Raise Money, Not Taxes

The headlines have been full of coverage about recent flooding in communities north of Pittsburgh. Sadly, the focus hasn't even been so much on the repeated floods as much as the lack of funding to prevent future disasters.

After the horrendous floods caused by hurricane Ivan, small communities such as Millvale attempted to dredge creeks & streams to prevent future floods. The Army Corps of Engineers promptly put a stop to it, claiming that they alone have the authority to perform such work. Millvale for one was happy to relinquish the work to the ACE, but federal funding shortages & recent layoffs prohibited the ACE from doing the work.

As we approach the 3rd anniversary of Ivan's landing in Pittsburgh, these same communities are being flooded with every significant rain. Funding shortages are still keeping the work from being done.

Some geniuses have proclaimed that the government needs to move people from theses communities rather than help them to rebuild & prevent future problems. Personally, I think that's plain stupid, as these communities existed for decades with no natural disasters to speak of & are only experiencing them now because of upstream development. Instead of federal & state help, these communities should be receiving money from those who built upstream.

These developments are causing problems so they should be the ones paying to fix them. Let's face it, if you build something properly, then it shouldn't strangle the neighbors, right? So if your business, McMansion or whatever is destroying neighboring towns, then you did a pretty shitty job with the planning & execution. Therefore, you should pay to fix the problem & also reimburse those harmed by it.

And such a solution would take some time. After all, development in the northern suburbs of this city is rampant so how do we decide the percentage of fault to assign to each upstream community, business or McMansion?

But I digress, because that's a post for another day. My simpler & quicker solution is to "find" the money somewhere in the coffers of our state legislature. They can afford it. The benefits & perks awarded to them are grossly out of line with those offered in both the private sector & also those offered to similar legislatures in other states.

I'm working off of some old numbers here (from the beginning of the rescinded pay raise fury period & it's ensuing blizzard of media coverage), but I'm sure these numbers have only increased since then.

Our legislature costs the taxpayers more than 13 million each year just in car leases, per diems & health benefits. That's about 8.1 million in per diems & mine is a conservative estimation, allotting for 250 per diems per year & considering that 25% take the lesser amount because they live within 50 miles of Harrisburg.

That's 1.98 million in car leases, costing up to $650 per month each. That's more than a mortgage payment for a lot of people. That's 3.33 million in health benefits, while so many working Pennsylvanians have no health care coverage.

Did you know that we pay approximately $927.47 per month for each member's health & prescription coverage? That does not include what we pay for their dental, vision, life insurance or long-term care facility coverage.

In contrast, the employees at my small business are generously covered in health, prescriptions, dental, vision, life & disability for less than $500 bucks per month. Half of our covered employees have spouses & children on the plan, but still the total premiums paid each month average out to just $487 per covered employee.

We have modest copays, no pre-approval requirements, can visit any physician, specialist, hospital etc. (no exclusions) & no pre-existing condition limitations. Our dental plan is the Cadillac of dental coverage, with 100% in network coverage. Ou vision plan is an actual plan, not one of those phony discount cards. Every 3 years, we can get 2 pairs of frames or 2 years worth of contacts with no out-of-pocket expenses. Suffice to say that I'm not blowing smoke here, our coverage kicks ass & it costs less than half of what we're paying to cover the bums in the Harrisburg.

So if I, a lowly purchasing manager in a tiny, struggling steel fabrication shop, can shop a small group with 6 people & negotiate awesome rates such as this, why can't our elected leaders do the same?

I propose a volunteer board of working professionals be convened to oversee spending by & for our elected leaders. If they could negotiate a benefits package similar to my own, we could save the taxpayers 1.86 in just health expenses alone.

Furthermore, nobody with any business savvy or success would allow the unvouchered expenses - which could save untold millions.

Additionally, the per diems could be eliminated in favor of free lodging at select capital hotels at negotiated package rates. The car leases would be altogether abolished in favor of mileage reimbursement at the current federal rate & then paid only for trips to Harrisburg. After all, most people don't have a free commute on the company dime, why should these bozos?

Imagine how this money could be reinvested in our communities, saved & grown for emergencies, or used to lessen the tax burden.

Again, I ask my fellow voters, why not?

Respect Our Farmers

It seems to me that being a farmer is a pretty thankless job in many ways. It's hard work, it's not very lucrative & there are many obstacles outside of your control to worry about, like weather. We need farmers & the fruits of their labor. They should be respected, valued & appreciated in our society because they feed us.

But it seems that farmers are frequently getting shafted by local government regulations that favor sprawl. In the greater Pittsburgh area, there are frequent news stories about local farmers being unduly restricted or even driven out of business.

All too often, the stories are the same: Someone sells an old family farm to a developer who wants to build a lot of houses on postage-stamp sized lots to create a big, ugly subdivision.

With the archaic property tax scheme in PA, municipalities welcome sprawl with open arms, no matter how unsightly. Sometimes they even court it because more houses in the tax base equals more money in the coffers.

The developer then rapes the land of all it's charm, bulldozing stately forests to build a bunch of houses that all look exactly the same. Then they plant a little bit of grass & a few trees around because, hey everyone loves nature, right?

Soon, people with no imagination pay a lot of money to buy a house that looks just like all of the others, is too close to all the others & has no privacy. Then they all sign a code of conduct, effectively agreeing to the predetermined color scheme of the plan, prohibiting the hanging of laundry & forbidding such atrocities as swingsets.

Apparently, you want to project the illusion that you throw away clothes after wearing & simply buy new ones. You want the world to think that your children are entirely too refined to spend time swinging or acting like children.

Then they all move in to Stepford Villa & realize that there is a farm nearby. And you can see the farm & those cows are even more aesthetically horrendous than a jungle gym!

And then you realize that animals smell. And then you realize that you can actually hear the horses whinny or the whir of a tractor cutting hay. This is unbearable. It’s a thousand times worse than the Wilson’s new gutter – which is sage when they know damn well that they are only allowed to have pebble clay.

So what do you do? It’s a small community & you probably know the powers that be. Your kids play nobody-loses soccer together or you may even be on some commission or other yourself. Next thing you know, the township has passed some ridiculous new law that puts the farmer out of business so that the residents of Stepford Villa don’t ever have to see those cows or hear their moos again.

Finally, there may be an end in sight of this poor treatment of farmers. The PG reports that the PA Attorney General is calling out these practices & stepping up to protect farmers. It’s about time because farming is the #1 industry in PA & it’s something we can’t do without. Beyond the fact that this is just plain wrong & stupid, jobs depend on it & we need food to survive. So the residents of Stepford Villa may hate their neighbors but they’d be damn hungry without them so they should learn to appreciate them.