Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget address covered many topics, but he was silent on a big issue that’s of paramount importance to many Times News readers — school property tax reform.

There has been a lot of hype on this topic so far in 2020, but the $64,000 question is whether state Sens. David Argall, R-Schuylkill, Mario Scavello, R-Monroe and Northampton, Rep. Doyle Heffley, R-Carbon, and Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-Schuylkill and Carbon, along with others, can bring home the bacon.

There was a massive rally early this month in Harrisburg attended by many of the legislators representing the five-county Times News area, and, to a person, they were united in the call to get rid of this “unfair tax.”

Call me a skeptic, but I just don’t see it in an election year where all 203 seats in the state House of Representatives and 25 of the 50 seats in the state Senate are on the ballot. In addition, it’s a presidential election and one in which all 435 congressional seats (including 18 in Pennsylvania) will be contested.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed Wolf’s conspicuous omission. “I was frustrated that the governor did not mention the problem of school property taxes in his address,” Scavello said in a statement.

“No matter how hard we try, property tax elimination is not going to happen without Gov. Wolf taking a leadership role, or at the very least acknowledging the dire situation this tax has caused for millions of Pennsylvanians,” Scavello added.

All three of our local senators, along with other supporters in hard-hit areas of northeastern Pennsylvania, have rendered gut-wrenching reports of constituents who have either lost their homes or are in dire straits because of seemingly never-ending increases in school taxes.

“For me to have to listen to the heartbreaking stories of constituents — including a senior who told me, ‘I’m guilty of living too long’ — and continue to not hear the governor say one word about it, is extremely frustrating. It’s about time we take care of our seniors, but his silence is deafening,” Scavello said.

Of course, the governor and his aides take exception to Scavello’s painting the democratic chief executive as the big, bad wolf, a heartless creature who has no compassion for impoverished senior citizens, and they are quick to point out the many programs he has championed on behalf of those Scavello claims are hanging on by a thread.

Scavello has introduced Senate Bill 805, which would scrap the school property tax to be replaced by an addition of 1.8% to the state income tax, currently at 3.07%.

There are competing bills, because Argall reintroduced his failed bill and oversaw a bipartisan study commission which advanced five options several months ago on how to deal with either partially or completely eliminating the school property tax.

Argall’s bill that called for a constitutional amendment nearly won approval in the 2017-18 session. A tie vote among senators was broken by then-Lt. Gov. Mike Stack, a Democrat, who voted “no,” so it was back to square one.

“At the Feb. 3 rally, Rep. Heffley, Sen. Scavello and I spoke to hundreds of people from all over Pennsylvania who share this common goal: We want to see this rotten school property tax eliminated. We need to find a better way to fund our public schools than an archaic and unfair tax structure from the 1600s,” Argall was quoted as saying.

Heffley said he favors Argall’s Senate Bill 76, the one narrowly defeated in the previous legislative session. Argall reintroduced it last February, and it was assigned to the Finance Committee. It calls for an increase in the personal income tax from 3.07 to 4.95%, upping the state sales tax from 6 to 7% and broadening the goods and services that would be subject to the tax.

Argall said that he is flexible. “I am open to any suggestions to eliminate unfair and archaic school property taxes,” he said in reply to my request for comment. “My strong preference, based on considerable input from the people I represent in Schuylkill and Berks counties, is the complete elimination of all school property taxes. I have voted with my good friend Sen. Scavello to do this several times in the past, and I will continue to do so.”

Any attempt to tinker with the school property tax is vehemently opposed by high-powered lobby groups, especially the state Chamber of Commerce and some of its constituent organizations. While they are in favor of tax relief, they believe Argall’s bill will create more problems than it will solve. What’s clear to me is that the math needs to add up, and many questions and guarantees need to be put on the table if this difficult change is ever going to get traction.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com