On this week’s Radio PA Roundtable, state House lawmakers were back in session this week. What could possibly interrupt their summer vacation? Also, we hear from Pennsylvania’s First Lady and talk to NASA on this special anniversary weekend.
Radio PA Roundtable is a 30-minute program featuring in-depth reporting, commentary and analysis on the top news stories of the week.
Click the audio player below to hear the full broadcast:
The multi-state Mega Millions lottery game is following in the steps of Powerball and shaking up the formula a bit. The changes take effect this fall.
The redesign of Mega Millions will mean a bigger starting jackpot and better overall odds of winning a prize. Pennsylvania Lottery Director Todd Rucci says there’s no change in the price, it will remain one dollar.
The starting jackpot will be 15 million dollars, up from the current 12 million and it will add at least 5 million dollars each time it rolls.
Players will choose the first five numbers from a bigger pool of 75 numbers compared to the current 56. The Mega Ball pool will shrink from 46 to 15 numbers. The overall odds of winning any prize will improve, but the odds of winning the jackpot will increase.
The changes take effect October 22nd. After the July 23rd drawing, advance play draws will decrease until the last drawing under the game’s current design.
Rucci says the changes are expected to produce three times as many winners overall, while producing bigger jackpots more often.
After changes were made in Powerball in early 2011, Rucci says they saw a great increase in sales. They hope for the same results with the Mega Millions changes.
The official 150th Anniversary Commemoration of the Battle of Gettysburg ran from June 28th through July 7th. Organizers were planning for 200,000 visitors over that 10 day period.
They got 235,000.
That’s the number released by the groups who planned the massive event. The number was based on input from a variety of sources, including event attendance, hotel occupancy and reports from other attractions, tours and organizations.
The epic event commemorated three bloody days in July of 1863 when the armies of the Blue and the Gray met on the fields and hills in and around the tiny Adams County town. About 400 events were planned as part of the 10-day commemoration, including two large-scale battle re-enactments. On July 3rd, organizers say 35-to-40 thousand people particpated in the Pickett’s Charge Commemorative March.
In the actual battle on July 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1863, more than 50,000 men were listed as killed, wounded or missing. The traumatic event changed the face and soul of Gettysburg forever.
Additional events are planned throughout this sesquicentennial year, including the recognition of the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address in November.
The state house has come back for a one day voting session to deal with a bill that’s part of the state budget package.
The vote was 103 to 85 to concur with changes made to the fiscal code in the senate, after some brief comments about whether the session itself was evidence of a late budget. The senate had stripped out language that the house added related to payday lending, then adjourned for the summer.
State budget officials said passage of the fiscal code was needed to avoid negative effects on state government. Governor Tom Corbett signed the primary budget bill on June 30th.
The state house will take a break from its summer break to return to voting session on Monday. A piece of the budget package needs to be finalized.
The House passed the fiscal code on July 1st, after adding an amendment regarding payday lending. The language indicated that the Senate and House majority leadership intended to pass legislation establishing a new schedule of rates and charges by October 31st.
The house adjourned until September, with only a non-voting day on the schedule for July 8th to sign bills and finish up other business. But on July 3rd, the Senate stripped out the payday lending language and sent the fiscal code bill back to the house. On the same day, the senate reluctantly approved the public welfare code, as amended by the house. Language on Medicaid expansion added by the senate had been stripped out by the house.
The state budget secretary warned that lack of final action on the fiscal code could have negative effects on state government. Governor Tom Corbett asked legislative leaders to pass it as soon as possible. The code includes language authorizing the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars, including some funding for higher education and additional money to help Philadelphia’s struggling public schools.
After house leadership looked at whether final action could wait until September, Speaker Sam Smith called the house back for a voting session at 1 pm on July 15th.
The delay in final passage of the fiscal code has led some to debate whether the budget for this fiscal year was really on time. The Governor did sign the General Fund budget before the start of the new fiscal year.
Franklin and Marshall College Political science professor Terry Madonna sees the dispute between the State House and Senate over the fiscal code a sign of serious distress between the two chambers. There were also big differences between the house and senate over key items in Governor Corbett’s agenda; liquor privatization and transportation funding. Neither won final approval before lawmakers took their summer breaks.
Pennsylvania’s Voter ID law goes on trial Monday (July 15th) and opponents geared up for the case with a rally in Harrisburg on Thursday. Commonwealth Court will decide if the law, which was put on hold pending the trial- is constitutional.
Groups opposed to it say it’s an effort to disenfranchise people who have trouble getting a state issued ID. National NAACP President Ben Jealous says Pennsylvania is a key state in the fight for voting rights. He encouraged people to turn out at the courthouse so the judge, state and nation see how important the trial is to the issue.
But supporters say the law will combat voter fraud by protecting the right of one person one vote.
The upcoming trial will focus on the merits of the law under Pennsylvania’s Constitution and any ruling is likely to be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
On this week’s Radio PA Roundtable, more from Governor Tom Corbett on his resistence to a Medicaid expansion in Pennsylvania. Also, Congressman Lou Barletta is continuing his fight against illegal immigration in Washington; and it will cost more to send your kid to one of the state-owned universities in the coming year.
Radio PA Roundtable is a 30-minute program featuring in-depth reporting, commentary and analysis on the top news stories of the week.
Click the audio player below to hear the full broadcast:
The 2013 summer break hasn’t been what state lawmakers usually hope for when they head back to their districts. State House members have already returned to the Capitol once, and now they’ll be back for another summer encore on Monday.
The issue bringing lawmakers back to the hill deals with the state Fiscal Code. The state budget was passed and signed on June 30th, but lawmakers left the Fiscal Code unfinished, and since that is the mechanism that gives the state authorization to spend the money in the General Fund budget, it must be passed in order for government operations to continue to run.
Democrats say this delayed action on the Fiscal Code means Governor Tom Corbett and Republican leadership can no longer claim to have passed and signed three consecutive “on-time” budgets, but that argument is largely semantic. The Fiscal Code was held up over last-minute changes involving payday lending statutes and posturing by the House and Senate, which have been at odds over several high-profile issues this year despite both being under the Republican flag.
It’s the state Attorney General’s job to defend the constitutionality of PA laws in court when they are challenged. Such a challenge is now underway by the ACLU regarding Pennsylvania’s version of DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act, which bans gay marriage in the Commonwealth.
Attorney General Kathleen Kane says, however, she will not defend that law on behalf of the state, instead turning the case over to Governor Tom Corbett’s lawyers. Kane says she believes the law to be unconstitutional and therefore cannot ethically defend it. She says any lawyer – herself included – has a fundumental obligation to withdraw from a case when there is disagreement with the client.
Kane says her office is empowered to turn cases over to the Governor’s Office of General Counsel and have them litigate cases when the Attorney General determines that is in the best interest of the Commonwealth.
Kane’s announcement Thursday drew praise from the left, as supporters of gay marriage gear up for the ACLU’s lawsuit against the Commonwealth, but state Republican Chairman Rob Gleason had a different take:
“The people of Pennsylvania elect citizens to carry out constitutional responsibilities based on the tradition that no one is above
the law,” Gleason said in a relased statement. “It is unacceptable for Attorney General Kathleen Kane to put her personal politics ahead of her taxpayer-funded job by abdicating her responsibilities.”
Two weeks ago, I asked you to watch the state legislature during their frantic week-long sprint to the state budget deadline. And, I asked you to remember…
So what happened? Well, we did get a budget, but that was the one thing lawmakers had to accomplish by law. That on-time budget will be the headline on most of the junk mail your local lawmaker sends you the rest of this year (you’re paying for that postage, by the way).
But was the budget on time? As we head into the second week of July, lawmakers have yet to approve key portions of the fiscal code, the set of laws that allows the state to spend the money it approved on June 30th. The House and Senate have been engaged in a skirmish likely stemming from leftover hard feelings from the votes that did and did not take place in the final week of June.
As for the other issues that week, let’s take a look at how these high-paid lawmakers handled the big issues…
Transportation Funding: FAIL
This one is especially concerning given the fact that it’s a crisis that has been building for years and it’s a matter of public safety for every Pennsylvanian who gets into a moving vehicle that touches Pennsylvania’s roads and bridges. Not only did lawmakers fail to act, the transportation funding plan became a pawn in chess game, apparently being held up by lawmakers who had their own personal agendas.
Pension Reform: FAIL
Did this one ever really have a chance this spring? It looked like lawmakers were just going through the motions down the stretch and never expected this one to gain traction.
Liquor Privatization / Expansion: FAIL or SUCCESS (depending on your position)
Again, did we really think this had a chance? It seemed like the unions were calling the shots all the way on this one, and when push came to shove, Republicans were accusing Democrats of holding up transportation funding in an effort to kill alcohol privatization…all at the behest of, you guessed it, the unions.
Remember that a lot of work goes into doing nothing in Harrisburg, so the coming three month vacation is a welcome respite to most of your lawmakers. Hopefully they’ll use that time to plan ahead for fall and show us a little more than they did in the spring session.
(Brad Christman is the News Director for Radio Pennsylvania and has covered 19 state budgets)