Tag Archives: Justin Simmons

State lawmaker spending for East Penn area

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Couple thoughts:
I am glad PA has a professional legislature but size of house should be reduced. In theory a professional legislature makes sense for a state the size of Pennsylvania. However, the size of the house needs to be reduced. Currently in the Senate the average district handles about 250,000 residents. In the house it’s 60,000. I think that number can be increased to about 100,000 residents per district in the house.

I think Reps & Senators should only make the average median income of the district they represent. I wrote about this couple years ago.  Today, the average salaries for our elected officials in PA are the 2nd highest in the nation for professional state legislators.

Clearly, we still need some reform of expenses in both chambers. The Senate is heading in the right direction. At least this past year having reduced expenses 14%. Still, the discrepancies in both chambers between the high spenders and the low spenders remain far too great. And in a lot of cases hard to justify.

This isn’t a partisan problem. We have big spenders and frugal spenders on both sides of the aisle. 

Lastly, I think the Morning Call does a pretty good job pulling together this information each year. Great work by our local newspaper.

HOUSE
Each House district represents an average of 60,498 residents. Pay is an average of 78,000

Gary Day – 68,915.41 (rank 9th highest out of 203)
Ryan Mackenzie – 50,563.09 (rank 124 out of 203)
Justin Simmons – 38,016.89 (rank 176 out of 203)

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SENATE
Each state Senate district represents an average population of 254,047 residents. Pay is an average of 85,000

Looks like for Senators office lease totals are reported as yearly and for the house it’s monthly. Note: Some Senators maintain multiple district offices. For example Lisa Boscola maintains 3. Bethlehem, Whitehall and Easton. Personally, I think that’s a justified service to constituents since Senatorial districts are so large.

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Pennsylvania spends more on road expansion than repair

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Pennsylvania spends more on new road expansion than we do on maintaining our existing network – despite financial liabilities mounting & conditions not improving. Meanwhile, we just raised the gas tax.

Here is a link to an eye opening study by Smart Growth America and Taxpayers for Common sense.

State departments of transportation (DOTs) are spending more money building new roads than maintaining the ones they have—despite the fact that roads are crumbling, financial liabilities are mounting and conditions are not improving for America’s drivers.
-Executive Summary

Here’s the statistical breakdown for PA:
*dollar figures in millions

Average annual state expenditures on road expansion versus repair, 2009–2011

Average annual state expenditures on road expansion versus repair, 2009–2011 From “Repair Priorities 2014 Transportation spending strategies to save taxpayer dollars and improve roads.

So we have above representing Pennsylvania’s most recent spending reality. (Again remember, we just raised gas taxes to address a “crisis” level concern. Which of course is pretty much universally acknowledged as a band-aid at best.) This in my opinion is a problem in and of itself, but meanwhile here are the results of this failed strategy…

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Here is another little tidbit from the report PA specific:
Pennsylvania as stated above is spending 877 million a year in repair. What’s the liability? 2,203 million. That’s a deficiency of 1,326 million annually.

Pennsylvania reflects the Nationwide trend of spending billions for marginal benefit. “States spent $20.4 billion on road expansion each year between 2009 and 2011. During that time our state-owned road network increased by 8,822 lane-miles, less than 1 percent. Meanwhile, America’s driving measured in vehicle-miles traveled, remained fairly stable during this two-year period, yet traffic congestion in urban areas did not change. It’s a statistical fact: States’ investments in expansion are yielding little gain for drivers despite the substantial cost.”

My question is whose going take some leadership in Pennsylvania? Road conditions are deteriorating yet our spending problems are focused on expansion which at best provide negligible results in level of service improvements. Whose going to break the broken cycle?

I’m looking towards our local state officials for leadership here. @Senator Pat Browne, @Representative Ryan Mackenzie, @Representative Justin Simmons, @Representative Michael Schlossberg (House transportation committee). Anyone paying attention to this?

 

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