Letters: Casino Tax Bait and Switch; Don’t Be Fooled; What Do We Want?; Wrong Stuff for Leadership

Well, this is delightful: In 2010, Pennsylvania lawmakers garnered support for the expansion of table games at casinos by promising that tax revenues from those games would be put into a Property Tax Relief Fund. Twelve years later we discover that, now that the state has licensed nearly all of the casinos that it wants and its financial requirements met, Gov. Wolf and the Republican-controlled state legislature have redirected those tax revenues from property tax relief (e.g. homestead exclusions) into the state’s general fund (Article 25, page 4)! Instead of keeping the state’s tax collections constant and shifting the burden of the state’s taxes from property owners to those voluntarily gambling at casinos, property taxes will remain unchanged while the state takes even more money through taxation by casino table games – which ultimately increases the amount of money that the state takes out of the communities overall. Does this behavior surprise anyone anymore? One has to wonder if this wasn’t the plan from the start….

Considering this, perhaps one of the next places our state’s leaders might find additional funds is by redirecting the 1%-2% tax casinos currently pay to their host municipalities to the state government. Enough casinos have now been built to saturate Pennsylvania’s gambling market; there’s no longer a need to incentivize additional municipalities to host new casinos. Granted, only 16 municipalities would be affected by this type of change, but they comprise a small fraction of the state’s population, have only a few representatives in the state legislature, and their voters are split across political parties. Thus it would be easy to make this change without suffering electoral repercussions. Speculative? Yes. But not unprecedented now.

Or the state government could posit that part of the taxes collected from the casinos would be sent back to their resident municipalities – but those municipalities should expect to receive about as much additional tax revenue through such a scheme as homeowners will now receive through the increased property tax relief from casino table gaming this year: none.

College Township’s leaders need to be wise. They must carefully consider whether the leaders in Pennsylvania’s state government are trustworthy to maintain the tax regime that is currently being offered to incentivize the development of the proposed Nittany Mall casino. The promises of sustainable ongoing tax revenue, like those of casino table gaming tax for property tax relief, are only as trustworthy as the politicians making them. Politicians whose tenures end, priorities shift, and whose interests – and interests of their constituents – often change. If our state’s leaders want or need to raise more revenue in the future, College Township could find itself beholden to all of the harms caused by a casino without any of the anticipated tax benefits.

Please e-mail the College Township Council at [email protected] and ask them to do everything in their power to stop the development of the proposed Nittany Mall casino.

Kirk Heller,
State College

Don’t Be Fooled

If you’ve been watching TV, you know that the airwaves are now filled with commercials calling Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro, and Democratic senatorial nominee John Fetterman, socialists, radicals and extreme left-wingers.

Republican candidates must be worried if they’re resorting to name-calling, lies and conspiracy theories rather than laying out their own positive agenda to improve the lives of Pennsylvanians. Instead, they’re up to their usual shenanigans. (Remember that the NYT documented nearly 31,000 lies told by Donald Trump during his single term, a record even the Prince of Lies would find enviable.)

The latest lie: The $80 billion allocated to the IRS to reverse more than a decade of underfunding will be used to audit more middle-income and poor Americans. The claim is untrue and absurd!

Fact: The IRS currently audits the poor at 5x the rate of wealthy Americans because it lacks the manpower to handle the more complicated tax returns of wealthy tax-cheats. Why do Republican members of Congress want middle-income and poor voters to believe that the IRS will be coming after them? To scare and enrage the base.

These are the same Republicans who deny women bodily autonomy, and then proclaim government-overreach when public health officials recommend vaccinations and masks to save lives from a deadly virus.

Republicans will continue these shenanigans so long as they’re rewarded for lying, name-calling and obstructing productive action on everything from climate change, lowering prescription drug costs to catching the big money income tax evaders.

Don’t be fooled.

Ed Satalia,
State College

What Do We Want?

Some polls say the midterm elections are tied 50/50. If that is true then half of us are going to vote in favor of open borders (with more
criminals, terrorists, heroin, fentanyl, human trafficking), suppression of fossil fuels that the world desperately needs during this transition
(especially our allies in Europe due to Putin’s madness), more crime, less police and military (because nobody wants to anymore), more
criminals with “get out of jail free” cards, more inflation, higher gas, more taxes to pay for Democrat spending sprees (of our money) at
exactly the wrong time, more IRS audits by 87,000 more agents, more brain washing of our school children, more child mutilation, China
buying more of our farmland, and the advancement of radical Democrat socialist/marxist New World Order ideology.

The other half of us will vote to bring back the America we know and love before it’s too late and deny Democrats the chance to do more damage.

It may help to remember that although the position of governor relates to state issues, U.S. representatives and senators mostly vote on issues that affect the entire country.

Speeches mean nothing. As an example, John Fetterman is a Pennsylvanian but also a progressive radical in lock step with all the others. Mehmet Oz is Mr. Hollywood but also an America first conservative who will vote accordingly.

The balance of power in those two institutions will decide the fate of America for the next two years that Biden remains President.

What do you want?

R.G. Schwenzer,
Bellefonte

The Wrong Stuff for Leadership

I recently read an excellent opinion piece written by the Editorial Board of the New York Times on leadership and how our democracy needs leaders who display “principled acts…of political bravery.” My thoughts immediately went to Pennsylvania’s wannabe state leader, Doug Mastriano, who has become the national poster boy of right-wing extremism.

From what I’ve seen, he talks a good game about leadership, using his military service and rank as evidence of his integrity and leadership skills. Ironically, his practice of posting pictures of himself in uniform brought him a “warning” from the U.S. Army, that such displays, easily interpreted as an endorsement of a political candidate, runs afoul of military policy. Interesting that such a by-the-book kind of guy wouldn’t know this.

Actually, Mastriano’s notoriety is not related to actions. His “service” to the Commonwealth is minimal and checkered. Rather, he is known by his words, which stand in stark contrast to what voters would expect and demand of principled leaders.

When he’s not pontificating about doing the “Lord’s” work, implying that he alone is the candidate for governor “hand picked by God,” he’s deflecting questions about his position on the issues most voters care about with curt dismissals. “My body, my choice is ridiculous nonsense,” he says. “Separation between church and state is a myth,” he declares.

Doug Mastriano fails miserably at demonstrating true leadership, offering instead arrogance, cynicism and dismissiveness.

History has shown each of these characteristics to be tools of the weak.

Dorie Evensen,
State College