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2025 State of Education Spending in Pennsylvania
Overview The national trends impacting education in Pennsylvania in 2025 include an impending fiscal cliff, under-enrolled schools, and population decline, all of which lead to school closures…
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Education
Governor Shapiro’s 2025 Budget Proposal: An Extreme Spending Binge
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Education
2025 State of Education Spending in Pennsylvania
Read More: 2025 State of Education Spending in PennsylvaniaRegulation
Beneath the Surface: Pennsylvania’s Looming Pension and Healthcare Benefits Crisis
Pennsylvania government employee-benefit plans operate in a vacuum. In a world where private-sector benefit cutbacks and cost reductions occur on a daily basis, state government in Harrisburg has not responded…
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Minimum Wage: Q & A
WHO ARE MINIMUM WAGE WORKERS IN PENNSYLVANIA?…
Fact Sheet
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Property Taxpayer Protections: Tax Referendum & Prevailing Wage
The Pennsylvania General Assembly is in the midst of discussing what to do about school property taxes. The discussion is an old one in Harrisburg. The complexity of this issue…
Fact Sheet
Read More: Property Taxpayer Protections: Tax Referendum & Prevailing WageState Budget
Pennsylvania’s Spending Limitation Bills
Pennsylvania is Exhibit #1 proving the axiom: “You can have government growth, or you can have economic growth, but you can’t have both!” For years, Pennsylvania public policy has increased…
Fact Sheet
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Minimum Wage: Facts
Proponents of artificial increases in the government-mandated minimum wage argue, among other things, that raising the hourly minimum wage will help to lift families with children out of poverty and…
Fact Sheet
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The Effects of the Proposed Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Increase
In recent years, the movement to enact “living wages” or increases in the minimum wage has been active in states and cities across the country. Advocates of these wage hikes…
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Rail Disasters 2005
This paper reviews ridership and other transit data published by the Federal Transit Administration from 1982 through 2003, plus 2004 ridership data published by the American Public Transportation Association, to…
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Read More: Rail Disasters 2005Health Care
Preferred Drug Lists (PDLs)
Governor Ed Rendell has proposed a Medicaid “Preferred Drug List” (PDL) as a means to address Pennsylvania’s welfare spending problem. PDLs limit the availability of drugs to Medicaid recipients and…
Fact Sheet
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Growing Greener II
While Pennsylvanians obviously want an environmentally safe and economically prosperous state, the $625 million debt plan known as “Growing Greener II” guarantees neither.
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Tax Cuts & Economic Growth
The paramount economic lesson of the past several decades is that tax cuts stimulate growth and increased government spending chokes it off. DIDN’T PENNSYLVANIA TRY THE TAX-CUT APPROACH IN THE…
Fact Sheet
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Air Quality False Alarm: An Analysis of the Natural Resource Defense Councils Heat Advisory Report
This report shows that air pollution will decline in the future, regardless of whether there is global warming, and that NRDC exaggerates likely future temperature increases in any case. Section…
Report
Read More: Air Quality False Alarm: An Analysis of the Natural Resource Defense Councils Heat Advisory ReportRegulation
Internet Taxes
A number of bills in the General Assembly represent the essential first step in extending the Commonwealth’s sales tax to out-of-state purchases—including those made over the Internet—through the national initiative…
Fact Sheet
Read More: Internet TaxesState Budget
Total Cost of Pennsylvania Government: 2005 and Beyond
The total cost of state and local government in Pennsylvania is projected to exceed $102 billion in FY 2004-05, and will likely reach more than $115 billion by the 2008-09…
Fact Sheet
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Rail Transit: “Corridor One”
Although everyone agrees that traffic congestion and air pollution are neither good nor desirable for Central Pennsylvania, regional rail transit—otherwise known as “Corridor One”—is not the solution to these problems.
Fact Sheet
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Telecommunications
The debate over the future of high-tech communications development in Pennsylvania parallels the debate over statewide economic development policy in general: Should state government raise taxes on families and businesses…
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Referendum: School Taxes
Pennsylvania homeowners lack the right to vote on school property tax increases, while citizens in 44 other states enjoy some form of taxpayer protection. As Pennsylvania legislators debate whether or…
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The Rendell Strategic Sourcing Initiative: An Analysis
Executive Summary …
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Great Rail Disasters: The Impact of Rail Transit on Urban Livability
Abstract This paper grades rail transit in twenty-three urban areas on thirteen different criteria:…
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Racial Bias in Pennsylvania Special Education
Executive Summary…
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Reinventing Education in Pennsylvania: Fulfilling the Promise of Public Schooling
For more than 250 years, Pennsylvanians have striven to bring academic excellence within reach of their children. In the mid 1700s, when Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and William & Mary colleges…
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Pennsylvanias Education Funding Gap
Executive Summary…
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