PSoTD

From the Center for Rural Pennsylvania:

The Center for Rural Pennsylvania Board of Directors has approved a study to measure inter-generational wealth transfer. The work will result in county level estimates on the amount of personal wealth likely to be transferred from one generation to the next. It will cover a transfer period of 50 years, and the study will be conducted on all 67 counties in the commonwealth. The methodology for the study is based on Boston College research, which found that more than $41 trillion of wealth in the United States will pass from the current generation to the next during the first half of the 21st Century.

Center staff will work with Don Macke of the Rural Policy Research Institute’s (RUPRI) Center for Rural Entrepreneurship to conduct the study. Macke and his RUPRI colleagues have assisted in similar studies in 10 other states.

For Pennsylvania, this work will result in useful information on the amount of wealth Baby Boomers and their parents will likely leave behind. For community foundations and other locally based organizations, tapping into this wealth through estate planning and bequeaths could provide the needed capital for a variety of programs and services that support a better quality of life. In Nebraska, for example, where the Nebraska Community Foundation handles the administration of 179 small foundations, funds have been used for schools, 4-H groups, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, libraries, and economic development.

The Pennsylvania analysis project is scheduled to begin in the summer of 2007 and conclude within a year.

From Keystone Politics:

Former state Sen. Robert C. Jubelirer lost his seat in the November election, but he'll still collect a yearly pension of nearly double the state's median household income.

Mr. Jubelirer, an Altoona Republican who served 32 years, will collect $90,934 a year, plus a lump-sum payment of $191,804, the State Employees' Retirement System said yesterday. As Senate president pro tem, his salary was $108,722.

Why can't we tie policy to pay a "retired" state legislator an annual retirement pension to the average annual pay for the workforce in his or her district? That seems to me to be both fair and incentive-based for performance by the legislator...

If you're looking for the biggest list of Pennsylvania political blogs, I think a good place to start would be the blogroll of A Big Fat Slob. He's compiled quite a list.

Why is it that whenever the general concept of legislative reform is discussed, that "term limits" come up? Can anyone show the "reform value" of this anywhere in the country? Has it improved whatever problem it was supposed to resolve?

When the news media talks to people who promote "term limits" in this country, they really ought to focus on the following questions:

What problem does "term limits" solve?
How does it solve that problem?
Can you show modern examples where this worked?

The problem I have with term limits is that it's like a bandage for a bleeding mole - it hides a problem but doesn't try to solve it. When "term limits" are discussed in the above framework, the visible value of its potential benefit to the electorate is pretty murky. When we take a look around the nation, we see that term limits only come up as a solution to some problem when the electorate is angry at their Legislature and is in a reactionary mood. Why is that? I think voters tend to see term limits as more of a "punishment" of legislators than as good policy, which is why it gets nowhere as policy when legislators are perceived to be behaving reasonably.

It's is offered as a panacea of sorts for Legislators Behaving Badly, the magic elixir for legislative reform. Pennsylvania has many, many structural problems with its General Assembly, from an unwieldy size to a lack of sunshine laws to an inability to amend the State Constitution without having two seperate sessions of the General Assembly pass such amendment, and that's just for starters. Term limits? We can find more effective solutions than that...