Presentation by Sandra L. Strauss

Director of Public Advocacy, Pennsylvania Council of Churches

Current Issues before the

PA General Assembly

                                                             The Rev. Sandra L. Strauss

              I have a question before I go any further—are any of you on the Council’s e-mail advocacy list?  For those of you who raised your hand, you know that 2005 was an exceptionally busy year, and 2006 promises to be just as busy.  For those of you who are not familiar with the Council’s advocacy work, let me provide just a little background before I talk about specific issues.

             According to our website, “The Director of Public Advocacy is a member of the Council’s executive staff with responsibilities to inform, educate, and empower people of faith on significant public issues and to coordinate and articulate public policy positions that reflect the Council’s constituent church bodies’ commitment to peace, justice, equality and compassion for all people.”  As I see it, I am an educator, a cheerleader, and a lobbyist—and for me, preferably, these responsibilities fall in that order.

             As an educator, my goal is to help our constituents to understand the issues that are of concern to the Council, both at the state and federal levels.  Education is power, and when our constituents understand an issue and why we have taken the position that we have, they can speak as more powerful witnesses.  As a cheerleader, I encourage our constituents to use the information they have received to contact legislators and other decision makers to make their views known.  As a lobbyist—admittedly, what I spend the least time doing, at least in the most widely understood sense—I make contacts with legislators and decision makers to let them know the Council’s positions, and to urge them to take these positions into account when they make decisions on policies and legislation.  This comes last on the list for several reasons, but primarily because we don’t have the budget to do this adequately either in DC or in Harrisburg.  Instead, we partner with groups who are able to do this more effectively.  In what often appears to be a “pay to play” environment, voices of organizations like the Council are often not heard above the voices of other groups with large budgets for such activities.  And that leads me to the first of the Pennsylvania priorities I’ll be talking about today.

             In a 2003 survey, the Center for Public Integrity placed Pennsylvania at 50^th—dead last—in its ranking of state lobbyist disclosure laws.  Why?  Because Pennsylvania has the dubious distinction of being the only state that with no statute mandating lobbyist disclosure.  Since January of 2003, the state Senate has required those who lobby that chamber to register, and on March 15—just two weeks ago—the Governor issued an Executive Order that requires registration and financial disclosure for those lobbying the Executive Branch. The leadership of House of Representatives has steadfastly maintained that no law is necessary, but in the wake of public outrage over the pay raise last year, it looks like the House might actually do something as well.

             In a recent e-mail, Tim Potts of Democracy Rising wrote the following: 

             I should note that lobbyist disclosure bills have been proposed in both the House and Senate.  To date, SB 1 looks like the most likely candidate to move.  HB 700 has not moved, and House Speaker John Perzel has finally moved in that he has formed a commission to look at what should be done.  While both bills, as well as the Governor’s Executive Order, are a step forward, they do not go far enough.  They all continue to permit gifts and travel, and lobbyists only need to report if the amount per member is above a stated ceiling.  For example, the Governor’s order allows up to $250 in gifts and $650 in “travel expenditure reimbursements" that lobbyists don’t have to report. That’s $900 a year, per lobbyist, per public official.  As Tim Potts noted, “If just 20 well-heeled lobbyists provided the maximum unreported gifts and entertainment to a state official, it could equal $18,000 worth of influence spending that personally benefit the state official and that lobbyists never have to report. There are estimated to be 800-900 lobbyists in Harrisburg.”  That is truly eye opening.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why lobbyists from the faith community and many non-profits have such a hard time being heard.

             This is a problem if as Christians we believe that God calls us to be full participants in our society, working for the common good.  The Council’s Principles for Public Advocacy says: 

             Early this year, the Council received a small grant from the Wallace Global Fund to help educate our constituents about lobbyist reform in Pennsylvania.  We are attempting to set up workshops at judicatory meetings that are coming up in May and June, as well as in some congregations in south central Pennsylvania, to discuss what people of faith can do with regard to this issue.  The grant runs through June 30, so any workshops under the grant would need to be done by then.  We have also created a bulletin insert with some information, and I have included a camera-ready copy in your packet.  I’m in the process of preparing an issue of the "Ecu-Advocate" that will provide in-depth information about the issue, as well as an Action Alert asking “people in the pews” to contact their legislators to urge them to pass the strongest lobbyist disclosure legislation possible. 

             Establishment of a living wage is another issue for the Council.  Because we believe, “All workers, including those whose work has traditionally been under-valued, deserve a family-sustaining wage,” we have spent a significant amount of time also pushing for a higher minimum wage in Pennsylvania because the prospects for a federal increase in the minimum wage have been pretty dismal.  There are two bills in Pennsylvania that would raise the state minimum wage—HB 257 and SB 926.  HB 257 has been the main vehicle to date, and it is our understanding that this bill will be coming up for a vote on April 5.  The bill as proposed in early 2005 would have raised the minimum wage in two steps—to $6.25/hour by January 1 of this year, and to $7.15/hour by January 1, 2007.  The bill has been amended to include an increase to $5.70/hour immediately and to $6.25/hour by January 1, 2007.  The governor has supported the increase to $7.15/hour, as has the Council.  I will be issuing an alert to urge our constituents to contact legislators to amend the bill to reflect the original increases. 

             Raising the minimum wage has become a priority because the rate hasn’t been raised for nine years, so its spending power has been vastly eroded.  If the 1968 minimum wage—the year it had its greatest spending power—had been pegged to inflation, the current rate would be around $9.15/hour.  Even $7.15/hour isn’t enough.  But $6.25/hour only brings the minimum wage up to poverty level.  No one can actually live on such a low wage—especially if they are trying to support a family.  As we say, “A job should keep you out of poverty…not keep you in it.” 

            I have included in your packets a resolution that our Public Advocacy Action Team adopted in February, and we are asking our Governing Board to adopt it as well.  I encourage you to consider amending the resolution as necessary and taking it to your congregation or judicatory body for adoption, and then sending it to all legislators, with a copy to me as well so that I can track these actions.  If you are interested, I can send a Word document as an attachment to an e-mail. 

            Another focus has been on stopping what we believe to be a dangerous rush to impose what has become known as TABOR, or Taxpayer Bill of Rights, legislation in Pennsylvania, a move that would peg increases in the state budget to the Consumer Price Index—the CPI—and population growth.  Proponents claim that automatic spending limits are a common sense restraint, that legislators need the limits to contain profligate spending, and that such limits won’t result in dramatic cuts in services.   However, it was dramatic cuts in services that caused Colorado voters to vote against their own self-interest in November by opting to put TABOR on hold and forego tax refunds after witnessing devastating impacts of the legislation on education and other services.

The problem with pegging state budget increases to the CPI is that the package of goods and services purchased by states is substantially different, with a higher rate of inflation, than what is included in the CPI.  For example, in 2004 the CPI increased by 2.8%, while the cost of health care—one of the services that states help to provide—was greater than 10%.  Over time, the effect is that states are forced to cut the level of services or the number of persons served, regardless of the need, which is why we heard horror stories from Colorado of parents pitching in to purchase fuel for schools that didn’t have adequate budgets to pay for heating their facilities.  It isn’t that we object to being responsible stewards of state budgets, but TABOR-type legislation actually removes the responsibility and hard work of setting priorities, spending, and revenue generation to those we elect to be responsible.  This issue has gone quiet in the last couple of months, but is likely to become an issue again as the election season heats up.

            The lion’s share of our work on the human services front has been at the federal level over the past year, because federal budget decisions have a direct impact on the state.  This will continue as Congress deliberates the 2007 budget.  However, the focus is shifting more to the state level, and work must continue on both sides.  We spent much of 2005 working to convince the U.S. Congress not to implement the massive spending cuts in human needs programs that were part of a budget reconciliation package for the 2006 federal budget that finally passed in early February.  While not as bad as proposals made earlier in the process, the result was a bill that still contained cuts of around $39 billion, with some programs suffering more than others.  Changes to the TANF program—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families—have been the main focus of our efforts in Pennsylvania, as well as at the federal level.

            Changes made in the TANF program are putting states in an untenable position of having to make dramatic, mostly negative changes in the way the program operates.  Pennsylvania has tried to focus on a program implementation strategy that would help to lift its citizens out of poverty by providing services that help people to address and overcome barriers such as poor education and lack of access to training, lack of safe and affordable child care, and problems of substance abuse, among others.  In the wake of the budget bill that passed, Pennsylvania will be faced with massive penalties unless it is able to increase dramatically the number of people it can document as working.  Through the Pennsylvania Welfare Coalition, the Council is working with our senators to advocate for more flexible rules and interpretations at the federal level that would give the states more flexibility in how they implement their programs.  We are also working with the state’s Department of Public Welfare to determine strategies that would prevent thousands from being eliminated from assistance regardless of what the federal rules happen to be. 

            We also advocated for the state to contribute funds for emergency utility assistance for the first time through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.  We were successful in this effort, with the state allocating somewhere between $20 and $25 million late last year.  We continue to work for changes to legislation that passed in late 2004 that makes it much easier for utilities to shut off services for non-payment, and much harder for services to be restored.  While there are bills that have been proposed to do this, it has been hard to get the attention of legislators when the weather is beginning to break and after a season that was not as harsh as many previous winters. 

            We continue to advocate for state level environmental policies and legislation that go beyond what are less than adequate federal standards.  We support mercury standards that would reduce mercury emissions in Pennsylvania by up to 90%.  We also support full implementation of the Pennsylvania Clean Vehicles Program that would promote the manufacturing and sale of significantly lower emission vehicles.  Pennsylvania ranks near the bottom of all states for air quality, and activities that would result from the proposed rulemaking by the state would go a long way toward reducing some of the worst pollutants. 

            While we have been encouraged by proposals from the Department of Environmental Protection, we have been disappointed in the response from legislators.  Legislators who disapprove of enhanced environmental standards are trying to thwart the DEP’s efforts by proposing legislation that would prohibit the state from imposing more stringent standards than those at the federal level.  This is alarming because erosion in federal standards is beginning to result in declining environmental quality on all fronts.  The legislative moves are causing the Council to join with other organizations to oppose bills that would prevent more stringent standards for both mercury and for lower emission vehicles.  While I am on this topic, I would appreciate it if you could go into the folder I gave you, pull out the green card that calls for Pennsylvania to fully implement the Clean Vehicles Program, and complete it.  I’m working with PennFuture and the Pennsylvania Interfaith Climate Change Campaign to gather at least 1,000 cards that can be sent to the Environmental Quality Board.  I’m guessing, also, that the names will be sent to legislators to demonstrate public support for cleaner cars. 

            While there are many more issues I could discuss, I will refer you to a list of the Council’s advocacy efforts that I have included in your packet, along with some other materials, but let me highlight just a few things. 

• We are working in coordination with others groups to promote a bill to form an Innocence Commission to review the state’s criminal justice system in light of recent exonerations.  We are also advocating against a bill that would require post-trial, rather than pre-trial, determination of mental retardation.  Post-trial determination is problematic in light of a federal court case that bans use of capital punishment for the mentally retarded.  Juries do not have the expertise to make such a determination, and may be more prone to find defendants mentally competent and vote for conviction and the death penalty after hearing what may be horrific testimony during a trial.  For clergypersons in the audience who might like to lend support in opposing the post-trial determination bill, there is a clergy letter in your packet that I will ask you to sign and give to me today.  We will be delivering signatures to legislators early next week, since a vote is expected next week.

• We are monitoring legislative discussions concerning tax policy, and have begun meeting with a variety of faith leaders to discuss how to help the faith community gain a better understanding of tax policy, its implications for budgets and spending, and a faith perspective on our duties as citizens to contribute to the common good.  There is no specific proposal that seems to have “legs” at the moment, but that could change in the coming months as we approach the fall elections when legislators may feel the almost always-dangerous need to “do something.”

• Related to tax policy, we are working with the Education Policy Leadership Center to sponsor and promote “Money Matters” regional workshops to help Pennsylvania citizens gain a better understanding of how funding can influence success in educational efforts.  We are also working with Good Schools PA to promote faith community re-engagement on public education issues.

            I want to highlight briefly a couple of minor victories

• First is the governor’s veto of HB 1318, a bill that would require all voters to show identification every time they vote as a means of eliminating voter fraud.  According to many district attorneys, the League of Women Voters and others, voter fraud has not been an issue.  Many believe it would disenfranchise thousands of voters who don’t have the kinds of identification required—primarily poor citizens and the elderly who are most likely to vote against the party in the majority.  The governor vetoed the bill two weeks ago, and I don’t believe there are sufficient votes to override it.

• The other is that legislation that would have legalized payday lending in Pennsylvania is now dead.  This has less to do with the work done by numerous groups to oppose it than with outside factors that made it nearly impossible for payday lenders to function within Pennsylvania, but I’d like to think our work helped to severely limit any political will that may have existed to pursue such legislation in the future.

            Let me take a couple of moments before I finish to draw your attention to a few additional pieces in your packets that are outside the state purview and encourage you to act on them as you see fit. 

            On the back of the list of advocacy efforts is a sign-up form for advocacy information.  If you are not on our e-advocacy list now, I invite and encourage you to complete the form and return it to me.  When you sign up, you will receive the semi-regular newsletter, the Ecu-Advocate, and action alerts for both state and federal issues.

            There are the following statements:

• “Torture is a Moral Issue,” prepared by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture that was approved in February by our Public Advocacy Action Team, or PAAT, and is headed to our Governing Board for Approval.

• A Pennsylvania Interfaith Statement in Support of Comprehensive Immigration Reform endorsed by PAAT.

• The Resolution for SMART Security endorsed by our Governing Board in late 2004—Sensible, Multilateral American Response to Terrorism.

• The resolutions calling for raising the minimum wage and for a Smoke Free Pennsylvania I mentioned earlier.

            I encourage you to consider seeking endorsement of one or more of these resolutions by your judicatories and your congregations as well.  If you decide to do this, I would appreciate your notifying me of the actions taken so that I can track them and pass the information on to the appropriate entity that we are working with. 

            Finally, I have included a sheet with information on a project to increase awareness in the faith community about the threat of nuclear terrorism.  We are seeking congregations and others to conduct screenings of a video called “Last Best Chance” followed by a time of discussion.  I have copies of the DVD with me, and ask that you let me know via the form in your packet if you decide to hold a viewing in your church or community so that I can track the screenings and report it to the agency that has provided funding to the Council for this work. 

            I’d be happy to take a few minutes now to answer any questions you might have, or feel free to contact me via e-mail or phone for further information.  I would also encourage you to read the article on why we do public advocacy on the Council’s newsletter in your packet and check out the advocacy section of the Council’s website at www.pachurches.org/ html/public_advocacy.html.  My e-mail address is s.strauss@pachurches.org. The Council’s phone number is 717-545-4761.

            Thank you for your time today, and blessings to you for your interest and engagement in faithful advocacy!