Last
year’s pilot program, described by GOP leaders as giving counties “flexibility”
to spend human services money where they believe it is most needed (with the
added bonus of having their budgets slashed 10 percent), evidently was so
flexible in its interpretation of state law that it went outside the bounds of
the constitution.
It’s
easy to lose track of which GOP policies are under court review at any given
time since so many laws signed by Gov. Tom Corbett (ehem, former Attorney
General –so I must know the law) end up
there.
Among
other PA GOP’s classics under scrutiny are 2012’s “Voter
ID
which is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania” law and Act 13, which stripped
municipalities of the ability to approve their own zoning regulations.
And
let’s not forget the ongoing hot potato plan to hand over control
of our billion dollars in revenue-generating state Lottery to a foreign country
which would be permitted to change the gaming environment in the Commonwealth
with no oversight or run it into the ground and give it back to us (at a price)
with no repercussions, which was rejected by current PA
Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Perhaps
if the GOP would just take a second to listen to Democrats upon occasion they could
prevent future carpal tunnel syndrome in the governor’s bill- signing hand, because
during floor debate for both Act 13 and Voter ID, we questioned the
constitutionality. I hate to say “we told you so,” but “we told you so.”
I
do have to hand it to the GOP, because they seem to have a laser beam focus on spurring
job growth in the legal sector.
Corbett’s
office alone is spending unspecified millions of dollars on outside law firms
(from Baltimore and New
York)
to handle these issues – at a time when the governor has been crying wolf about
sorting out “must haves from nice
to haves.”
However
court scrutiny is nothing new to Gov. Corbett because remember as Grand Poobah
Attorney General a whistleblower case was brought against him in federal court alleging
he terminated two employees for having the audacity to call for an independent
investigation into some AG office operations. The court dismissed one count of the
suit, but before closing the case said two counts are viable in the appropriate
state court.
…there
was also the time he joined 12 other attorneys general on a lawsuit regarding
Obamacare, the same Obamacare that was upheld by the US Supreme Court in 2012.
But
we know health care has never been Corbett’s forte because his first action as
governor was to dismantle adultBasic, the health care
program serving 40,000 working Pennsylvanians, paid for partially using funds
from PA’s share of the federal Tobacco Settlement and by program enrollees. Corbett
then used the tobacco funds for other non-health related issues and that was
found to be unconstitutional by a
Commonwealth Court
judge just a few months ago.
Of
course the GOP’s geography aptitude may be called into question too, as their
first attempt at redistricting maps made history by being the first to be
rejected as unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in 50 years!
And
just this month, Gov. Corbett’s flipflop on the Jerry Sandusky-induced NCAA
sanctions demonstrates his misunderstanding of the law. After originally
accepting the “serious penalties” as part of the “corrective process…,” he reversed his
stance and opted to sue the NCAA. That
lawsuit has been dismissed by a federal judge,
calling it a “fairly easy decision to dismiss.”
Just
so I can say “I told you so” – my guess that if the Corbett/Turzai cabal is
able to convince enough lawmakers to go along with their liquor privatization
and pension schemes to get them to the governor’s desk, they’ll end up in the
courts as well with similar consequences.
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