Act 72 is Like School on Sunday

As we come down to the wire, more and more Mon-Yough area school districts are deciding whether to take part in the state's Act 72 shell game ... er, I mean, property tax relief.

This week, school directors in Woodland Hills, East Allegheny, Clairton, Duquesne and Steel Valley all voted to participate. West Jefferson Hills school board tabled action --- which is as good as a "no" vote, effectively, because there isn't a snowball's chance on Route 51 in August that they're going to hold a special meeting to reconsider it before Monday.

Trying to fund anything through gambling revenue is a fool's errand. Gambling doesn't create any new money --- it just moves around some discretionary spending. Money that people spend on gambling is money they're not going to spend on a new DVD player, or Pirates tickets, or in a few cases, food and clothing. I strongly suspect that any money made by regulating slot machine gambling in Pennsylvania is going to be money that isn't collected in sales and amusement taxes.

I also firmly believe that our distinguished leadership is overestimating the appeal of slot machine gambling. I can understand the appeal of table gaming --- shooting craps, playing cards, etc., is competitive and social, even if some of the players look anti-social. But sitting in front of a metal box and plugging quarters into a slot is not my idea of a good time. You might as well go play a Coke machine --- at least you're a winner every time.

Yes, I understand that busloads of Pennsylvanians go to Wheeling Island or Atlantic City every single day and play the slots, but has anyone stopped to consider that maybe traveling somewhere else to play the one-armed bandits is fun mostly because it's a change of scenery? I somehow doubt that people from Munhall are going to plan vacation trips to play the slot machines in, say, Hays.

But because our solons lacked either the courage or the imagination to go all the way and legalize all forms of casino gambling, we're stuck with this namby-pamby slot machine legislation, which may or may not generate the $1 billion that its proponents say it will.

And yet I sense that it isn't this uncertainty that has prevented some school districts from signing onto Act 72. Instead, I suspect they're more concerned over the provision of Act 72 that would require any future property tax increases over and above a certain "index" number to be put before the voters. We all know, I think, that if you put a school tax increase to a vote, it would be almost impossible to gain passage.

The fundamental problem --- and the one Act 72 is supposed to address --- is that a district like Duquesne or Clairton doesn't have anywhere near the taxable property base of a Hempfield. In terms of real, non-inflationary dollars, property tax revenues only ever increase if there's new development, or if you raise the tax rate. With a community like Duquesne, where there is little if any new development, and where the existing properties are depreciating, the only option left is to raise taxes, which only chases people away. But Act 72 is just a patch on an already bad system.

There are a couple of real solutions, I suspect, for any politician brave enough to suggest them. Before the 1950s, practically every municipality in Pennsylvania operated its own school district. In the 1950s and '60s, the state compelled them to merge --- that's how we got East Allegheny out of East McKeesport, North Versailles Township, Wall and Wilmerding, for instance. In a few cases, there was more than one merger --- the Port Vue and Liberty school districts merged into the creatively named Port Vue-Liberty School District, and then with Glassport and Lincoln into South Allegheny.

The state needs to do that again --- offer big incentives for school districts to merge, and arrange some shotgun marriages if necessary. What would be wrong with a countywide school district, for instance? That system seems to work well in western states. A school district that encompassed all of Allegheny County would go a long way toward addressing the tax revenue inequities between Quaker Valley (Sewickley, etc.) and Steel Valley (Homestead, et al).

Or go even further. Institute a statewide uniform school tax rate, assess all properties based on their full, fair market values (not on county drive-by assessments), and have people send their school property taxes to Harrisburg. Then disperse the money to the school districts based on a standard formula, with adjustments for schools or districts that are in extremely unusual circumstances. Sure, some people would scream, "Too much bureaucracy," but how could it be any more bureaucracy than our current system in Allegheny County of 43 school districts with 43 school boards, 43 school superintendents, 43 school tax rates, 43 school tax collectors, etc., etc., ad nauseam?

Right now, Pennsylvania ranks 49 out of 50 in the share of education funding provided by the state. Survey after survey by Education Week has shown that the fairness of funding from district to district is worse in Pennsylvania than in all but a few states. (Instinctively, we already know that a kid going to school in Upper St. Clair has access to technology and opportunities that a kid in Clairton doesn't.) You can get more information from Good Schools Pennsylvania, whose executive board includes (among others) the Mon-Yough area's own Linda Croushore.

What will it take for Pennsylvanians to wake up and demand that their state legislature do something besides these Band-Aid solutions like Act 72? Do we finally have to bottom out?

In the meantime, we sit and scratch our heads and wonder, "Gee, why do young people keep moving away from Pennsylvania? Is it because of our weather? Our outdated hockey arena? Our lack of doughnuts with flavored custard?"

Boy, it's a puzzler, it is.