The state’s education-reform battle goes into extra innings as the flip-flopping governor takes a beating.
The state’s education-reform battle goes into extra innings as the flip-flopping governor takes a beating.
I t turns out the treachery of Pennsylvania Democrat governor Josh Shapiro is not the final act in the prolonged drama over adopting a Keystone State budget. Shapiro, who buckled to teacher-union demands by deep-sixing his campaign-promise support for school choice Lifeline Scholarships, may yet be forced to make the budget a vehicle for enacting this profound education-reform program that would benefit thousands of kids trapped in crappy schools.
For one thing, the political spectacle is still unfolding. As payback for Shapiro’s high-profile word- and deal-breaking, the Republican-controlled senate has outmaneuvered and turned the screws on the man said to have 2028 presidential ambitions. Moreover, they have the people on their side. A new poll reveals that Shapiro’s calumny has put him decidedly against the interests of his (non-government-labor-union-leadership) constituents, and the vast majority of Democrat voters.
The key finding of the mid-July poll (of 600 “registered likely voters”), conducted for the Commonwealth Foundation, was that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) responded “Yes” when presented and asked: “Governor Shapiro made a bi-partisan deal with the State Senate to support scholarships for children attending the state’s worst-performing schools. He should honor the deal he made and fund the scholarships.”
Only 14 percent disagreed, while the balance were neutral or “unsure.” More Democrats (67 percent) than Republicans (63 percent) replied in the affirmative.
With Pennsylvania pols deadlocked over the scholarships, the budget’s legal June 30 deadline passed as the leader of the Democrat-controlled house, labor lawyer Representative Matthew Bradford, adamantly refused action over his opposition to the popular scholarship program (that is wildly unpopular with the state’s powerful teachers’ union). This put him remarkably and publicly at odds with Shapiro, who had negotiated with the Republican-controlled state senate to create a palatable scholarship component in the draft budget. That is, until Shapiro budged.
On July 5, Shapiro shocked the state by promising Bradford that if the House adopted the senate-approved budget (it did the following day), which included funds PASS (Pennsylvania Award for Student Success), he would kneecap the scholarship:
Knowing that the two chambers will not reach consensus at this time to enact PASS, and unwilling to hold up our entire budget process over this issue, I will line-item veto the full $100 million appropriation and it will not be part of this budget bill.
Any thought that this tactic might put the contretemps in the governor’s rear-view mirror has proven dramatically wrong. For starters, his stand has sold out a sizeable bloc of Democrats in the House that supports the reform. Per Commonwealth Foundation’s Jen Stefano in her recent Philadelphia Inquirer column:
People familiar with the inner workings of the Democratic caucus, including a Democratic state lawmaker, told me there are anywhere from 15 to 30 House Democrats who would have voted yes on a budget with Lifeline Scholarships before the governor threatened to veto it. That support, I’m told, remains. Some of those “pre-veto threat yes votes” are Democratic members of the Black Caucus, who represent families desperate to get their kids out of failing schools.
Then there are the senate’s majority Republicans, who horse-traded in good faith with Shapiro, only to learn that he ran from a fight and proved incapable of keeping his word at the negotiation table. Never mind his widely ballyhooed pro-scholarship campaign promise that won him admiration and no doubt many votes in his 2022 gubernatorial triumph.
The veto promise is not the final scene in this melodrama. The General Assembly’s upper chamber has cards to play, and the GOP leader, Senator Kim L. Ward, is playing them. For example: Per state law, a gubernatorial veto can only take place when the legislature is in session.
Guess which Pennsylvania chamber has recessed until September?
Denying the veto-promise stunt prolongs the controversy for Shapiro. According to the aforementioned Commonwealth poll, he is by far the person voters hold most responsible for getting the budget finalized. Asked, “Who do you think is ultimately responsible for making sure the state budget gets finalized?” 55 percent fingered the governor, with no other person or group, including legislators, coming close.
The GOP-induced recess also has other major ramifications, because the Pennsylvania budget is a two-pronged process. One part is the financing legislation — the part that witnessed Shapiro’s cave on PASS. That money, and any public money, requires enabling legislation, known as “code bills,” which have yet to be taken up. Chockablock with benefits for Shapiro’s political constituencies, they will languish as the GOP-controlled senate — in no mood to give their treacherous ed-reform ally a break from two months of political juice-stewing — waits and watches to see if Shapiro will buckle back.
Is he capable of doing a 180 on his pledge to line-item veto PASS? Maybe the sun will rise in the West. But at Commonwealth Foundation, which has been leading the fight for education reform in Pennsylvania, Shapiro has yet to acquire the status of Fredo Corleone — he’s yet to go fishing. Erik Telford, its senior vice president, says that “Pennsylvanians are not only looking for Governor Shapiro to return to the negotiating table, they are expecting him to take responsibility and step up as a leader to finalize a state budget that includes keeping his promise to help kids trapped in failing and unsafe schools.”
Maybe other data from the organization’s survey will provide political clarity about the reality that, no matter the power of the teachers’ unions, education reform, in its many iterations, has proven to be a very popular and very bipartisan cause.
For example, the Commonwealth survey found that 77 percent of all likely voters (anchored by 83 percent of Democrats) support expanding tax-credit scholarships, allowing “businesses to donate money to nonprofit organizations that provide scholarships to low-income and middle-income children in Pennsylvania to attend pre-kindergarten or a k-12 private school.” A mere 14 percent oppose this.
And then: 73 percent of all likely voters (again, with a massive 81 percent of Democrats) favor “scholarships for low-income students in Pennsylvania’s worst performing . . . schools that would help pay for tuition to another k-12 school.” Opposition stood at 18 percent.
One more example: Expansion of charter schools — to accommodate the 40,000-plus kids now on entry waiting lists — is backed by 73 percent of likely voters (led by 80 percent of independent voters).
Josh Shapiro was auditioning for the ideal post-Biden political wunderkind-in-the-making role: young and likeable and not afraid to stand up to partisan interests, able to work across aisles, bringing along those attributes which plenty of worn-out American voters seek. Quite quickly and quite publicly, Shapiro has undone that. Instead, he is developing the reputation of a union-beholden politician, a brazen flip-flopper, like so many others: the guy who can sell out on principle, personifying treachery, and — maybe worst of all — getting badly outfoxed politically.
No, surely worst of all: Governor Josh Shapiro has prioritized championing positions that are strongly opposed by most Americans, especially a vast majority of those in his own party, many of them desperately seeking relief for their children.
Michael Corleone is holding on Line One.