Senate Approves Boscola’s Bill to Eliminate Straight Party Voting
HARRISBURG – June 25, 2019 — The state Senate today voted 30 to 20 in favor of Sen. Lisa Boscola’s Senate bill 421, which would do away with straight party voting. “Straight-ticket voting promotes the election of a party, not the election of a candidate,”...Two Boscola Voting Reform Initiatives Clear Senate Committee
HARRISBURG – June 18, 2019 — The state Senate State Government Committee today unanimously approved Sen. Lisa Boscola’s senate bill 421, which would do away with straight party voting. The bill will now move on to the full Senate. “Informed and...Antiquated Basic Education Funding Formula is Hurting Lehigh Valley Homeowners and Students
The following Op-Ed is from Sen. Lisa Boscola (D – Lehigh/Northampton):
The Basic Education Funding Formula is the single largest education funding stream in the commonwealth’s budget. Until 2014, each year when the General Assembly passed a budget it distributed basic education funding dollars to our school districts based on what they received the year before — regardless of whether the student population grew or shrank. This led to large disparities throughout the state when it came to where money went versus where it was needed. Some school districts received over 70 percent of their funding for their school programs from the state while other school districts received as low as 30 percent. As you can imagine this led to significant inequality in property tax burdens for homeowners.