Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Really?

I remember playing Kick-the-Can as a child. Little did I know at the time that, if I wanted to play it professionally, I could have been a State Legislator:

House Bill 1661 would prevent any Pennsylvania county from carrying out a court-ordered property reassessment until June 30, 2011. That delay would give the Legislature a chance to do a study of problems that many counties are having with the existing property reassessment system. The study would also deal with whether the state, rather than individual counties, should perform the reassessments. Allegheny County is now facing a court order to reassess.
*Clonk*

Bully on Sen. Pat Vance (R-Cumberland) and Sen. John Eichelberger (R-Blair) for voting against a bill that's so clearly unconstitutional, and shame on Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-Lawrenceville) for voting for a bill just "to keep the process moving."

*Clonk*

It's like letting someone get mugged because "you wanted to see how it played out."

Of course, it's not nearly that noble: everyone in Harrisburg doesn't want to rock the boat... despite not being able to pass a friggin' budget... because raising taxes is tantamount to politically whipping out your love junk in front of preschoolers and the press: if you do it, you're going to get into serious trouble and be tagged forever as a sex offender.

Metaphorically speaking of course.

So here's the thing: you either support the State Constitution and its uniformity clause or you don't and you want to play political games... which apparently includes "kick-the-can".

*Clonk*

1 comment:

EdHeath said...

As I remember vaguely, the Supreme Court decision that upheld Wettick said something about it being a shame that the State Legislature did not take action to force Pennsylvania's Counties to have some sort of uniform assessment system (or create some uniformity for them). Now the State Legislature is interested in action. I don't know what the procedure is, but I suppose if the bill does become law someone will sue to have it declared unconstitutional. Still, however it comes out, it will be months more of delay.