PhillyDeals: Corbett gets a right-wing wish list: Cut wages, end corporate welfare

The Commonwealth Foundation, backed by the Mellon Scaifes, the McKennas of Kennametal Inc., and other wealthy donors with a lot at stake, have sent Gov. Corbett a conservative wish list of ways to cut state spending.

It may offend almost as many entrenched Republicans as Democrats. Some highlights:

Eliminate corporate welfare by prohibiting the state from giving tax dollars to private companies.

That means killing the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP), which Govs. Ed Rendell and Tom Ridge used to pump billions into private developments, factories, colleges, and museums; the Keystone Opportunity Zones, which give state and local tax breaks for new development in old industrial areas; and the Ben Franklin Technology Partners, which have been

shoveling state dollars to early-stage companies since the 1980s.

The state should stop these giveaways to favored companies, and instead lower taxes for all Pennsylvania businesses so they will be more likely to hire people, says Commonwealth  policy director Nathan Benefield.

New House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) has also called for scrapping the RACP. In the Senate, all three programs will be reevaluated. "We're staring a $5 billion shortfall in the face," Eric Arneson, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi (R., Delaware), said.

Support private schools (such as the Catholic schools) with vouchers and scholarships, reducing the need for more expensive public-school subsidies.

With Republicans in charge, says Benefield, "it's much more likely to pass in some form, either tax credits or a voucher program."

Freeze the guaranteed state-worker pension systems, and instead offer a 401(k)-style investor-beware program, as many private companies have done.

State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.) and other public-worker allies say this is unnecessary. The stock market will recover, and the pensions can continue to build up, they say.

But last year's pension-reform bill "just delayed the crisis," Benefield says.

Replace grants to universities with scholarships to students, and shift state colleges' focus to "teaching, rather than research."

Doesn't university research benefit industry and the public? "There's a lot of money to be made finding the cure to cancer," Benefield insists. "Pharmaceutical companies are more than willing to invest in research. When government starts picking which research to fund, it becomes the subject of lobbying."

Commonwealth even questions the need for federal medical research grants, which help keep Philadelphia and Pittsburgh medical schools and teaching hospitals afloat.

Cut wages for Pennsylvania workers by ending the state minimum wage and scrapping "prevailing-wage" requirements for public construction projects.

Won't that push contractors to bring in a lot of low-wage, out-of-state workers to build taxpayer-funded schools and prisons on the cheap?

With existing state-project wage requirements, "I don't think our government buildings are built any better than private buildings," Benefield told me. "I think it's a silly notion that we need to protect 'Pennsylvania jobs.' It's a fluid economy," and workers cross state lines all the time.

Force SEPTA and other mass-transit services to competitively bid contracts.

For example? "Allow private contractors to do some of the bus routes, which a number of cities have gone to," Benefield says.

Open new drug courts for "low-level" drug offenders.

Does that mean punishing them more, or less, than under current law? Not necessarily either, says Benefield: "Our regular courts are being flooded with drug offenders. Drug courts allow judges and lawyers to concentrate on these offenses and where treatment might be better than incarceration. We have support from left and right on this," led by State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Bucks), among others.