Allegheny County voters last fall rejected raising property taxes to create a “Children’s Fund.” But county Chief Executive Rich Fitzgerald, who opposed the ballot measure because of the proposed tax hike, has convened a 26-member working group to create a similar fund to, as the Post-Gazette reports it, “bolster early learning and out-of-school time programs for kids throughout the county.”
A report is to be delivered to Fitzgerald in six months.
The group reportedly will assess current offerings, study what gaps there might be and consider a trio of budget scenarios — of $5 million, $10 million and $20 million annually.
Here’s to a thorough review.
But, more importantly, here’s to an honest assessment of what works and what doesn’t — with a particular emphasis on weeding out feel-good programs that have iffy or no demonstrable track records.
The Commonwealth Financing Authority has awarded $55 million in “transportation funds” for 106 “infrastructure projects” in 40 Pennsylvania counties, the P-G reports.
So why are taxpayers being treated as venture capitalists to develop a new coffee beverage?
Say what?
Included in such projects as road slide repairs, bridge deck replacements and upgraded traffic signals is this critical transportation funding need: $23,500 for Turner Dairy Farms in Penn Hills to assist in the development of a ready-to-drink coffee beverage, for coffee-processing equipment and to hire a graphic design company to develop packaging.
Really? Really.
Why in the world should the public pay for such a thing? If Turner wants to bring to market this kind of drink, it should risk its own capital to, first, gauge the market, then produce and advertise the drink as it pursues a profit.
Since when is it a function of public dollars to do this?
Sadly, this grant does not represent a market perversion in isolation, as a Thursday Tribune-Review story sadly documents.
“Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding praised dairy processors such as Penn Hills’ Turner Dairy Farms on Thursday for thinking beyond fluid milk.
“’We need more dairy processing in the state to correspond with where the consumer trends are,’” Redding said at the annual Turner Dairy Producers Luncheon in Blairsville.
He says the five-year trend has been away “from fluid milk consumption and toward greater consumption of milk products such as cheese, yogurt, butter and ice cream.”
“That’s good for us,” Redding said, “but it means that we need to sort of ‘up’ our game, all the time looking for new products and looking for some way to connect, finding a way for people to consume what it is we offer.”
But, again, that is not, clearly, an endeavor to be underwritten by taxpayers.
Yet, “The State” has turned taxpayers into forced investors.
As the Trib story notes, the Turner Dairy grant “was one of several totaling $5 million that were given to dairy farms across the state [originating] through the Pennsylvania Dairy Investment Program, a new program designed to encourage development of more ‘value-added’ dairy products, such as yogurt and cheese.
Touted Redding, “The Dairy Investment Program is about trying to build the capacity of value-added processing, so more butter, more ice cream, more yogurt – not at the expense of fluid milk but in addition to it.”
But at taxpayer expense?
And this nonsense doesn’t end with Turner. Pleasant Lane Farm of Unity, Westmoreland County, received a grant of nearly $287,000 to build a creamery for cheesemaking.
Really? Really.
Redding perfectly (but unwittingly) frames the economic ignorance of this dive into taxpayer pockets when he noted how dairy farmers are “caught in a vortex” of, among other things, depressed prices and declining consumption.
So, the answer is for “The State,” tapping tax dollars, to artificially juice the dairy market that stands every chance of keeping production artificially high which, in turn, serves to keep prices depressed?
Pennsylvania dairy farmers, faced with eroding markets, must evolve or perish. But that’s their job – not taxpayers’.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org.
