Editorial voices from around Pennsylvania
Editorial voices from newspapers around Pennsylvania as compiled by the Associated Press:
State Rep. Paul Schemel, R-Greencastle, hosted a forum recently on how churches can protect themselves from discrimination lawsuits, thereby preserving their rights to live by their principles and beliefs.
The timing is interesting, to say the least.
But let’s address the premise that churches and religious organizations must protect themselves from discrimination suits. There’s a need to help businesses and institutions better understand anti-discrimination rules and regulations of course, which was one function of the forum.
But simply put, the answer to protecting oneself from discrimination accusations is, don’t discriminate. And most people know very well when they are doing it but want permission to continue. What if lawmakers held public forums with groups that shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, aid abused women and children and people helplessly addicted to drugs – to see how government could support and enhance their work?
There’s no small irony in the fact lawmakers hold forums on “rights” at risk during a 160-day state budget impasse that is hurting their most vulnerable constituents daily. Tell us again which rights we ought to talk about?
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane will spend up to $2 million of taxpayer money on non-Pennsylvania lawyers to investigate alleged pornographic emails shared by dozens of Pennsylvania employees as she ramps up her defense against perjury and other charges for allegedly leaking confidential grand jury and investigatory material.
Mind you, Kane is running the Attorney General’s Office without a valid law license, as the state Supreme Court suspended her license for an indefinite period amid the charges she faces. One Supreme Court justice caught in the email scandal was forced into retirement; the career of another hangs in the balance.
Millions of residents’ tax dollars already have been spent because of bad behavior by our public servants, including Kane, and now millions more in invoices are coming through this probe and the Senate’s attempt to oust Kane.
How embarrassing for all of us in Pennsylvania.
Government projections are often just optimistic guesses, dressed up with some pie-in-the-sky numbers.
Unfortunately, for the state’s taxpayers, that definitely seems to be the case with Pennsylvania Act 90, which was signed into law by Gov. Tom Corbett in 2013.
The bill, legalizing small games of chance in taverns, was projected to bring in a whopping $150 million for the state’s general fund.
In the fiscal year that ended June 30, the state collected about $554,000 in taxes and fees.
Talk about seriously missing your mark. As predictions go, it ranks right up there with the Y2K disaster that never happened.
So what happened?
Well, it seems pretty simple. The state, as it is prone to doing, got a little too greedy and a little too bureaucratic.
The act made it prohibitively costly for bar owners to get the program up and running in their establishments. According to an estimate cited by Amy Christie, executive director of the Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage/Tavern Association, it costs more than $10,000 to get gaming started in a bar.
In addition, the bar owners realized just $6.50 in profit, after a 65 percent tax and expenses, for each packet of tickets sold. With that kind of small profit margin, the bar owner has to sell a boatload tickets to make it worthwhile.
So, for the moment, there appears only one certainty. The small games of chance law has fallen woefully short of its much-ballyhooed projection, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.
And the state legislators can’t blame anyone but themselves.