PA STATE CAPITOL COMPLEX \u2013 Here\u2019s a number that might surprise you \u2013 the state of Pennsylvania owns four million acres of public land.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not a misprint.<\/p>\n
Four million acres \u2013 a percentage of that is also owned by the federal government as well.<\/p>\n
And no one is allowed to build or repurpose or do anything other than what the state deems allowable on those four million acres.<\/p>\n
Meadow Grounds Lake is an example of such land. It\u2019s in Fulton County.<\/p>\n
Michele Jansen of News Talk 103.7FM pointed out, \u201cLet me give you a quick thumbnail. It was completed in June of 1964 in late February. This is where the controversy came in \u2013 2013 the Fulton County commissioners learned that the Meadow Grounds Lake would be drained. Subsequent to this information becoming public, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission issued a press release on the draining of the lake. After the first press release was issued a second press release was issued announcing a public meeting at the Central Fulton High School. The locals fought and fought to get that refilled. They wanted it back, and I know there was a big celebration, and I think it was 2021 when they refilled it, because we covered that, actually. I remember the story, and the coverage in the news. We just didn\u2019t know how beautiful this place was.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pat Ryan of News Talk 103.7FM said, \u201cApparently, the way I understand it is, it\u2019s only open from dawn to dusk, and it\u2019s another one of these land grabs that if you guys are looking for money, I don\u2019t know why you wouldn\u2019t, and I\u2019m sorry, Fulton County, there\u2019s got to be a tasteful way in which either to develop it a little bit more. Why would you take that away from the people and the ability to either thoughtfully, carefully develop it and get it back onto the tax rolls? You\u2019ve got to do it carefully. Understood. Figure out all the rules, but in the land of the free and the home of the brave, can I have some free land here. You would make a fortune selling that thing off, and I don\u2019t know how you would do it. It\u2019s not going to happen in my lifetime. It probably will never happen, but I mean, why wouldn\u2019t we sell some of the assets in which to close up the gaps?\u201d<\/p>\n
PA Representative Chad Reichard said, \u201cLook at Raystown. It has some development. Deep Creek down in Maryland. I know some folks that have some homes down that way. There are there ways that I think you could potentially do that. It\u2019s all about local control. Whenever you have an asset like this, it\u2019s ensuring that whatever best benefits the community that hosts it is at the forefront of any decision made. I mean, someone sitting up in Harrisburg, trying to determine what is and what is not best for our local community always runs into roadblocks, and I think we see that time and time again. When you have the folks up here in Harrisburg calling the shots, usurping local control, it leads to disaster and community outrage, and it sounds like in this particular case, with the history of Meadow Grounds, the community really rallied around this asset, and got it restored, and got it put back into use.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ryan noted, \u201cBut it\u2019s now under the state thumb, it\u2019s forever under this whole land grab of the state. I\u2019m just thinking, you want to find your way to a decent enough revenue stream for the state, and for the county, and for the municipality, put this thing back in play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reichard said, \u201cI remember we were having conversations about South Mountain Golf Course, and we were talking with Secretary Cindy Dunn at DCNR, and Dan Moul and I were in a meeting, and she said, did you know that DCNR is the largest landowner in Pennsylvania? And Dan goes, no, the taxpayers of Pennsylvania are the largest landowner in Pennsylvania. It\u2019s just sometimes you get that disconnect. Once you have the folks in Harrisburg, and the bureaucrats, it\u2019s not the people\u2019s land, it\u2019s our department\u2019s land, or it\u2019s our agency\u2019s land, and I think we see that quite often. You get different entities, this is our money, you\u2019re cutting our budgets. No, it\u2019s people\u2019s money, right? It\u2019s tax dollars, and the best place to have tax dollars is in the back pocket of the taxpayers. We take a little bit to do what we need to do, but we shouldn\u2019t be taking any more than that, and you get departments and agencies and different entities that feel like there\u2019s this endless stream of cash out there that you can just turn the taxpayers upside down and shake them until everything falls out, and then you collect it, and that that\u2019s a dangerous place to be in government. It\u2019s a dangerous place to be whenever you are charged with the honor of representing the people or being employed by them. I mean, it is your duty and responsibility to ensure that what you take and what you are using is used wisely and used responsibly. It\u2019s just this government mentality that it\u2019s so pervasive up here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jansen said, \u201cPeople think of, okay, they want to raise your taxes to use that money for something, and then there\u2019s the vice taxes. We\u2019re going to take more of the things that we know you\u2019re more tempted to spend money on, the skill games, but there\u2019s also then the tax credits, and some of them are so well used, and I would say the EITC to allow money to be directed to follow children and allow actually companies to take, take part in that. Now that\u2019s a tax credit that also takes money out of the system, but we try, I think, at least at times, and I would say that one\u2019s a prime example of a good use of that money that\u2019s going to do what we\u2019re seeing failing too many of our children these days, is get them connected to a good education, especially from the failing public schools, and I\u2019m sorry, we want to pretend like all public schools are so equally great, they\u2019re not, but then we also seem to go a little crazy sometimes with too many tax credits aimed at too many people, and despite whatever good you think that they\u2019re doing, that also though takes money out of the system, which means more is going to be pulled or need to be pulled from the taxpayer, so every time you see somebody offering a new tax credit, like right now they\u2019re going crazy for all kinds of tax credits for children, child care, and in fact the EITC bill that\u2019s being looked at this week on third consideration, is going to be voted on, wants to do that as well, direct some of that money towards childcare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reichard said, \u201cWhen you look at tax credits, it\u2019s the government encouraging private citizens and private businesses to undertake things that are public goods. So with the EITC, the Educational Improvement Tax Credit, instead of the Commonwealth spending money on public education, what this would do is, a business can say, well, instead of paying $100,000 in taxes to the Commonwealth, I can take that $100,000 and I can contribute it to Cumberland Valley Christian School, or Shalom, and so now CVCS or Shalom has $100,000 that they might be able to use to educate a child, or several children, I guess, with that amount of money. So, instead of that money going to Harrisburg and into the public system, it\u2019s going into the private system, but it\u2019s still educating that child, and some of the arguments from the pro EITC folks is that it might be more cost effective. But the parents ultimately retain the choice of where to send their child, and I think we\u2019re very fortunate in Franklin County to have some outstanding public schools. I\u2019m a proud graduate of Waynesboro, and Greencastle. Obviously, I mean, their baseball team just won the state championship. We have some outstanding public schools in Franklin County, but ultimately it\u2019s the choice of the parents of where they send their child, and the EITC enables that choice. It enables the parent to be able to decide what\u2019s best for their child, whether it\u2019s public school or private school or home score, charter school, or whatever the case may be, so these types of tax credits, again, they are used to accomplish a public good just without using government resources to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PA STATE CAPITOL COMPLEX \u2013 Here\u2019s a number that might surprise you \u2013 the state of Pennsylvania owns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2481,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-225209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-land","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}