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WILKES-BARRE — Gov. Tom Wolf this week announced the Department of Human Services has received approximately $185.5 million in federal funding for the 2016-17 Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) season. This season marks the commonwealth’s 35th anniversary participating in the program.
“Making sure all Pennsylvanians are safe and healthy is my top priority,” Wolf said in an emailed news release. “It is essential that we ensure that every Pennsylvanian has a warm home and I encourage anyone who needs this assistance to apply through COMPASS or at their local county assistance offices.”
LIHEAP provides assistance for home heating bills to keep low-income Pennsylvanians warm and safe during the winter months. The program is available to both renters and homeowners. The support comes in the form of a grant, so the individual does not have to repay assistance that goes directly to their utility company or home heating fuel provider.
The LIHEAP cash and crisis program opens Nov. 1, 2016, and is scheduled to close March 31, 2017.
According to the news release, the federally funded program provided hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians a warm place to live during last winter, including elderly, children and individuals living with a disability.
During the 2015-16 LIHEAP season, 345,791 households statewide received $156.3 million in assistance. These households received an average of $452.
Eligibility for the 2016-17 LIHEAP season is set at 150 percent of the federal poverty income guidelines.
Online applications can be completed by visiting www.compass.state.pa.us. Paper applications are still available through local county assistance offices or interested applicants can download and print an application from the department’s website.
Wolf lists four major accomplishments
The 2016 fall legislative session has ended, capping Gov. Tom Wolf’s first two years in office.
According to a news release from the governor’s office, the governor has achieved “significant progress” on issues that have confronted the commonwealth for years, and in some cases, decade,s including historic education funding increases at all levels, a fair funding formula, expanding access to health care, fighting the opioid and heroin epidemic, modernizing the sale of liquor and beer and legalizing medical marijuana.
• Combating the opioid and heroin crisis
In late September, Wolf addressed a joint session of the General Assembly to outline a set of shared, specific legislative goals that would help tackle the opioid and heroin crisis. Together with Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate, Wolf made a commitment to prioritize helping the victims of substance use disorder and the communities that have been devastated by this terrible disease.
The governor and legislators passed five major bills that will strengthen the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, restrict the number of pills that can be prescribed to minors or in emergency rooms, establish education curriculum on safe prescribing, and create more locations for the drop-off of drugs among other important initiatives.
• Modernizing the sale of beer and liquor
Wolf has worked with Republicans and Democrats in the General Assembly to modernize the sale of liquor, wine and beer in Pennsylvania in order to “bring the commonwealth’s wine and spirits system into the 21st century.”
During the fall session, the governor worked with lawmakers to approve the sale of six-packs of beer at distributors throughout the commonwealth. This legislation further enhances the customer experience by providing greater convenience and satisfaction to the residents of Pennsylvania.
• Legalizing ride-sharing across the commonwealth
Wolf said he worked with both parties in the legislature to pass a long-term solution for ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft to operate everywhere in Pennsylvania.
This legislation not only permanently legalizes ride-sharing, but it will also send two-thirds of the revenue derived from ride sharing in the city of Philadelphia to the Philadelphia School District to help the district continue to strengthen its financial footing.
• Making critical reforms to unemployment insurance
The governor and lawmakers from both parties also passed a reform bill that will provide nearly 50,000 additional people with access to unemployment insurance.
This agreement brought together both Republicans and Democrats, as well as advocates in the business community and organized labor, to ensure that we help the unemployed while they try to find work.
AP story: State eyes gambling to fill budget deficit
An Associated Press story this week said Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania who are resisting tax increases to balance a deep budget deficit are taking steps toward the state’s third expansion of gambling in six years as an alternative source of cash.
According to the AP story, lawmakers who support it estimate an expansion of some sort could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in one-time license fees plus collections from taxing a new stream of gambling profits. It also would keep the state’s industry current in a competitive and fast changing environment, supporters say.
Here is the story from the Associated Press:
House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, gave gambling expansion a prominent place in his list of priorities. Exploring the possibility should come before lawmakers raise taxes, he said Wednesday after the House defeated a $2.4 billion tax package presented by Gov. Tom Wolf.
“I think we need to have a discussion first on what other revenues are on the table,” Reed said. “We need to come to a conclusion on liquor reform. We need to address cost drivers like our pension system. We need to look at gaming options.”
Pennsylvania state government has been in a partial shutdown for more than 100 days as the Republican-controlled Legislature resists Wolf’s request for a multi-billion-dollar tax increase that the first-term Democrat says is necessary to resolve the state government’s budget deficit and begin correcting steep disparities in public school funding.
Top Republicans, however, have yet to say how large a tax increase they will support.
The Wolf administration is open to a gambling expansion, if it is part of a comprehensive package that resolves what the administration projects to be a multi-billion-dollar long-term deficit, a spokesman said.
Top Democratic lawmakers have yet to voice support.
House Minority Whip Mike Hanna, D-Clinton, said he had yet to survey rank-and-file Democrats on it. Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, was more resolute, saying his caucus is firmly against balancing the budget on the backs of gambling addicts and an unpredictable revenue stream.
“That’s a path we don’t want to go down,” Costa said.
Even supporters acknowledge balancing the budget on a gambling expansion is problematic: It is very difficult to estimate how much actual gambling revenue will materialize.
Tax collections on table games, legalized at slot-machine casinos in 2010 to help buttress recession-wracked tax collections, raised $96 million last year. The state lottery’s $1 billion in revenue last year went to support programs for the elderly, including a record amount for costs that the state’s general tax collections used to shoulder. Meanwhile, more than $1.2 billion in tax collections on slot machine gambling in the last fiscal year went mostly for school property tax reductions and horse racing industry subsidies.
Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, said gambling bills may not have seemed like a great idea months ago. But with massive tax increases and the government’s partial shutdown at stake, perspectives should change, Scarnati said.
“All of a sudden,” Scarnati said, “gaming doesn’t look that bad.”
