Month: August 2019

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The commonwealth’s lawmakers are still on their summer recess for another month. But a few are already laying out plans for their return—some more ambitious than others.

One of those ambitious legislators? Frank Ryan. He’s a second-term Republican who represents part of Lebanon County and wants to get rid of property taxes once and for all.

Harrisburg lawmakers have dreamed of getting rid of property taxes for years. The problem is, the revenue to fund public schools would then have to come from somewhere else. And the legislature hasn’t been able to agree on a substitute.

Ryan is taking a different route than most of the people who have tried to tackle the taxes.

His plan, which isn’t introduced yet, would leverage local sales and personal income taxes. And most crucially, it would put an almost five percent tax on all retirement income, except Social Security.

Ryan likes to remind people, he’s 68. His own taxes will go up under his plan, and he thinks that means he’s one of the only people who could get away with proposing something like this.

But will still be very, very difficult for him to get traction.

On this week’s episode, we look into the recent history of the property tax problem, and talk about some of the options lawmakers have suggested for alternative revenue.

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Much of this week’s political conversation has been dominated by questions about guns. Questions like, who should be able to use them? What characteristics should we should allow them to have? And is it ever OK for the government to be able to take them away?

The weekend of August 3rd saw two major shootings. One at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in which 22 people were killed, and another in on a busy street in Dayton, Ohio that killed nine.

In Pennsylvania and across the country, there’s come to be a sort of standard political response to mass shootings. Politicians and others who oppose the relatively unrestricted access Americans have to guns, turn out en masse in protest.

These post-shooting protests all tend to look the same, and for good reason: gun laws haven’t really changed in a long time.

However, there have been some small—but notable—shifts in the conversation in the commonwealth.

PA Post reporters Emily Previti and Ed Mahon join us on this week’s podcast to explain.

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The 2020 election is still more than a year away, but Pennsylvania’s eighteen congress women and men are already well into the fundraising that they hope is going to get them another two-year term.
This week, we took a look at the quarterly reports the commonwealth’s incumbents and challengers have been filing to see how they’re doing. On this episode, we’ll brief you on those findings, and on which races you should be watching for potential flips.
We’ll also recap a rare town hall one of Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable incumbents recently held. Scott Perry, a conservative who has represented the 10th congressional since 2013, found himself with a much more liberal district after a map-redrawing last year. After squeaking by against a mostly unknown challenger in 2018, Perry is trying to connect with his more liberal constituents. If his recent town hall is any indicator, results have been mixed.
PA Post reporters Emily Previti and Ed Mahon join us to explain it all.

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