvania’s population.

So how is this an area where the leader of the free world isn’t leading?

In 1993, the U.S. passed the Family and Medical Leave Act. It gives employees up to 12 weeks off for a list of covered incidents, including childbirth or adoption. The employee must have worked at the company for at least 12 months and the company has to have at least 50 employees to qualify. Otherwise, the job isn’t guaranteed to be there upon return. And pay is never a guarantee. That’s what vacation time — or a spouse to pick up the slack — is for.

The idea of whether and how to accommodate parental leave has been left to employers in the same way government frequently allows some industries to police themselves. That means 31 years after the Family and Medical Leave Act, many women are still healing from childbirth when they have to go back to work. A 2023 study by human resources company Remote found 15% of workers can’t afford to take the 12 weeks available by law.

States are making their own policies. Oregon has the most generous, with 12 weeks at 100% salary, with several others close to that. Overall, 13 states have their own family leave requirements. South Carolina would be 14th, but its 12-week paid policy refers only to its own employees.

A Pennsylvania bill has support from Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. Ideally, that would mean good debate, little infighting and quick passage. But as the two chambers have differing ideas about funding, it may devolve without accomplishing anything.

It shouldn’t. Pennsylvania has bemoaned the loss of population to other states and the need to be attractive to employers. Solving the issue of paid parental leave could be a reason for people and companies to come to or stay in the Keystone State.

If the U.S. can’t lead on the issue, Pennsylvania can.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 10, 2024.

Editorial: Return some of Pennsylvania’s surplus to the people — but not too much

A bid by Penn­syl­va­nia Senate Re­pub­li­cans — with the sup­port of sev­eral of their Demo­cratic col­leagues — to cut the state’s earned in­come and elec­tric­ity taxes is cer­tainly tan­ta­liz­ing: Tax cuts in the Key­stone State are few and far be­tween.

But they also un­der­cut Re­pub­li­cans’ own ar­gu­ments, which are largely sound, about the im­por­tance of fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­ity, even as Penn­syl­va­nia sits on record re­serves. The state’s fi­nan­cial sta­bil­ity — much like Pitts­burgh’s — is more frag­ile than it ap­pears. Per­ma­nently cut­ting rev­e­nues by $3 bil­lion would de­plete the sur­pluses Penn­syl­va­nia has ac­cu­mu­lated, al­most en­tirely due to the fed­eral pan­demic stim­u­lus wind­fall, in only about three years.

The pro­posal is the mir­ror im­age of Gov. Josh Sha­piro’s pro­posed 2024-2025 bud­get, which would spend $3 bil­lion more than the com­mon­wealth ex­pects to bring in.

It sets up a clas­sic de­bate: Should the state re­turn $3 bil­lion to the peo­ple in the form of tax cuts or in the form of spend­ing on gov­ern­ment ser­vices?

Either way, it’s too much. Mak­ing per­ma­nent $3 bil­lion an­nual com­mit­ments, whether in tax cuts or in spend­ing, will quickly draw down the state’s his­toric re­serves. That will leav­e a deep­ened struc­tural def­i­cit that a fu­ture gov­er­nor or leg­is­la­ture will have to rem­edy.

The pru­dent ap­proach would be to drain less of the re­serves — say, un­der $2 bil­lion — and to split that be­tween new spend­ing and mod­est tax breaks.

The tax cuts passed the Senate, 36 to 14, in early May. They would cut Penn­syl­va­nia’s in­come tax by 9%, bring­ing it down from 3.07% to 2.8%. They would also elim­i­nate the gross re­ceipts tax as ap­plied to elec­tric­ity com­pa­nies — 5.9% on all funds com­ing into the firm — and re­quire that the sav­ings be passed on en­tirely to cus­tom­ers.

With a me­dian in­come of about $73,000, the in­come tax cut would save the av­er­age Penn­syl­va­nia house­hold about $200 per year. While es­ti­mates of av­er­age elec­tric­ity bills vary, get­ting rid of the gross re­ceipts tax would prob­a­bly save the av­er­age house­hold an­other $100 or so.

A fair com­pro­mise that would keep the best of the GOP pro­posal, while pre­serv­ing the state’s fis­cal sta­bil­ity and the pos­si­bil­ity for more spend­ing, would be to keep the in­come tax at 3.07% — or, at most, cut it to an even 3% — but ditch the gross re­ceipts tax.

Gross re­ceipts taxes, which tax all rev­e­nues re­gard­less of source, are no­to­ri­ously in­ef­fi­cient and pu­ni­tive. As ap­plied to util­i­ties, they are deeply re­gres­sive — even more than the state’s flat in­come tax — be­cause poorer house­holds pay a greater pro­por­tion of their in­come for elec­tric­ity. While an in­come tax cut would be scaled based on in­come, end­ing the gross re­ceipts tax would be felt more equally by ev­ery­one.

It’s good pol­i­tics and good pol­icy to re­turn some of Penn­syl­va­nia’s wind­fall to the peo­ple. But it must be done right, or else fu­ture Penn­syl­va­nians will have to pay for it.

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Scranton Times-Tribune. June 9, 2024.

Editorial: Remember when voting by mail was uncontroversial?

Republicans appear to be of two minds about mail voting as we approach the November General Election.

On the one hand, Donald Trump, who has stubbornly, but wrongly, insisted mail voting is rife with fraud that cost him reelection in 2020, has spoken in favor of a Republican National Committee initiative called “Swamp the Vote,” which urges party members to use any means possible, including the mail, to cast their ballots.

On the other hand, the RNC continues to oppose efforts to ensure mail ballots are not rejected for purely technical reasons.

Last week, the committee criticized a legal effort to remove rules empowering Pennsylvania counties to reject mail ballots if voters fail to properly date the outside of the envelope. Liberal groups suing to abolish the date requirement say it serves no purpose, as all mail ballots must be received in county election bureaus by Election Day and the date they were mailed or signed is immaterial.

Such onerous restrictions routinely rob thousands of Pennsylvanians of their votes. Recent reporting by the nonprofit news organizations Spotlight PA and Votebeat concluded Pennsylvania counties rejected nearly 16,000 ballots cast in the April primary for various reasons, including incorrect or missing dates.

Republican resistance to mail voting, regardless of efforts to get GOP voters to at least consider that method, can be chalked up purely to numbers and politics. Roughly three-quarters of mail ballots in Pennsylvania are filed by Democrats, for example, so tighter restrictions on the practice here are most likely to reduce Democratic totals.

And despite persistent claims to the contrary, allegations that mail voting leads to widespread fraud remain unsupported by the evidence. In fact, in recent months, two stories that supposedly provided such evidence have totally fallen apart.

In February, the conservative group Project Veritas and its former leader publicly acknowledged the falsity of claims by a postal worker in Erie that his supervisors illegally backdated mail-in presidential ballots in 2020. The admission came as part of a legal settlement between a postmaster and Project Veritas, which had widely spread those claims.

And late last month, Salem Media Group Inc., the conservative media company behind the film “2000 Mules,” which alleged a nationwide conspiracy to stuff ballot drop boxes in 2020, said it would halt distribution of the widely debunked movie and a related book. Salem issued an apology to a Georgia man who was falsely depicted in the film as illegally putting multiple ballots in a drop box. That retraction also came as part of an out-of-court settlement.

It’s regrettable it has taken so long for Project Veritas and Salem to admit they spread misinformation that has so damaged many Americans’ faith in mail voting and the election system as a whole. Before 2020, 29 states allowed no-excuse mail voting — including five that used mail ballots exclusively —all without controversy. In the 2016 presidential election, one in four voters used ballots that were mailed to them.

Perhaps the softening of the Republican position on mail voting coupled with continued fact-checking of spurious fraud claims will eventually allow us to return to those happy days when mail voting was an uncontroversial option making it easier for Americans to participate in the democratic process.

END