IT LOOKS as if Pennsylvanians have figured out Gov. Corbett’s shell game.

His “no new taxes” approach at the state level has led to a combination of deep cuts in the budgets of local school districts, plus a round of local tax increases to lessen the impact. The situation is true not just in Philadelphia, but in districts across the state.

Voters in Pennsylvania are not happy with the situation. A statewide poll commissioned by Public Citizens for Children and Youth and the Pennsylvania Center for Budget and Policy shows that voters are aware of the cuts.

What’s more, 77 percent said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the situation.

Consider the fact that the majority of those polled would favor increases in taxes to remedy the problem. The margin was 58-to-34 percent in one question proposing a business and personal-income tax increase.

To hear the governor talk, higher taxes are taboo to most voters. But not to the majority in this poll. After all, they have lived through three years of cuts to education and other state programs overseen by the Corbett administration.

They know all the moves in this shell game by now. The governor makes it look like the state is holding the line on taxes.

In reality, he is shifting the burden from state government to local governments.

So far, he has used the same gambit when it comes to the Philadelphia district’s financial meltdown. The district has asked for $122 million in state aid. The state has signaled that its answer is to pass the necessary legislation so the city can impose a $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes and keep the sales tax at 8 percent, instead of lowering it to 7 percent next year, as originally scheduled.

Giving local governments the right to further tax its own residents doesn’t fit our definition of offering financial aid. The shells move again; the result is the same – a shift of obligations from state to local government.

When it comes to using money to fund local services – whether they be education, social welfare or transportation – the Corbett administration has staged a retreat, slashing budgets in the name of fiscal prudence. If the money didn’t go to local government programs, where did it end up? Not in the budgets of the state bureaucracy. With the exception of prisons, the operating budgets of most departments have gone down as well during the Corbett years.

If you want to know where Corbett directed the money, lift up the shell labeled “business taxes.” In his three years in office, the governor has trimmed $1 billion in various business taxes and he has a plan to lower the corporate net income tax by $750 million more in coming years.

It’s no secret that the governor is pro-business, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, these giveaways qualify as wretched excess at a time when schools and local governments across the commonwealth, buffeted by the recession and the retreat in state aid, are starving for money.

It’s time to end the shell game, governor. Step forward and lead by offering genuine help.

Philadelphia Daily News – June 28, 2013 – Read article online