Rep. Grucela Responds to House Bill 2550 Questions

Following my earlier commentary regarding House Bill 2550, I contacted Rep. Grucela via email and received a nice response to my questions related to the deductions and naming rights included in the Bill (read full text of the bill).

I asked Rep. Grucela to respond to the following for this post:

• why were deductions included?

• how do these deductions correlate to education?

• why were naming rights included and wouldn't this result in permanent advertising for developers?

• what if any comments would you like to make regarding this bill?

He replied in regard to the deductions, "my earlier impact fee bills had no deductions and went nowhere.......there are some builders who understand what they are doing to school districts and a builder friend of mine met with me and suggested the incentives (deductions)."

He also noted there was no correlation between the deductions and education, but they were positive steps for the environment.

On naming rights, and I do appreciate the honesty, he replied, "the naming rights were a little "tongue in cheek" on my part.....a senior citizen who attended a Nazareth School District meeting suggested to me that "Tuskes" should build the new school and have it named after him."

He also noted that, "Another problem is there just aren't enough growth districts in the state and H'burg is a numbers game.....I have bi-partisan support from the growing counties...there are about 10 of them including those in the Lehigh Valley.....and I am working on my friends in the other areas who are afraid the bill will retard development and they're losing enrollments (but not funding and that's another story)."

This final point is one we often over-look as a part of a rapidly growing community, not everyone in PA is experiencing this growth. The side that non-growth legislators don't see, however, is that their own local school board must then approve the bill as well. Approval by the state only gives the local board an opportunity to enact it. Shooting this down out of fear is really a lack of confidence by these reps and senators of their fellow, locally elected officials.

Thanks to Rep. Grucela for providing the additional insight and we'll see where this bill goes.