‘Fix Harrisburg,’ help Indiana County

Coat of Arms, Pennsylvania General Assembly

By Joyce Rizzo

WHITE TOWNSHIP — Every two years in early January at the start of a new Pennsylvania legislative session, the initial duty of all of our elected representatives (after being sworn in) is to vote on rules governing the legislative process for the next two years. The majority-party leaders write the rules.

Why is this significant?  Because which bills get debated and voted on will be determined by a handful of legislative leaders and committee chairs.  A single, powerful committee chair can block important bills that have bipartisan support from being introduced in committee; and a majority leader can keep these bills from debate and a vote in each of the General Assembly’s chambers.  Many newly elected legislators go to Harrisburg determined to make a difference for their constituents only to vote on the same old rules, thereby lessening their own voices but also diminishing the voices of the people they represent.

With new congressional and legislative districts in place for the next 10 years, Fair Districts PA, a non-partisan good-government group, which for six years has been advocating for more transparency and public input in redistricting reform, has turned its attention to educating Pennsylvania citizens about why issues and problems they care about oftentimes die when they reach Pennsylvania‘s legislative body.  On March 30, the organization, in partnership with the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, introduced its new campaign called “Fix Harrisburg” at the state Capitol Rotunda.

At an introductory press conference, other participating organizations described their common experience of having bipartisan legislation they support blocked by procedural rules year after year—in some cases for decades.  The issues ranged from the inequities in school funding to pre-canvassing of mail-in voting ballots to a gift ban for Pennsylvania legislators to telehealth legislation.  In some cases, important bills addressing these issues could not get out of committee, were voted out of committee but not introduced on the floors of the chambers, or were passed in one chamber but stalled in the other.  All because a small number of legislators determine which bills advance.

Time for Mike Driscoll to go

Indiana Uniiversity of Pennsylvania President Michael Driscoll, “Future of IUP” speech, Fisher Auditorium, April 19, 2022. Source: IUP video.

An opinion

By Henry Webb

IUP President Mike Driscoll’s April 19 “Future of IUP” speech has to be one of the most bizarre speeches, and one of the most dishonest attempts at revisionist history, ever made by a state official entrusted to manage hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars. Whatever else the speech is, it is the opposite of effective leadership – and the opposite of being accountable and taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s own failures. According to President Driscoll, the buck stops everywhere but with him.

President Driscoll spent the first nine-plus minutes of his 30-minute remarks equating the smoking wreckage that is IUP after 10 years under his leadership with the plight of the Judeans during their captivity in Babylon – perversely deeming it necessary to include the following language from Psalm 137:  “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.” President Driscoll then asks his audience to essentially pretend that his gross mismanagement of IUP over the last decade never happened.  Unfortunately for IUP and all of its stakeholders, however, it did.

Rainy days in Harrisburg and Indiana

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf delivers his final budget address to the General Assembly, Feb. 8, 2022. Photo: Associated Press

An opinion

By David Loomis

INDIANA – It’s budget season. On March 24, the Chamber of Commerce hosted an annual State of the County event at the Indiana Country Club. Another Chamber-sponsored State of the County event – open to the public — is scheduled for early next month.

Indiana County’s state lawmakers attended the country-club event and – surprise! – criticized the governor’s proposed 2022-2023 budget, delivered Feb. 8.

“With the current inflationary times that we are living in, combined with recent world events, it would be foolish to think that right now is the time to start increasing our spending,” said Sen. Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Me too, echoed Rep. Jim Struzzi, R-Indiana, a member of the House Appropriations Committee.

“Nothing new,” he said of the governor’s spending plan.

The Republican lawmakers were responding to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget proposal to increase spending (including federal pandemic aid) with no increase in sales or income taxes (the two biggest sources of state revenue), leaving a surplus of $3.4 billion.

“Our Rainy Day Fund is the highest it’s ever been,” the governor asserted in his budget address.

And he has pitched new ideas for how to spend the commonwealth’s fat fiscal cushion.

That old White Township supervisors shuffle. Again.

Friends of White’s Woods yard sign, Indiana, Pa. Photo by David Loomis

White’s Woods chronicles

 By Sara King

WHITE TOWNSHIP — Township supervisors last year established a Stewardship Committee to develop a plan for White’s Woods and other wooded areas owned by the township.

The panel’s most recent meeting revealed that it’s déjà vu all over again.

In 1995, when the township had its first bright idea to timber White’s Woods, the plan was to develop the park.  Put in an amphitheater. Or a garden.  Then-township manager Larry Garner, according to an April 13, 1995, article in The Indiana Gazette, said he knew that the plans were unpopular.

How unpopular were they?  The township mailed a ballot to every township resident. More than 2,400 ballots were mailed back to the township office. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents said to leave White’s Woods alone.  Leave it as a natural area.

Imagine Friends of White’s Woods’ surprise when, at the March 31 meeting of the Stewardship Committee, suggestions all-too-similar to those put forward in 1995 came up again.

RGGI spells relief for coal country

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection graphic.

Coal Town chronicles

By David Loomis

INDIANA – Sometime next week, the state Senate may try to override the governor’s Jan. 10 veto of a measure to kill his effort to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The override attempt is likely to fail. That could be good for Indiana County.

RGGI promises environmental, climate and health benefits. And it could extend economic assistance to workers and communities (including Indiana County’s coal-industry workers and their communities) affected by cutting the use of climate-killing coal.

Homer City Generating Station – Pennsylvania’s biggest coal-fired power plant — is slated to become the last of its kind in the commonwealth by the end of the decade. Two of Pennsylvania’s oldest coal-fired power plants — Keystone in neighboring Armstrong County and Conemaugh in neighboring Westmoreland County – plan to stop burning coal and retire their generators by 2028.

Those corporate plans are not prompted by RGGI. Instead, they stem from federal environmental regulations that require cleanup of pollutants discharged into waterways.

The trends are not new. Coal-fired plants began closing after Pennsylvania deregulated its energy market in 1997. Since then, 19 coal-fired power plants have closed or converted to other fuels. In 2010, coal fueled about half the state’s power generation. By 2030 the state Department of Environmental Protection figures it will fall to 3 percent, whether RGGI is implemented or not.

Pennsylvania is not alone. In neighboring Ohio, eight coal plants are expected to close or convert by 2030. More than 200 plants are closing down in dozens of states from here to Hawaii – all responding to market forces, not RGGI.

Coal-field disruptions have yielded limited support for impacted workers and their communities. RGGI, however, offers ample means for such investments. That’s more important now that Indiana County’s economy is less diversified than it was a generation ago. Back then, light manufacturing, health care and higher education offered job opportunities. Those opportunities have dimmed.

Partisan redistricting? PA voters can decide

Final Pennsylvania state House redistricting map. Details shown for House District 62, including Indiana County, represented by Rep. Jim Struzzi. R-Indiana. Source: Dave’s Redistricting. Click to enlarge.

A review

By Stanley Chepaitis

INDIANA — On Feb. 4, Pennsylvania’s five member Legislative Redistricting Commission (LRC) met and voted to approve by a 4-1 margin legislative district maps for the state. The event was live-streamed and recorded.

The maps which they approved are also available in detail at the same site. A lawsuit was filed by the one commission member who voted against the maps to invalidate them. This lawsuit was dismissed by the state Supreme Court on March 16. Barring some extraordinary event, these legislative maps will be in effect until our next round of constitutionally mandated redistricting following the 2030 census.

This has followed a months-long process by the LRC in which testimony was taken from thousands of individual and group witnesses (myself included), and the former district maps were adjusted to accommodate new census information, as well as the incredibly complex geographical, political and demographical realities of our state. Much of the LRC deliberations were live-streamed and are still publicly available.

Pennsylvania’s redistricting process is complicated and often misunderstood. But it is crucial to achieving good and fair governance, so it is necessary to unpack some of those complexities.

A student-centered IUP, including IUPatty’s

Pennsylvania State Police helicopter hovers above Philadelphia Street, Indiana borough, IUP Homecoming, Oct. 6, 2018. Photo by David Loomis.

An analysis

By David Loomis

INDIANA – IUP is “student-centered.”

In case you have missed that, University President Michael Driscoll repeated the institutional mantra four times in his March 5 Indiana Gazette column under the headline, “Tuition affordability plan moving IUP forward as a student-centered university.” The piece asserted that “student-centeredness” was IUP’s strategic plan to be “truly student-centered” and “more truly student-centered.”

The new tuition-affordability plan represents a U-turn for the university’s old tuition-affordability plan, which was pitched in 2014 as “a better plan for both the students and the university.” Not explicitly student-centered, but implicitly.

In fact, the old plan was centered on hiking students’ tuition bills by 19 percent when the plan rolled out in fall 2016. Now, the new “more truly student-centered“ plan will cut tuition by 20 percent to 32 percent when it takes effect in fall 2022.

But it also means IUP must regain student enrollment lost under the old tuition plan, which coincided with an enrollment slump of 35 percent in five years. And the slump is accelerating.

The resulting financial squeeze may not loosen soon. Armchair economists – say, families of prospective IUP students — might note that sharp price hikes can chase away customers quickly, but sharp price cuts may not draw customers back anytime soon.

And meanwhile, state legislators — resting on their ranking of 48th of the 50 states in support of higher education — appear non-committal about boosting Pennsylvania’s parsimonious public investment, despite the commonwealth being flush with cash.

 

THIS WEEK, students are front and center again as I-ACT — the sometimes secretive, sometimes showy committee of community “stakeholders” organized by IUP – met to strategize how to make students behave during IUPatty’s, the movable kegger scheduled around Saint Patrick’s Day.  For this year’s occasion – today through Saturday — organizers tweeted that they will celebrate the event’s 10^th anniversary.

Cannabis decriminalization and reefer madness

An analysis

By David Loomis

INDIANA – Not a lot is known about the Borough Council’s proposal to decriminalize possession of small amounts of cannabis. The council member who first pitched the idea has not been particularly forthcoming.

Neither is the borough’s lawyer, who council members asked in January to draft an ordinance. In February, solicitor Patrick Dougherty reported to the councilors that he was working on it as he juggled an apparently hot potato.

“There is a lot of unknown as to what this body wants,” he said. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t know if you know what you want.”

Maybe that’s why the council members wanted Mr. Dougherty to draft an ordinance in the first place — so they and their constituents could have some legal language to consider in public discussion.

Helpful hint: Fifteen of Pennsylvania’s 2,560 municipalities have adopted decriminalization ordinances since Philadelphia got the ball rolling in 2014.

Such ordinances are accessible online, share many of the same provisions and offer a quick and easy starting point for Indiana’s discussion. For example, Norristown, in Montgomery County (population 34,500), enacted Ordinance No. 20-05 in March 2020. The document is two pages of plain English.

Indiana borough can be distinguished from the 15 other municipalities in one respect: It is the most rural of the lot. All the others are urban or suburban, including, arguably, State College.

But Indiana borough’s interest reportedly is prompted by the same motivations as the others’. More than 50 localities in a dozen states have enacted municipal laws or resolutions either fully or partially decriminalizing minor cannabis possession offenses. More than half the states have passed similar statutes.

And trends in decriminalization don’t even include wider trends in recreational, non-medical marijuana, which has been legalized in 18 states (plus several U.S. territories, including the District of Columbia). Medical marijuana is legal in Pennsylvania and 36 other states (plus territories). The federal government, too, is considering decriminalization and legalization with bipartisan backing. American adults support cannabis legalization for recreational and for medicinal purposes by supermajorities, and the support has doubled in the past two decades. 

RIP IUP per-credit tuition

IUP President Michael Driscoll, 2019 commencement. Photo: Indiana Gazette

Campus chronicles: by the numbers

By David Loomis

INDIANA – Minutes of the Dec. 4, 2014, meeting of the IUP Council of Trustees do not record how its attending members voted on a pilot per-credit tuition plan pitched by university President Michael Driscoll. But no objections were noted.

The rah-rah document reports the plan was “enrollment driven” and “met with a great deal of optimism.” The president pronounced his “flexibility pricing pilot” proposal “a better plan for both the students and the university” that would allow the campus “to grow its way out of the budget shortfall and put to an end [to] living hand to mouth.”

Beyond the optimists among trustees and IUP administrators, campus pessimists were legion. Among others:

— A veteran IUP business-school faculty member professed per-credit pricing would risk an institutional death spiral by raising sticker price and lowering value.

— Students called it a “stealth tuition hike.”

— One student reported that tuition would rise by double digits on average just as admission standards were lowered. “The eventual drop in enrollment,” the student wrote in March 2015, “appears inevitable to all but a select few.”

Indeed, in its first year, the per-credit pricing policy raised the average student’s tuition by 19 percent. The 2016-2017 price hike was steeper in one year than the increase over the preceding four years, during which IUP tuition rose 18 percent.

By comparison, it took a decade (July 2007-July 2017) for U.S. consumer prices to rise 18 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

By the 2018-2019 academic year, the cost of attending IUP (including fees and room and board) ranked highest among all 14 PASSHE schools.

As for IUP’s budget, the institution’s deficit is running at $20 million a year, including red ink for such auxiliary operations as student housing.

Our fight for civil rights in Indiana, Pa.

Edith Cord, 2012. Photo: IUP

Black History Month

Editor’s note: In 1962, Edith Mayer Cord, a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, Austria, joined the foreign-language faculty at Indiana State College (later Indiana University of Pennsylvania). Her husband, Steven Cord, of New York City, joined the social studies department.  

In 1979, Edith left academia and later wrote two books about growing up in Europe during World War II. She lost her father and brother in Auschwitz.

In October 2020, IUP posted on its website Edith Cord’s recollections of the struggle for civil rights in Indiana, Pa., soon after she and Steven arrived. Those recollections are reprinted here, edited for length.

Steven Cord died in April 2020. He was 91. Edith Cord died in Columbia, Md., Sept. 21, 2021. She was 93.

Her narrative, below, begins in 1962 when Edith and Steven Cord arrived in Indiana.

                                    — David Loomis, editor

——————————–

By Edith Cord

Indiana had a small Jewish community, mostly composed of merchants. We learned later that Jews had only recently been allowed to join the Indiana Country Club.

We also learned that housing was segregated in Indiana, and most members of the small Black community were restricted to living in Chevy Chase. We learned that when Lyman Connor, who was African American, was sent to Indiana as the local administrator for the state Health Department, he was not able to buy housing in town, and he and his family had to settle in Chevy Chase.

Civil rights were the topic of the day. Our conversations about civil rights led us to get involved at the local level. Since most of us were academics, the first thing we did was establish a fund to provide scholarships for any post-high school education or training for young Black people from Indiana County.

We created a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization named the Human Relations Committee of Indiana County. We now had official status, and contributions to the scholarship fund were tax deductible.