LNP/LancasterOnline. June 14, 2023
Editorial: Another warning about danger to democracy posed by FreePA and Moms for Liberty
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
In January 2022, Joe Mohler — then the chairman of the Lancaster Township Republican Committee — wrote a column for this newspaper decrying an election training partnership between the Republican Committee of Lancaster County and FreePA.
Who “a political party aligns itself with matters,” Mohler wrote. “FreePA is not an organization the county GOP has any business associating itself with. Its website has been a hub for spreading inflammatory and verifiably false information.”
He described FreePA’s conduct as “reckless, provocative and designed to exploit people’s base instincts.”
Mohler, of course, was right. But for the sin of being right he stepped down from his leadership position as members of the Lancaster Township committee prepared a resolution to remove him from it.
The Florida-based Moms for Liberty is cut from the same cloth as FreePA, but it wields far more power and influence. It’s a right-wing organization seeking to take over local school boards in the guise of protecting children from “dangers,” such as the accurate teaching of history, compassionate policies relating to transgender students and library books that reflect the realities of students’ lives and prepare them for the complexities of living in a diverse world.
Without the freedom to read, without free and fair elections, without truthful history, our democracy is doomed. Moms for Liberty is intent on speeding democracy’s demise at the local level, promoting liberty for its members and like-minded supporters — but for no one else.
We’re not surprised that Moms for Liberty and FreePA leaders were dismayed to be labeled “antigovernment” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They view themselves as patriots, but the patriotism they espouse is narrow-minded and exclusionary.
We were startled, however, by the willingness of Republican Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons to attack the Southern Poverty Law Center in response.
“This is a political tactic to try to oppose those groups who they see as conservative,” said Parsons, whose photo with FreePA activists is on the group’s website.
His fellow Republican commissioner, Ray D’Agostino, was more measured. He told LNP ‘ LancasterOnline’s Sholtis that he wanted more information about how the Southern Poverty Law Center came to its decision to place FreePA within “the antidemocratic hard-right movement.”
D’Agostino got perhaps more than he bargained for when Joseph Wiinikka-Lydon, the law center’s senior research analyst, provided a statement.
“Overall, FreePA trades in the rhetoric and goals of the larger antigovernment movement, fearing UN power and calling their political opponents Marxists and communists,” Wiinikka-Lydon wrote. “They demonize their opponents, attack inclusive education and scapegoat LGBTQ persons, and they work with other organizations to undermine faith in legitimate democratic elections. They have also engaged in extremist activities and with extremism groups, from the January 6th insurrection to Moms for Liberty.”
FreePA’s connections to violent extremism are exemplified by some members’ involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Wiinikka-Lydon added. Three members of FreePA were arrested for their participation in the Jan. 6 riot, including Sandra Weyer of Mechanicsburg, who was convicted earlier this month of obstructing Congress’ work and illegally entering the Capitol.
After Mohler’s forced exit from leadership in the local Republican Party, we asked this question in a February 2022 editorial: “What does it say that the county GOP does not have space for a Liberty University graduate who believes in Reagan Republicanism?”
We’d ask another question now: What does it say that some within the county GOP have made room for two organizations deemed to be “antigovernment” by the Southern Poverty Law Center?
What does it say about the local school boards that have cowed to demands from Moms for Liberty and FreePA to implement policies targeting transgender student-athletes and restricting access to certain library books?
Sholtis interviewed Elizabethtown Area School District board Vice President Michael Martin, who said FreePA members have taken over the local Republican committee and helped to get election deniers and conspiracy theorists such as Danielle and Stephen Lindemuth elected to the school board.
Martin is concerned the FreePA school board members and candidates may “embark on a Christian nationalist agenda that will end up tying up the school district in lawsuits.”
A self-described “fiscally conservative lifelong Republican,” Martin did not seek reelection this year. Like Mohler, he now feels he has nothing in common with the right-wing extremists seeking to take over local GOP politics.
County Republicans can slam the Southern Poverty Law Center all they want, but they’d be better off heeding this newest warning about the forces with which they’ve become aligned.
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 18, 2023
Editorial: State Senate should approve indigent defense bill
Sixty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark decision established the right of poor defendants to an attorney and adequate legal defense. Nowhere is that constitutional right more flagrantly violated than in Pennsylvania. It’s one of only two states — South Dakota is the other — that provides no state funding, oversight or uniform standards for local public defenders or court-appointed attorneys.
Fairness in the legal system requires an even playing field, where truth emerges from the adversarial efforts of a competent prosecution and vigorous defense. That doesn’t happen in Pennsylvania. Instead, outgunned and underpaid defenders are often forced to cut corners and forgo expert witnesses and investigators. Cumbersome criminal caseloads push attorneys to settle cases quickly with a plea.
As noted by a 2011 bipartisan task force of state legislators, the issue is not the competency of defense attorneys for the indigent — many of them are outstanding — but the system that gives them neither the time nor the resources to mount a constitutionally adequate defense.
Vastly disparate spending among the state’s 67 counties, which pick up the entire tab for public defender offices, also means the quality of defense depends on locale. Philadelphia, for example, spends nearly 10 times more per capita on indigent defense than does Mifflin County. Allegheny County spends roughly $9.2 million, close to the average per-capita expenditure.
Elsewhere, state governments provide most of the funding for local indigent defense, assuring a more equitable system.
Members of the state House this week approved a bill (HB 1085), sponsored by Rep. Napoleon Nelson, D-Philadelphia, that would take a first step toward a public defense system that meets minimal constitutional standards. Now, the state Senate must approve the plan before the state’s 2023-2024 budget takes effect in July. The Senate version of the bill, sponsored by Lisa Baker, R-Luzerne, and Vincent Hughes, D-Montgomery, remains in the Appropriations Committee.
Both bills would establish an Indigent Defense Advisory Committee within the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, as well as a grant program. The Advisory Committee would, among other things, propose minimum standards for indigent defense services. Standards could cover training and qualifications for attorneys, data collection, caseloads, eligibility requirements and employee compensation.
Legislators would have to carve out money in the 2023-24 state budget to fund the grant program.
An abysmal system
The public may never know how poorly the system works. Many public defender offices don’t have time to record even the most rudimentary information on their operations, such as average caseloads. Outside of Philadelphia, the system delivers a hodgepodge of fast, cheap and ineffective indigent legal services.
Public defenders and court-appointed attorneys are underpaid and overworked. Starting salaries for public defenders are typically about $50,000 a year, but as low as $30,000, considerably below what assistant district attorneys make. Court-appointed attorneys are compensated by flat fees, regardless of the complexity of a case, or how many exams, pleas and other legal tasks it entails.
As a result, more people go to state prisons, where each prisoner costs taxpayers more than $40,000 a year. Over the last 30 years, more than 100 people have been exonerated in Pennsylvania. Since 1976, in capital cases alone, 11 prisoners have been exonerated and many more resentenced. Inflated sentences, court-ordered retrials, incarcerating the innocent and wrongful-conviction lawsuits have cost the state millions of dollars.
Justice for all
Previous administrations and legislatures in Pennsylvania have talked about the problem but done little, or nothing, about it.
To his credit, Gov. Josh Shapiro included $10 million in his 2023-24 budget, effective July 1, to start fixing Pennsylvania’s shameful system. The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency would distribute this unprecedented investment locally, based on a formula that considers needs and available resources, the governor’s office said. Legislators would have to carve out money in the 2023-24 state budget to fund the grants.
Statewide, an added $10 million is insufficient to ensure adequate legal services for poor defendants, but it’s a step forward that would, overall, amount to nearly a 10% increase. Together, Pennsylvania’s 67 counties spend more than $100 million on indigent defense, but Philadelphia accounts for 40% of that.
Providing adequate and equitable funding for indigent defense in Pennsylvania won’t be fast, cheap or easy. It will take the state’s best bi-partisan efforts. But fixing this broken system is essential to making the 60-year-old promise of justice for all a reality in Pennsylvania.
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Times-Tribune. June 14, 2023
Editorial: Improve pay for support professionals
Pennsylvania law requires the state government to fund services for people with intellectual disabilities and autism, along with a moral obligation to help provide for some of its most vulnerable citizens.
It’s failing on both scores. At the same time that the state government has more than $5 billion in its Rainy Day Fund and an anticipated $6 billion surplus by the June 30 close of this fiscal year, more than 12,000 people languish on a waiting list for intellectual disability and autism services. More than 5,000 of those people qualify for what the state itself classifies as “emergency services.”
The Rainy Day Fund is meant to cover budget shortfalls, and it’s raining hard for intellectual disability and autism service providers.
Underlying the waiting list is a major shortfall in the number of direct support professionals who provide individual and group care for people with intellectual disabilities and autism. Statewide, according to the Provider Alliance that represents support agencies, the field has a 37% annual turnover rate, a current 24% vacancy rate and 15,000 open positions.
The jobs are emotionally and often physically demanding. But providers can’t compete for workers with market-based wages for health care because wage rates are tied to state reimbursements. The average pay for a direct support professional is $16.72 an hour, for which the state supplies $14.25.
That alone explains the turnover and vacancy rates. It takes an extraordinary level of commitment to remain in the direct support role when comparable or better pay readily is available for much less-demanding work.
The providers have asked the state to increase the appropriation for direct support professional wages by $430 million. With a match from the federal government, that would enable the providers to increase wages to about $20 an hour.
Some state lawmakers often complain about wasteful spending, but this a case of their own wasteful hoarding. Rather than squirreling away taxpayers’ money, except for their own guaranteed annual pay increases that are tied to inflation, lawmakers should ensure that it is spent on crucial services that the government exists to provide.
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Citizens’ Voice. June 19, 2023
Editorial: LOOP, STAR, other tax adventures
With the June 30 end of the fiscal year looming, legislators must craft the new state budget’s education piece in light of a recent Commonwealth Court decision that the government’s distribution of education funding is unconstitutional.
That, in turn, points to the Legislature’s failure to increase the state government’s share of public education funding from only about 35% of the total, leaving school districts to raise more than $17 billion from local property taxes.
Annual proposals range from modestly modifying the property tax to eliminating it. Lawmakers have increased state contributions over the past eight years but not to the point of diminishing local property taxes.
They could maintain the current system while providing property tax relief to those who most need it, by borrowing from programs in other states and from a local program.
The New York State Tax Relief Program, STAR, provides a range of property tax relief based on property owners’ incomes rather than property values. It has several components. Owner-occupants of taxed property are eligible for a state tax rebate of at least 45% if they are older than 65 and their incomes are $60,000 or less. Those whose incomes exceed that are eligible for smaller rebates. Other property owners who earn up to $250,000 are eligible for percentage reductions in their property’s assessed value. The average benefit is about $800 a year. It costs the state government $3 billion but would be less expensive in Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia has a program applicable to all property taxes known as LOOP, for Longtime Owner Occupant Program, and Pittsburgh’s state representatives have introduced a bill to allow that city to emulate it. It particularly suits dynamic urban areas, where longtime homeowners sometimes suddenly face much higher property taxes because of new high-end developments around them. LOOP effectively zeroes out the new development in determining longtime residents’ assessments.
The Legislature should approve not just Pittsburgh’s plan but apply it statewide. Local markets will determine where it makes sense.
If lawmakers don’t directly reform property taxes, they at least should work around the edges to make them less onerous for people who can least afford them.
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