All's quiet; an important meeting

19 August 2009

Dear Friends,

It’s been quite a while since the last PTCC Update and many of you have written to ask what’s happening with the School Property Tax Elimination Act (SPTEA). In a word, nothing. The General Assembly and the House and Senate leadership are far too occupied with budget concerns right now to consider any far-reaching legislation.

The SPTEA has been fully drafted and is still available for co-sponsorship. It is Representative Sam Rohrer’s intention to issue a second co-sponsorship memorandum shortly and then formally introduce the bill this autumn.

In the meantime, if you want to help you can contact your Representative to request his or her co-sponsorship of the School Property Tax Elimination Act. The bill currently has 26 sponsors but more is always better. The current sponsors are listed below; please contact your Representative if he or she is not on this list. In many cases you will be offered phony excuses why they won’t co-sponsor or why the plan won’t work, but this is almost always because of petty political maneuvering that has nothing to do with the worthiness of the bill. Accept no excuses!

The current School Property Tax Elimination Act co-sponsors:

Rep. Sam Rohrer R-128 (Berks)
Rep. Kerry Benninghoff R-171 (Centre, Mifflin)
Rep. Karen Boback R-117 (Columbia, Luzerne, Wyoming)
Rep. Thomas Caltagirone D-127 (Berks)
Rep. Jim Cox R-129 (Berks)
Rep. Tom Creighton R-37 (Lancaster)
Rep. Gary Day R-187 (Berks, Lehigh)
Rep. Gordon Denlinger R-99 (Lancaster)
Rep. Russell Fairchild R-85 (Snyder, Union)
Rep. Jaret Gibbons D-10 (Beaver, Butler, Lawrence)
Rep. Keith Gillespie R-47 (York)
Rep. Neal Goodman D-123 (Schuylkill)
Rep. Seth Grove R-196 (York)
Rep. C. Adam Harris R-82 (Juniata, Mifflin, Snyder)
Rep. Rob Kauffman R-89 (Cumberland, Franklin)
Rep. Mark Keller R-86 (Franklin, Perry)
Rep. Jerry Knowles R-124 (Berks, Schuylkill)
Rep. Tim Mahoney D-51 (Fayette)
Rep. Bob Mensch R-147 (Montgomery)
Rep. Merle Phillips R-108 (Northumberland, Snyder)
Rep. Thomas Quigley R-146 (Montgomery)
Rep. Dante Santoni D-126 (Berks)
Rep. Stan Saylor R-94 (York)
Rep. Curt Schroder R-155 (Chester)
Rep. Tim Seip D-125 (Berks, Schuylkill)
Rep. RoseMarie Swanger R-102 (Lebanon)

The PTCC and the Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations send our heartfelt gratitude to those Representatives who have agreed to co-sponsor the SPTEA. If your Representative is on this list, we STRONGLY request that you contact him or her to thank them for their co-sponsorship. These legislators are always very encouraged to know that their help is appreciated.

Whether you are contacting your Representative to thank them or to request their co-sponsorship, you can find their contact information by Zip+4 here.

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Northeast Pennsylvania Information Session

Northeast Pennsylvania is by far the worst region of the state for legislative support for the School Property Tax Elimination Act. To help overcome this problem, the five Northeast region member groups of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations will be holding a public information session about the SPTEA in late September. These five grassroots groups will introduce their organizations, the details of the SPTEA will be presented, and the politics of the SPTEA enactment will be discussed; there will also be an audience participation question and answer session following the presentation. The event will be emceed by Sue Henry of WILK radio. This promises to be an exciting evening, so please watch for a future PTCC Update for further details and plan to attend.

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Welcome CEPT!

The Pennsylvania Coalition of Taxpayer Associations (PCTA) recently gained its thirty-second member group! Citizens for the Elimination of Property Taxes from Perry County has already proven to be a hard-working, dedicated organization that will be a big help in supporting the SPTEA in South-central Pennsylvania. If you live in the Perry County area and want to help you can contact them at nopropertytax@gmail.com. Welcome to the PCTA, CEPT! We’re pleased to have you aboard to keep the momentum building.

If you’re fed up with unfair taxation and unresponsive politicians and would like to form your own taxpayer advocacy group, contact any PCTA member group for advice and assistance. The PCTA members are listed on the PTCC website under the “About the PCTA” tab.

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Just one more note: If you change your e-mail address, please send a note to me about the switch so you’ll continue to receive the PTCC Updates. It will be appreciated.

That’s all for now. There’ll be another update when more information is available and please watch for details about the Northeast Pennsylvania event.

As usual, I want to thank all of you for your continuing support of the PTCC and PCTA efforts to bring about true education finance reform and school property tax elimination. You are truly appreciated.

David Baldinger
PTCC Administrator
www.ptcc.us