{"id":2396,"date":"2011-03-24T15:04:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T19:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=2396"},"modified":"2011-03-24T15:04:12","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T19:04:12","slug":"barrars-town-hall-budget-takes-center-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=2396","title":{"rendered":"Barrar’s town hall: budget takes center stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Residents ask questions on a wide range of issues, but the bottom line reigns supreme<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

State Rep. Steve Barrar (R-160) answers questions from local residents during Wednesday night's Town Hall session at the Chadds Ford Municipal Building.<\/p><\/div>\n

CHADDS FORD \u2014 Gov. Tom Corbett\u2019s new budget may or may not be popular, but it sure seems to have gotten people\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

A Town Hall meeting hosted by State Rep. Steve Barrar (R-160) Wednesday night at the township building was packed with people who had questions about everything from nuclear plant safety to the Marcellus Shale Gas Field to proposed cuts in education funding. But it was the budget and state and local fiscal issues that dominated the lively,\u00a0 but civil, two-and-a-half hour session.<\/p>\n

Joking a bit about the \u201c300 emails a day I get about the governor\u2019s \u2018horrible\u2019 budget,\u201d Barrar said he understands that people have questions and concerns about the budget, prompting such a robust turnout Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of have a feeling it\u2019s probably the reason for part of the turnout that we have tonight,\u201d Barrar said. \u201cThis is probably one of the better turnouts I\u2019ve had in the last five or six years of doing these town meetings.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Corbett\u2019s defense, Barrar, a fellow Republican, said that the new governor was put in a difficult situation coming into office, inheriting a fiscal mess from outgoing Gov. Ed Rendell.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a governor who is leaving, who spent too much and left the commonwealth in a position of having a $4 billion deficit,\u201d Barrar said. \u201cWe lost billions of dollars this year in federal stimulus money, that\u2019s simply not going to be there this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, the governor was faced with many difficult choices in putting together his first budget, Barrar said, and had to do it immediately after taking office. And while there were cuts across various state programs, including the end of the AdultBasic health insurance program, education funding took the brunt of the budget cuts \u2014 in part because of the loss of federal stimulus funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cEducation took the bulk of the cuts that the governor put forth,\u201d Barrar told the audience. \u201cA big part of the education was the loss of the stimulus money. The governor (Rendell) put over $700 million into education. Two years ago, you may remember we went 101 days late with the budget. That was a result of we, the house Republicans, did not want to vote for a budget that gave this money (stimulus funds) to education, into the basic education formula, which we knew, we warned our school directors and our superintendents that that money was a two-year gift.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the two years, they all knew that money was going to go away. There\u2019s not a superintendent in this state that didn\u2019t know that this year, all of that stimulus money that they received over the past two years was going to dry up.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, Barrar said, makes the cuts look worse than they are.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt looks like the governor is cutting basic education funding by about 10%,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you took out the stimulus money, it\u2019s actually about a 5% cut.\u201d<\/p>\n

Story continues on next page<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Story continues from previous page<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The proposed cuts to the state\u2019s universities \u2014 about half of state funding \u2014 were another matter, Barrar said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all shocked,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cI can guarantee every legislator, Republican, Democrat, when we saw the 50% cut to higher education, we were pretty stunned by that. None of us expected that type of cut.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrar said he hoped a closer examination of other parts of the budget might offer other savings that would allow restoration of some of the cuts, particularly in higher education.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere I feel, personally, the governor did not focus enough of his time looking \u2014 because these guys are all new \u2014 was the welfare budget,\u201d he said. \u201cThe welfare budget is a very difficult budget to go through and find fraud and waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told the crowd that there were very few cuts in the welfare budget and even a few increases, while some $900 million in waste and fraud, as identified by Auditor General Jack Wagner last year weren\u2019t touched. As an example, Barrar cited paying patients at Methadone clinics being paid milage to get to and from treatments \u2014 while not being required to go to the closest clinic to their home.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, we questioned the head of welfare, who is in charge of this program, and he felt that requiring people to go to the closest Methadone clinic to their homes put an \u2018onerous\u2019 burden on them,\u201d Barrar told the audience. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to tell you, I watched all the senators, the legislators, their faces were just…I mean everybody just sat their dumbfounded.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrar said he took the welfare official to task.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the kind of program, I think, that kind of infuriates taxpayers, that this is just a stupid wasteful program.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrar said that there would be close scrutiny of such programs, with the idea that funds saved could reallocated to education.<\/p>\n

The eight-term legislator also talked a bit about property taxes, including legislation that would limit increases on senior citizens, a bill that he has sponsored, as well as proposals to completely revamp school funding by substituting sales and other taxes for property taxes. This led to a wide-ranging discussion about the impact of such a move on local control, pay for senior school district administrators and other issues.<\/p>\n

Concerns about cuts to Penn State\u2019s agricultural outreach program were also expressed by attendees, worried that there will be little support for small farmers. Barrar said that even prior to this year\u2019s cuts, that Penn State has been working to phase out such services and move some of the services to the state department of agriculture, although it is unlikely that the state would have the resources to take them on.<\/p>\n

There was further discussion about job creation and tax measures that could help companies to hire more employees, cutting regulation, Barrar said, is a priority to help business grow.<\/p>\n

Although Corbett has come under fire for keeping about $200 million in tax incentives for filmmakers, Barrar said that studies have shown that the tax more than pays for itself, in terms of stimulating local economic activity and added income taxes paid to the state.<\/p>\n

The evening finished with a lengthy discussion about the Marcellus Shale Gas Field and whether it made sense for the state to impose a severance tax on drillers. Gov. Tom Corbett has said he will oppose a tax, but might consider an impact fee to help local communities pay for added infrastructure costs caused by the drilling.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the question I get asked more than anything on the planet right now,\u201d Barrar said.<\/p>\n

Barrar said he differed with the governor on this issue and would support a 3% or 4% tax, as long as 1% is set aside for local use, for roads and public safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this year or next year, you\u2019re gonna see a tax put on, and I think there\u2019s enough votes, even though Corbett has made a \u2018no-tax\u2019 pledge, we\u2019ve actually counted the votes in our caucus and we feel there\u2019s enough votes to override a veto of that bill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Barrar said he also wants to make sure that there is an environmental legacy fund set up with the proceeds to the state will be able to cope with any unanticipated environmental issues created by the drilling. He also cited studies of groundwater contamination show that approximately 85% of the wells tested had contamination prior to drilling operations began \u2014 in part from generations of coal mining, in part because of some naturally-existing conditions, such as in-ground radon, leeched from uranium veins that runs across the northern tier of the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Residents ask questions on a wide range of issues, but the bottom line reigns supreme By Mike McGann, Editor, UnionvilleTimes.com CHADDS FORD \u2014 Gov. Tom Corbett\u2019s new budget may or may not be popular, but it sure seems to have gotten people\u2019s attention. A Town Hall meeting hosted by State Rep. Steve Barrar (R-160) Wednesday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[113,65,39,181,69,24],"class_list":["post-2396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-2011-budget","tag-barrar","tag-chadds-ford","tag-corbett","tag-legislature","tag-unionville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}