COALITION OF GROUPS AND LEGISLATORS OPPOSE KEYSTONE FUND DIVERSION
By
The Pennsylvania Alliance for
Restoration and Conservation (PARC), a coalition of conservation, sporting and
parks organizations, joined a bipartisan group of members of the Pennsylvania
House members at a Capitol Hill news conference calling on the Governor and the
General Assembly in opposing legislation diverting half the funding for the
Keystone Recreation, Parks and Conservation Fund to the Hazardous Sites
Clean-up Fund (HSCA). SB
913 directs approximately $40 million annually into HSCA by transferring
from the 15% share of the Realty Transfer Tax that currently funds the Keystone
Fund.
Jan Jarrett, vice president and
co-chair of PARC, said the legislation “constitutes the biggest cut in funding
for parks and conservation in state history.” According to Jarrett, the
Keystone Fund provides monies for local park projects, land conservation, state
parks and parks maintenance along with museums, local libraries and a variety
of other projects. She said most of the money goes to local communities to
improve various public services such as the libraries and the parks. Jarrett
also said the legislation was approved by the Senate on June 26 by a vote of
36-14. She cautioned, “We are hearing this proposal is part of the budget deal
and the Administration has considered supporting it.” Jarrett said both the
Keystone Fund and HSCA need funding. She added, “The environmental community
and a bipartisan group of representatives believe we should not be taking money
from one very important and successful environmental program at the expense of
another very important program.” Jarrett said, “It is not the time when there
is a budget surplus to be making the biggest cut in parks and conservation
programs in the state’s history.” She urged the State House to reject SB 913 or
any legislative vehicle which includes its provisions.
Rep. Kate Harper (R-Montgomery)
said, “There are five facts that need to be remembered: (1) Pennsylvania has a
surplus of between $500 and $600 million; (2) HSCA needs $30-$40 million a year
to do its job; (3) Keystone is funded by the realty transfer tax and realty
transfer taxes are down this year and are expected to be down next year because
there has been a slump in home sales; (4) Both are great and popular programs
and it makes no sense to set one off against the other and de-fund one to fund
the other; and the fifth is same as the first, Pennsylvania has a surplus.” She
added, “We can do this another way. We can take care of HSCA without taking the
money away from parks, libraries, open space, and museums.”
Rep. Michael Gerber (D-Montgomery)
said the bipartisan group of legislators participating in the news conference
“shows we can work together on issues as important as this.” He added, “The
general theme here is the preservation of two very important programs.”
According to Rep. Gerber, “Regardless of where you are from, these programs are
important to your district.” He added, “We stand here united, urban, rural,
suburban, Democrats and Republicans, all saying these programs are important
and we shouldn’t have winners and losers in this case. We should only have
winners.”
Rep. Chris Ross (R-Chester)
announced plans to introduce an amendment which would shift funding for HSCA
from the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax to a dedicated portion of the
Corporate Net Income Tax. He said, “This would not pit one group of valuable environmental
programs against another.” Rep. Ross added, “More importantly, we are not
leaning on the realty transfer tax for both hazardous sites cleanup and also
for the environmental programs under the Keystone Fund.”
Rep. Daylin Leach (D-Montgomery)
said, “We were elected by our constituents to make progress on the environment
and raiding one fund for another fund within the environment is not making
progress, it is stagnating.” He added, “It is not moving forward, it is
standing still.” Rep. Leach cautioned, “It is very important we remember, we must be very vigilant the next few days that SB 913 is
not put into the Fiscal Code or another bill to make it more difficult to vote
against.” He encouraged the legislators from both parties “to go to their leadership
and make it clear it is not an acceptable solution.”
Rep. Carole Rubley (R-Chester) said
she could attest to the success of the Keystone Fund. She pointed out, “It has
been helpful to projects throughout the Commonwealth.” Rep. Rubley also cautioned
the state could not depend on the same amounts of monies being raised through
the realty transfer tax. She also said HSCA should be funded from another
source.
Rep. Barbara McIlvaine Smith
(D-Chester) said the tipping fee proposal to fund HSCA has been described as a
“tax which would be bad for business.” She added, “SB 913 is bad for people”.
Rep. McIlvaine Smith further described the legislation as “a shortcut solution
to a major problem”. She said, “You can bet I am not going to support it in the
House.” Rep. McIlvaine Smith concluded, “We can do a lot better than take money
away from projects that help to preserve the beauty of this state.”
Rep. Jay Moyer (R-Montgomery) urged
legislators to support Rep. Ross’ amendment and said, “Raiding the Keystone
Fund is a bad idea.”
According to Rep. Greg Vitali
(D-Delaware), he has been told by his leadership the transfer of funds is part
of the budget deal based on a surplus in the Keystone Fund. He said he spoke
with members of the Administration who indicated there is no surplus in the
Fund and “currently there is about $136 million in demand for $56 million in
projects”. Rep. Vitali described the budget agreement as being based on “a
false premise”. He predicted the proposal will be put in a Fiscal Code bill. He
added, “We must be vigilant”.
Rep. Bob Mensch (R-Montgomery) also
expressed support for the Ross amendment describing it as “a creative way to
take business revenues and divert them so negating taking from another fund
allowing us to fund our parks and local libraries.”
Rep. Eugene DePasquale (D-York)
announced he would support the Ross amendment. He described SB 913 as a
“specific hit job” on conservation efforts and the library system in
The prime sponsor of Growing Greener
II, Rep. Thomas Quigley (R-Montgomery) also expressed support for the Ross
amendment.
Brian Hill, President of the
Pennsylvania Environmental Council and co-chair of PARC, pointed out, “The
demand on the Fund is so great, the state Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources is only able to support half of the projects that are
proposed.” He added, “A depleted Keystone Fund will drop the number of projects
that receive funding down to 25% so it will have a significant impact.” Hill
said he did not want to understate the importance of HSCA and “it is vitally
important to find funding for HSCA.” He pointed out the voters of Pennsylvania
supported the Keystone Fund in 1993 and the Growing Greener Bond Issue in 2005
and they “have made clear their support for providing more funding for
conservation and the environment, not less.”
Glenn Miller, Executive Director of
the Pennsylvania Library Association, said libraries receive 4% of the Keystone
Fund. He noted, “Every $1 in Keystone Funds leverages nearly $6 in local
library capital funding.” According to Miller, since the creation of the Fund,
213 library projects have been completed in 48 different
Jarrett said other groups opposed to
SB 913 and the diverting of funds include the Pennsylvania Chapter of the
Sierra Club, the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, the Pennsylvania Parks
and Forests Foundation, the Pennsylvania Recreation and Park Society, the
Nature Conservancy, the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen, the Pennsylvania
Land Conservation Association, Clean Water Action, and the Chesapeake Bay
Foundation.
How might this affect approval of the Budget and the Budget agreement?
Rep. Ross responded: When you are
talking about $40 million in a $27 billion budget, it is hard to imagine that
there are not a couple of line items which could spare $10 or $15 million. We
are operating with a substantial surplus right now. Not all of the line items
have been completely reconciled as far as the budget negotiations. Again, I
always get a little frustrated when I see some very important programs that are
relatively small in size when you consider the total size of the budget being
the ones that are squeezed. I think we got some very large line items that
could shave a tenth of a percent off of them and more than compensate for this
in the General Fund. Fundamentally, we should be paying for the Hazardous Sites
Fund Clean-Up Fund out of the General Fund. It is time for us to actually put
it in the budget in a consistent way.
Proponents of SB 913 say the $40 million will free up to $30 million
from Growing Greener and so the Keystone Fund is only taking a $10 million hit.
Rep Harper responded: We projected
out that we would be able to do Growing Greener II without raising the tipping
fee. We expected HSCA to have its own source of funding by now so it was never
meant to be taken this year. What happens in a Growing Greener project is that
the debt service rises. We have a six year bond for spending and borrowing
money over six years. At the beginning, the debt service is not that big
because you have not borrowed that much. But as you get further into the
project, you need more money from the Environmental Stewardship Fund to pay for
debt service plus to pay for the current project. We have always intended to
have another source of funding at this point. The Keystone Fund is funded by
the realty transfer tax and the market has gone soft. The Fund is not going to
have the money that it needs or expects. The Keystone Fund is going down
because the realty transfer taxes are going to take a hit because of the softness
in the real estate market and because we always expected HSCA to have its own
source of funding by now.
Rep. Ross, you said the legislature could shave other line items. Are
you willing to stop the budget if it can’t be done?
I don’t think it will be necessary.
We are only talking about $40 million in a $27 billion budget. It is my
understanding that we have not reconciled all the differences between the
Democratic and Republican members of the House and Senate and the Governor at
this point. Adjusting one or two of those numbers by $10 or $20 million is not
going to be an impossibility. We are going to have tough negotiations over
other items and this is one are where we should be rethinking this.
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