Shapiro won't say who paid for inaugural festivities

Democrat Josh Shapiro has been sworn in as Pennsylvania's 48th governor, pledging to deliver on promises of growing the economy, decreasing gun violence, ending the opioid epidemic, and bolstering trust in democracy.

Spotlight PA has a dispatch from his inaugural ceremony, as well as a complete list of who Shapiro has nominated to fill his cabinet. 

Before Shapiro officially became governor, Kate Huangpu and Angela Couloumbis reported on the nondisclosure agreements he required his transition staff to sign. They also found that Shapiro had yet to disclose which private donors paid for his swearing-in festivities, including a lavish bash featuring Wiz Khalifa. 

Finally, Commonwealth Court has ruled that special elections for seats vacated by Democrats should be held on Feb. 7. The outcome of those races will likely determine which party holds the majority in the state House, which is currently at a standstill because of an ongoing power struggle.

"The machines don’t get tired, get distracted."

—Lycoming County elections director Forrest Lehman on human error that occurred during a recent hand recount of 2020 results 

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Tax caps leave many Pa. municipalities with few ways to raise revenue

Bradford, a small city situated just a few miles south of the New York state line in McKean County, no longer has 24-hour police coverage.

It has deferred necessary maintenance and projects, and laid off employees in several departments — including fire, police, and streets — to cut costs, City Manager Chris Lucco told Spotlight PA.

“We’re in need of infrastructure repairs for sidewalks,” Lucco said. “We need updates to municipal facilities. Our fire station was built in the ‘30s, I believe — not in good condition."

Bradford has been forced to make these choices because it’s running out of options to raise the revenue necessary to fund public services. It’s far from alone. 

Municipalities across Pennsylvania that lack home rule charters are unable to increase a variety of taxes beyond limits set by a state law from the 1960s, according to a recent report from the Pennsylvania Economy League, a good-government group. Those include the earned income tax and a per capita tax on residents.

Without that flexibility, these municipalities have come to rely heavily on property taxes.

“Pennsylvania’s local government tax laws mostly focus on raising tax revenue from residents, businesses, and properties located only within a municipality’s borders to support services,” the league’s report states. “It is easy in Pennsylvania for the wealthy to avoid higher local government taxation by living in less dense suburbs and exurbs with less costly services.”

Bradford is what Lucco calls a “core community.” People who live in surrounding communities in northern McKean County rely on Bradford for essentials like the hospital, schools, and emergency care, and often commute to work there. 

The city provides services to between 15,000 and 20,000 people, but only about 7,700 of them are residents, Lucco said. Despite that disparity, the burden of funding those services falls heavily on people who actually live in Bradford.

Property taxes account for about 70% of Bradford’s general fund revenue, according to the report. 

The city could continue to raise them. Property taxes haven’t been reassessed in McKean for 25 years, and upping them would increase revenue. 

But Bradford residents already pay higher property taxes than people in nearby communities with higher housing values. That’s especially burdensome in a city where 30% of the population is in poverty — more than twice the poverty rate in McKean County and Pennsylvania as a whole, according to census data. 

“It still forces everything on the back of the property owner,” Lucco said of reassessing property taxes. 

Bradford has raised needed revenue by sharing the cost of some services with neighboring municipalities, and it sells timber from its water authority’s watershed. Occasional one-time fixes have helped, Lucco said, like when the city sold its stormwater system to Bradford’s sanitary authority that is governed separately. But Lucco said a long-term fix is needed.

The report recommends modernizing Pennsylvania’s current tax system by eliminating or raising tax rate caps, implementing taxes for nonresidents around core communities, and giving municipalities the power to levy new taxes like one on alcoholic drinks. —Ashad Hajela, rural affairs reporter and Report for America corps member

'FOREVER' LIMITS: 

» AL DÍA: Shapiro doesn't want private prisons in Pennsylvania

» AP: Pa. Senate advances bill to drop school religious garb ban

» POLITICO: GOP paying $100K to figure out what went wrong in Pa. 

» WESA: With protections expired, foreclosures are climbing 

» WITF: Mastriano misses Senate vote, skips Josh Shapiro’s inauguration