dr. hfn
02-23-2010, 03:11 PM
TOWANDA - Republican governor candidate Sam Rohrer sees the upcoming election as a pivotal time for the Commonwealth.
"I think the challenges that are facing us in this Commonwealth this next go-around - this next governor and this legislature - are going to be the most significant and the most monumental of any time in the history of this state," Rohrer said. He spoke to The Daily Review recently in an interview.
And the state representative (R-Berks) - who has been serving the 128th Legislative District since 1993 - is ready to take those challenges on, asking voters to get behind him in the upcoming election.
He broke the dilemmas facing the state into three areas: economic, educational, and ethical.
Regarding economics, he said the state has business and budgetary problems, adding that Pennsylvania is a "very unfriendly" place for business with a "very hostile business climate" with the highest corporate taxes in the country.
He said the hostile business climate dates back to 1991, when he said there was a major tax increase - $3 billion a year with almost all the taxes "on the back of business."
He said industry began to leave the state "just right out of the chute," and nothing has been done.
"We have tax policy ... we have a regulatory climate that is strangling new business and strangling anybody who wants to expand any business - hostile, frankly, to any kind of new job creation," he said.
If elected, Rohrer said he would veto any piece of legislation "that would increase any type of burden or cost on existing or new business in Pennsylvania."
Secondly, Rohrer said the entire business tax structure in the state needs redone and restructured with a reduction in tax rates.
Regarding the regulatory climate, he said he would oppose anything that would be more restrictive.
"That's more of an attitudinal thing. The governor can actually say we're not going to enforce some of these things by regulation or we're going to."
As for the labor climate, Rohrer said no one should be required to join a union or pay forced union dues.
"That's a matter of individual worker freedom," he said.
Also, Rohrer said the state has to embrace new industry, saying Marcellus Shale development "represents the single best opportunity to grow industry, to produce good paying jobs, of anything that we have before us."
"If we want to take and expand wealth and develop wealth in this Commonwealth, we're going to take it up out of the ground. That means gas and that means clean coal. And both of those together will give us the ability to be energy independent in the Commonwealth."
"A matter of fact, Pennsylvania ought to become a net exporter of energy," he said. "We can be; we have the opportunity to do so."
He also said most of the mass transit in the state should run on LNG (liquefied natural gas) and/or clean coal, noting technology is available to produce diesel fuel from coal.
Rohrer said the governor "has an opportunity to lay out a vision and a direction," saying the goals he outlined are "visionary" and "directional things."
"I know these things I've laid out here - with the governor's direction - these things could happen," he said. "What we've not had is a governor who has the commitment or the vision to understand what to do on these things. They talk about it, but things don't come into reality."
Rohrer said the state is insolvent, though it's not bankrupt. "Insolvency means that we don't have the money to pay for our bills."
"We are about two years behind California," he said. "California is sitting here today in functional bankruptcy. They cannot pay their bills. They have no way to raise the money."
And, he said, "we are right behind him."
"The questions is, 'what do we do about it?'" he said.
The state, from a budget perspective, he said, is in a "predicament."
He said the state budget that was passed was about $28 billion dollars, but the state is bringing revenue into the general fund at a rate of $24 billion a year.
According to Rohrer, the answer about what to do is not to raise taxes, but to reduce spending to make up the shortfall.
As for where to cut, Rohrer said, "you've got to go where you spend the most money," which he said is welfare, corrections and education.
"We are wasting money by the millions, and I'd say by the billions, throughout these departments in a couple of areas." He said programs are being duplicated, and there are areas where there is a "significant" amount of waste and fraud.
For instance, he said, intake welfare workers in many counties do not ask applicants for proof of where they live or check them for residency requirements.
"That's the kind of thing that's happening across the board," he said.
"This governor has grown the welfare rolls because he has sought to grow the welfare rolls, and when you don't enforce the laws, of course it's going to grow," he added.
Rohrer said programs have to be looked at and assessed as to whether they're efficiently run. And, he said, "you go after the ones that are not being efficiently run."
He said he would ask what the core missions of these departments are, and what they're doing now.
"Where have we had mission creep?" he said. "Where are we doing things that are maybe nice, but are not what is supposed to be done?"
Taking a management approach, Rohrer said he would look at each program and institute a performance analysis, and come up with an objective evaluation to determine whether the departments are off-mark, over budget or inefficient.
Also, Rohrer said he would take a "close look" at the area of federal mandates and federal involvement with states.
"I've been very opposed to intervention of the federal government in the area of the states anyway because, number one, they end up telling us what to do, which means we can't determine our own things for ourselves; number two, they promise money that they don't deliver, which then lets the taxpayers of the state on the hook ..." In addition, he claimed it's a violation of the Constitution.
"Constitutionally, the federal government is not even allowed to be involved in welfare, they're not even allowed to be involved in education," he said.
"The governor of the state should not have their hand out taking any federal money for where there are strings attached," he added.
As for education, Rohrer said the way public education is funded is "broken and not sustainable."
Rohrer describes himself as the "statewide leader in the right to eliminate and replace school property taxes." The Rohrer plan would replace school property taxes by broadening the state's current 6 percent sales tax. It would also involve accessing money from Marcellus Shale royalties generated on gas produced on state-owned properties like state parks, up to about 50 percent, and a billion dollars being collected from gambling, he said.
"I believe that the property tax must be eliminated, not reduced, eliminated, and when you eliminate it under the plan we've laid out, you can also fix the way we are funding public education and put that back onto a financial stable footing," he said.
He said eliminating the property tax would produce the "single greatest economic stimulus action that we could create here in this Commonwealth."
What would people do with the money formerly paid as the tax?
"They'd spend some of it, they'd save some of it maybe, or they'd give some of it away, one or the other," he said. "All three of those are positive economically."
Rohrer imagined the impact on housing and real estate markets.
"If people right now who are about to lose their homes through foreclosure because they cannot pay their mortgage ... if they knew that the property tax, which is also built into that mortgage payment, was soon going to not have to be ... those banks would look at those homeowners as receiving a boost in their income equivalent to the amount of the property tax," he said. "They would back off of the foreclosure because the income evaluation of the people who have that mortgage would have gone from here to here, even though there was no income change. The impact is absolutely dramatic.
"Just think if people knew two years down the road, as an example, they would have no property tax to pay."
Also on the front of education, Rohrer was in favor of an expanded version of school choice.
"We need competition in education," he said. "We need parents to have a broader menu of choice of where they may send their child to school and how it is done." He said competition brings down prices, improves quality of service, and improves delivery of service, wherever it exists.
Turning to ethics, Rohrer said leaders must tell the truth to get back the public's trust. "You tell the truth, we can restore that deficit of trust," he said.
On another topic, he was opposed to a severance tax for the natural gas industry, with the way the current business tax structure stands.
"The problem with a severance tax in Pennsylvania ... is that the severance tax that he (the governor) would impose here is on top of already the highest corporate net income tax in the country," he said. "And keeping the current tax structure in place, and adding this on top of it does great harm to the industry."
He added that shallow gas drilling takes in Pennsylvania, but these wells don't generate nearly as much as Marcellus Shale, and would be harmed by a severance tax. "Those are marginal wells from a financial perspective. If the severance tax is applied, it cannot be just applied to Marcellus because of the uniformity clause; it has to be applied to all of them."
He said it's estimated there are 29,000 jobs in the shallow well industry in the state.
"The last thing we want is to shut down a going concern that's already benefiting so many people because you want to try to get at this more lucrative revenue source, which is, frankly, not yet fully developed ..."
Rohrer and his wife, Ruth Ann, have six children and three grandchildren.
Eric Hrin can be reached at (570) 297-5251; e-mail: reviewtroy@thedailyreview.com.
http://thedailyreview.com/news/rohrer-seeks-governor-seat-1.635953
"I think the challenges that are facing us in this Commonwealth this next go-around - this next governor and this legislature - are going to be the most significant and the most monumental of any time in the history of this state," Rohrer said. He spoke to The Daily Review recently in an interview.
And the state representative (R-Berks) - who has been serving the 128th Legislative District since 1993 - is ready to take those challenges on, asking voters to get behind him in the upcoming election.
He broke the dilemmas facing the state into three areas: economic, educational, and ethical.
Regarding economics, he said the state has business and budgetary problems, adding that Pennsylvania is a "very unfriendly" place for business with a "very hostile business climate" with the highest corporate taxes in the country.
He said the hostile business climate dates back to 1991, when he said there was a major tax increase - $3 billion a year with almost all the taxes "on the back of business."
He said industry began to leave the state "just right out of the chute," and nothing has been done.
"We have tax policy ... we have a regulatory climate that is strangling new business and strangling anybody who wants to expand any business - hostile, frankly, to any kind of new job creation," he said.
If elected, Rohrer said he would veto any piece of legislation "that would increase any type of burden or cost on existing or new business in Pennsylvania."
Secondly, Rohrer said the entire business tax structure in the state needs redone and restructured with a reduction in tax rates.
Regarding the regulatory climate, he said he would oppose anything that would be more restrictive.
"That's more of an attitudinal thing. The governor can actually say we're not going to enforce some of these things by regulation or we're going to."
As for the labor climate, Rohrer said no one should be required to join a union or pay forced union dues.
"That's a matter of individual worker freedom," he said.
Also, Rohrer said the state has to embrace new industry, saying Marcellus Shale development "represents the single best opportunity to grow industry, to produce good paying jobs, of anything that we have before us."
"If we want to take and expand wealth and develop wealth in this Commonwealth, we're going to take it up out of the ground. That means gas and that means clean coal. And both of those together will give us the ability to be energy independent in the Commonwealth."
"A matter of fact, Pennsylvania ought to become a net exporter of energy," he said. "We can be; we have the opportunity to do so."
He also said most of the mass transit in the state should run on LNG (liquefied natural gas) and/or clean coal, noting technology is available to produce diesel fuel from coal.
Rohrer said the governor "has an opportunity to lay out a vision and a direction," saying the goals he outlined are "visionary" and "directional things."
"I know these things I've laid out here - with the governor's direction - these things could happen," he said. "What we've not had is a governor who has the commitment or the vision to understand what to do on these things. They talk about it, but things don't come into reality."
Rohrer said the state is insolvent, though it's not bankrupt. "Insolvency means that we don't have the money to pay for our bills."
"We are about two years behind California," he said. "California is sitting here today in functional bankruptcy. They cannot pay their bills. They have no way to raise the money."
And, he said, "we are right behind him."
"The questions is, 'what do we do about it?'" he said.
The state, from a budget perspective, he said, is in a "predicament."
He said the state budget that was passed was about $28 billion dollars, but the state is bringing revenue into the general fund at a rate of $24 billion a year.
According to Rohrer, the answer about what to do is not to raise taxes, but to reduce spending to make up the shortfall.
As for where to cut, Rohrer said, "you've got to go where you spend the most money," which he said is welfare, corrections and education.
"We are wasting money by the millions, and I'd say by the billions, throughout these departments in a couple of areas." He said programs are being duplicated, and there are areas where there is a "significant" amount of waste and fraud.
For instance, he said, intake welfare workers in many counties do not ask applicants for proof of where they live or check them for residency requirements.
"That's the kind of thing that's happening across the board," he said.
"This governor has grown the welfare rolls because he has sought to grow the welfare rolls, and when you don't enforce the laws, of course it's going to grow," he added.
Rohrer said programs have to be looked at and assessed as to whether they're efficiently run. And, he said, "you go after the ones that are not being efficiently run."
He said he would ask what the core missions of these departments are, and what they're doing now.
"Where have we had mission creep?" he said. "Where are we doing things that are maybe nice, but are not what is supposed to be done?"
Taking a management approach, Rohrer said he would look at each program and institute a performance analysis, and come up with an objective evaluation to determine whether the departments are off-mark, over budget or inefficient.
Also, Rohrer said he would take a "close look" at the area of federal mandates and federal involvement with states.
"I've been very opposed to intervention of the federal government in the area of the states anyway because, number one, they end up telling us what to do, which means we can't determine our own things for ourselves; number two, they promise money that they don't deliver, which then lets the taxpayers of the state on the hook ..." In addition, he claimed it's a violation of the Constitution.
"Constitutionally, the federal government is not even allowed to be involved in welfare, they're not even allowed to be involved in education," he said.
"The governor of the state should not have their hand out taking any federal money for where there are strings attached," he added.
As for education, Rohrer said the way public education is funded is "broken and not sustainable."
Rohrer describes himself as the "statewide leader in the right to eliminate and replace school property taxes." The Rohrer plan would replace school property taxes by broadening the state's current 6 percent sales tax. It would also involve accessing money from Marcellus Shale royalties generated on gas produced on state-owned properties like state parks, up to about 50 percent, and a billion dollars being collected from gambling, he said.
"I believe that the property tax must be eliminated, not reduced, eliminated, and when you eliminate it under the plan we've laid out, you can also fix the way we are funding public education and put that back onto a financial stable footing," he said.
He said eliminating the property tax would produce the "single greatest economic stimulus action that we could create here in this Commonwealth."
What would people do with the money formerly paid as the tax?
"They'd spend some of it, they'd save some of it maybe, or they'd give some of it away, one or the other," he said. "All three of those are positive economically."
Rohrer imagined the impact on housing and real estate markets.
"If people right now who are about to lose their homes through foreclosure because they cannot pay their mortgage ... if they knew that the property tax, which is also built into that mortgage payment, was soon going to not have to be ... those banks would look at those homeowners as receiving a boost in their income equivalent to the amount of the property tax," he said. "They would back off of the foreclosure because the income evaluation of the people who have that mortgage would have gone from here to here, even though there was no income change. The impact is absolutely dramatic.
"Just think if people knew two years down the road, as an example, they would have no property tax to pay."
Also on the front of education, Rohrer was in favor of an expanded version of school choice.
"We need competition in education," he said. "We need parents to have a broader menu of choice of where they may send their child to school and how it is done." He said competition brings down prices, improves quality of service, and improves delivery of service, wherever it exists.
Turning to ethics, Rohrer said leaders must tell the truth to get back the public's trust. "You tell the truth, we can restore that deficit of trust," he said.
On another topic, he was opposed to a severance tax for the natural gas industry, with the way the current business tax structure stands.
"The problem with a severance tax in Pennsylvania ... is that the severance tax that he (the governor) would impose here is on top of already the highest corporate net income tax in the country," he said. "And keeping the current tax structure in place, and adding this on top of it does great harm to the industry."
He added that shallow gas drilling takes in Pennsylvania, but these wells don't generate nearly as much as Marcellus Shale, and would be harmed by a severance tax. "Those are marginal wells from a financial perspective. If the severance tax is applied, it cannot be just applied to Marcellus because of the uniformity clause; it has to be applied to all of them."
He said it's estimated there are 29,000 jobs in the shallow well industry in the state.
"The last thing we want is to shut down a going concern that's already benefiting so many people because you want to try to get at this more lucrative revenue source, which is, frankly, not yet fully developed ..."
Rohrer and his wife, Ruth Ann, have six children and three grandchildren.
Eric Hrin can be reached at (570) 297-5251; e-mail: reviewtroy@thedailyreview.com.
http://thedailyreview.com/news/rohrer-seeks-governor-seat-1.635953