Dear Editor:
Governor Corbett visited Schuylkill County this month and was quoted as saying "everyone wants money, money is tight". It didn't have to be this way, the Corbett way. There was one prominently conspicuous opportunity that was incredibly discounted by Corbett. Instead of harnessing the opportunity that presented itself in the form of the Marcellus Shale, the Governor used his pen to sign the 2011-12 state budget that denied all of us this opportunity.
Corbett's pen may as well have been a chain saw. Because the Corbett budget that we are now tormented with, gashed open a gaping wound that: leaked out almost $1 million from the Tamaqua Area School District budget, squirted away emergency response dollars from PEMA, drained the environmental oversight accounts of DEP and the county Conservation Districts and made 4,000 jobs disappear in school districts all across the Commonwealth.
Instead of embracing this Marcellus Shale opportunity and returning to the Commonwealth a small portion of the proceeds that foreign companies seized by drilling into our State Forest Land, the PA Wilds Area and the rolling rural farmland of our state, the Governor has allowed foreign companies to prosper at the peril of kindergartners, college kids and our environment. I twice voted as a member of the PA General Assembly, for this opportunity and in defense of our students, emergency responders and the environment. My votes would have produced over half a billion dollars by now and a whole lot of money for the future to keep Pennsylvanians educated, protected and working. The Corbett plan might produce $195 million six years down the road, but truly is a band aid that will not begin to reattach our severed economy and environment.
Unfortunately, almost all of our current Schuylkill County legislators have chosen to stand with Corbett. Senator Argall, Rep Knowles and Rep Tobash have all helped oil up the Corbett chain saw by voting for the Corbett budget and against Pennsylvania.
Tim Seip
Past State Representative
125th Legislative District
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Comments
Isn't in true that it also didn't have to be this way if we as a state didn't go completly beyond our means during the last 2 terms of Rendell? Didn't we blow the windfall of gaming tax revenue that now has no chance of bailing us out of this mess or help to cut propery taxes like they were supposed to? So from what I can see, you are saying that in order to make life easier now we should once again use an opportunity to promote business growth as a way to fill our shortfall now and we are supposed to believe that it would somehow be diverted back to decreasing our taxes at some point in the future when things aren't so tight? Give me a break. How about this, you give me a $20 and I'll give you $5 back and act like you should be happy that I gave you $5 of your own money back. If our last legislation wasn't so unwilling to make the difficult decisions when they weren't so difficult back in 2007 and we still had a fighting chance maybe we wouldn't be in such rough shape now? Or is your solution to tax and find other ways to spend until the windfall of Marcellus Shale is drained and then hope they find diamond mines in Shippensburg and maybe some oil in Allentown?.... how many windfalls do you think we have in us? I think it's time to right the ship and move ahead.
And if special interests and pork bellies weren't so prevalent in everything coming out of Harrisburg and Washington maybe we wouldn't have to cut the things you mention of which most people including myself would have a hard time saying we do not so desparately need. No one wants to (I might add you have a real flare for dramtic wording) give to foreign companies at the peril of kindergardeners. Maybe our elected officials can instead not pay my local superintendant $150,000 per year and then give him a $500 monthly gas allowance without explaination of milage. Or maybe my local elected officials can tell me why a school our size has a business manager at $100+K per year, an assistant business manager who after 1 year got a $16,000 raise and is now making around $80,000 and then we have a line in our budget where we are paying another school districts business manager to file our online paperwork with the state because our $240,000 didn't get us someone who knew how to file the paperwork. But you are right, I and others like me dramatically want to rip food from the kindergardeners mouths as we push the elderly down stairs and laugh with evil intent as we shove shale in our pockets on the way to our family sustaining jobs with beneifits that are so abundant in the tax and spend world of utopia-sylvania of pre evil Corbett empire!