Jul 5, 2023 9 min read

Citizens’ Voice. July 1, 2023.

Editorial: Bill ensures maximum vote on referendums

Legislative gerrymandering, devising electoral districts to ensure certain outcomes, is the most reliable way to help produce and preserve minority rule. That had been the case in Pennsylvania for more than a decade, during which Republicans held majorities in both legislative houses even though Democrats held substantial registration advantages.

Holding majority power also enables other instruments of minority rule, such as voter suppression and scheduling important state constitutional referendums for low-turnout elections.

Thursday, the House State Government Committee approved a bill that would eliminate the last of those devices by requiring that state constitutional referendums appear on ballots when the most Pennsylvanians are likely to vote. It passed on a straight party-line vote: 12 Democrats in favor; 9 Republicans against.

Republicans held both legislative majorities until Democrats captured the House by a one-vote margin for the current two year session. While in the majority, Republicans scheduled two referendums to diminish the governor’s emergency powers for the 2021 municipal primary election. Odd-year municipal primaries almost always produce low turnouts, helping to mitigate the Republicans’ registration disadvantage. In 2021, about a quarter of the state’s voters participated in the municipal primary, compared with 76.1% in the 2020 general election and more than 60% in November 2022.

The GOP majorities also planned to conduct referendums in this year’s municipal primary on highly controversial constitutional amendments regarding abortion and voter identification. Court challenges and the Democrats’ election to the House majority deterred that plan.

The new bill would require constitutional amendment referendums to be on general election years, when elections for Congress, all of the state House, half of the Senate, and governors and presidents produce bigger turnouts.

Since the current state constitution last was adopted in 1968, according to an analysis by Spotlight PA, 49 constitutional amendments have appeared on statewide ballots, but just 14 were presented during gubernatorial or presidential elections.

“The constitutional amendment process … should not be done by a handful of voters,” said Democratic Rep. Ben Sanchez of Montgomery County, the bill’s sponsor.

The Legislature should pass the bill to ensure that as many Pennsylvanians as possible weigh in on matters important to state governance.

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. June 29, 2023.

Editorial: Pa. needs better reintegration plan when paroling former prisons

SCI Greensburg was once a center of activity in Westmoreland County.

It housed around 900 inmates. It was staffed by 360 people, generating paychecks that fueled business throughout the area.

Then, in 2013, it closed. Overnight it went from being a place with purpose to a question mark. What would come next? What do you do with a 350,000-square-foot prison? How do you turn it from a place meant to keep people from leaving to a place that people choose to use?

Those are questions the state should have considered more in depth before it let the property go.

The state of Pennsylvania owns a lot of buildings and land. The Department of Corrections alone has a lot. There are 23 prisons and a boot camp that is really a short-term prison with a military motivation approach and focus on things like drug and alcohol treatment.

Since 2013, five prisons have been closed. In addition to SCI Greensburg, SCI Cresson’s cell doors slammed shut for the last time that same year. In 2017, it was SCI Pittsburgh, followed by SCI Graterford in 2018 and SCI Retreat in 2020.

The closures were done after changes to prison populations. Some were about declining numbers making consolidating inmates more effective. Others were about managing specific needs, like opening SCI Phoenix in 2018 as a newer and more functional maximum security facility. Both the openings and closings came after much thought.

More thought needs to be given to what happens next.

In just 10 years, the former SCI Greensburg property has been through a lot. It was purchased in 2015 by Verdant Holdings LLC for $995,000. The man behind that, David Goldsmith of Carlisle, had a $150 million veterans center dream that never came to fruition.

Just three years later, it was foreclosed on to recoup a $5 million loan. It has been tied up in bankruptcy and gone to sheriff’s sale. While it went back on the tax rolls after years of being state property, it also spent years without those taxes being paid before being satisfied by the sheriff’s sale. And now, after all that, Hempfield is buying it for $3.5 million. The township will work with Westmoreland County Industrial Development Corp. to dump even more money into demolition.

It is a proactive move to eliminate blight, according to township manager Aaron Siko. The partnership is to try to take a nuisance and turn it into something productive.

The state should have done that before walking away from the property like a shuttered Bed Bath and Beyond.

The Department of General Services is now looking for a buyer for the former SCI Pittsburgh, aka Western Penitentiary. A land use study and recommendations are being made, including consideration of the site’s value for film and television use. Costs of demolition are estimated as high as $50 million if the whole property is razed.

Let’s hope that the state takes more than just bids into consideration. The overall feasibility of the project needs to be better assessed. Hempfield is paying millions for the opportunity to spend even more money to eliminate a state problem. Pittsburgh doesn’t want to end up in the same position.

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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. July 3, 2023.

Editorial: Shapiro programs make progress in special education shortage

Within the crisis of teacher staffing in Pennsylvania, there is a particular crisis of special education staffing. A $1.5 million grant program to fund accelerated credentialing for paraprofessionals is a step in the right direction, but more will have to be done to smooth the path to a career in special education.

Pennsylvania’s special education teacher pipeline is running dry. The state issued 2,600 special education certificates in 2010, but now issues barely 1,000 a year. That’s simply not enough to keep up with demand. Vacancies are currently under 10%, but they’ll only get worse.

Paraprofessionals, or paraeducators, are generally better known as teachers’ aides. They assist and learn from certified special education teachers, and lead activities with students. State law only indicates that they must be “qualified,” which the Department of Education has defined to mean achieving one of three milestones: completing 48 credits of postsecondary education; obtaining an associate’s degree or higher; or receiving a “Credential of Competency” from the department.

Serving as a paraeducator provides hands-on experience that can’t be matched in the college coursework setting. But the state requires, rightly, deeper pedagogical and clinical knowledge to be credentialed as a special education teacher. Bridging that gap can be expensive and time-consuming.

The paraeducator grants will be distributed among the state’s 29 Intermediate Units (IUs), which provide educational services to school districts and private schools, especially in remedial and special education. The IUs will partner with local community colleges to provide education for paraprofessionals that meets several criteria: It advances them toward further credentials, such as an associate’s degree; it is feasible to complete coursework while working full-time; and, most importantly, it is free.

This still won’t get paraprofessionals to teaching certificates, however, which involves further time and expense. Another $1.5 million Shapiro administration program, announced this spring, offered grants of up to $100,000 to colleges and universities to help them create expedited special education certificate programs. As it stands, the cost in time and money to become a special education teacher is a major barrier.

Most special education certificate programs at Pennsylvania colleges and universities are geared toward already-certified teachers who would like to add special education to their credentials. These programs are generally around 30 credits and take 18 months. At a cost of over $500 to over $1,000 per credit, based on a sample of options from around the commonwealth, teachers must spend from $15,000 and to more than $30,000 to become certified in special education.

Both of the Shapiro administration’s programs are promising examples of investing in potential long-term solutions, rather than funding band-aids. As Gov. Josh Shapiro continues to look for ways to make government more efficient — while showing a willingness to take on teachers unions, as with his support for school vouchers — finding ways to reduce red tape and make it easier to become a teacher will be essential.

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Scranton Times-Tribune. July 3, 2023.

Editorial: Broadband plan calls for broad reform

The COVID-19 pandemic created a new classification for “haves” and “have-nots” regarding economic and educational opportunities, access to medical care and more — those who have broadband internet access and those who don’t.

As schools went online and offices turned to work-at-home schedules, the lack of broadband in many communities posed a major burden. Parents sometimes had to drive their children to shopping malls or other areas where their computers could work off Wi-Fi.

Now, the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program has begun to distribute money to help states establish universal broadband access. In the modern economy, that access is every bit as crucial as access to railroads, electricity and highways was in earlier eras.

Pennsylvania’s share of BEAD funding is $1.16 billion, which will be allocated by the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority. Its work so far demonstrates that the universal broadband project must be accompanied by a key reform at the federal level.

The lack of broadband access is far more extensive than the Federal Communications Commission had believed, because the agency had allowed internet service providers to self-report the upload and download speeds of their service. The FCC had considered Pennsylvania to be well-served based on ISP reports, for example, until Penn State researchers tested actual download speeds for 15 million computers in 2019 and found that none of the state’s 67 counties had more than 50% true broadband penetration.

The new state authority has determined that more than 50,000 spots in Pennsylvania lack broadband access that were not included in the FCC’s maps identifying areas without broadband. So far, according to the authority, the FCC has accepted more than 28,000 of its challenges to the maps, thus ensuring that those areas will get broadband in the impending rollout.

Armed with is own accurate information, the state authority will develop a five-year plan to deploy broadband across the state.

Meanwhile, the FCC should ensure that its own data on broadband access and reliability comes from independent sources rather than from internet service providers with a self-interest in showing compliance with federal standards.

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