We've seen this movie before

Jack Markowitz is disappointed, though not surprised, that Pennsylvania hands out tax breaks to filmmakers:

The new Pennsylvania pattern is that nothing seems to get built, or even relocated, without politicians leaping in to "help" with your money. (link)

At least my mom gave me a book

It seems that the Democrats in Congress never met a principle they weren't willing to compromise. To get Republican support for the S-CHIP program -- support that was insufficient to override the president's veto -- the Democrats agreed to increase funding for abstinence-only sex education by $28 million.

Of course, abstinence-only sex education doesn't actually keep kids from having sex; it just ensures that when they do, they will be more likely to catch an STD or get pregnant. (Which will lead to more abortions. Tell me again how the GOP is the pro-life party?)

In other news, it sounds like the Pennsylvania attorney general's investigation into the bonuses awarded by legislators to their staff is really heating up. Momentum for major reform of state government, which picked up after the infamous pay raise, seems to have slowed. Could this get the ball rolling again?

You still have to go a long way, baby

Alexandra Starr, in a New Republic essay published in the Post-Gazette, laments that the blue northeastern states are far less hospitable to female politicians than the red west:

Massachusetts and Rhode Island don't have any women in their congressional delegations, either, and Pennsylvania has one of the lowest percentages of female state legislators outside the South. In Rhode Island, female delegates make up a paltry 19.5 percent of the legislature -- placing the state behind such liberal bastions as Kansas, Nebraska and Idaho.

Indeed, if many left-leaning Northeastern states have proved surprisingly inhospitable to female politicians, the reverse is true of many conservative Western states. In 1999, women held the top five statewide offices in Arizona, which is also the only state where female governors have served back-to-back. Meanwhile, Colorado has the fifth-highest percentage of female legislators in the country and is one of only six states where a woman serves as speaker of the state Senate.

The reasons? The old-school political machines, and their frat-boy culture, that still wield a lot of power in vetting candidates, and the demands of full-time legislatures, which are rare in the west:

The part-time political culture of the West -- where elected office can seem more like a hobby than a job -- also tends to favor women. As Alan Ehrenhalt pointed out in the late '80s, when he investigated why Colorado's state legislature had the highest percentage of female delegates in the country, the Colorado legislature only meets part-time (which makes it more family-friendly) and doesn't pay much (which may dissuade some male breadwinners from running). "While men tend to get involved in politics as a premeditated career option," says Ms. Walsh, "women often run because they want to fix something."

In the Northeast, bosses long had an interest in making government service a profitable profession. As a result, many legislatures pay a sizable salary -- and demand a full-time commitment. "In a part-time legislature, service can be an extension of volunteerism," says Jennifer Mann, a Democratic state legislator from Allentown, Pa. "In a place like Pennsylvania, you don't fall into a political career by happenstance. It's not something you add to your life -- it really replaces what you used to do."

One result, Starr says, is that would-be female office holders in the northeast tend to gravitate toward the Republican Party, a traditional minority in much of the region, and thus eager to embrace anyone who wants to run for office. All in all, it's another cost of the culture of corruption and cronyism that has turned Pennsylvania into a political and economic backwater.

An inconvenient truth

The Trib addresses what Ross Perot might call Pennsylvania's crazy aunt in the basement: an inequitable system for funding public schools. This is the reason why cutting property taxes is so difficult. Without reforming the school funding system--which puts the onus for funding schools on local districts, and thus local property owners--not only will you be unable to offer significant local property tax cuts, but you will continue to have vast inequalities among school districts.

Some other states have reformed their school funding systems after state courts have ruled that they were so inequitable as to violate state consitutions. But a similar lawsuit in Pennsylvania failed a few years ago. (Though the Trib article hints that the current lawsuit over Allegheny County's base-year system could have a similar effect. If the system is declared unconstitutional, and properties statewide must be re-assessed, taxpayers may demand state-wide reform.)

The other hurdle to reform in Pennsylvania is the state's strong tradition of local control--and many of the communities that value local control the most are the most affluent and thus have the greatest political influence. Districts like Mt. Lebanon, Upper St. Clair and Quaker Valley can raise taxes as much as they want, because many--though not all--residents can afford to pay them, and they moved to those places in the first place because they were willing to pay a premium for public education. Taxpayers in those places will not be happy to pay taxes to support school districts in places like Wilkinsburg, Clairton and Duquesne.

But until and unless the state tackles school funding reform, we will never have property tax reform. Because unless you change the way schools are funded, any property tax cuts would have to be matched by an increase in some other tax. (And it may have to happen any way.) As any politician will tell you, there's no percentage in that.