Policies to make
Pennsylvanians
prosper


America’s story began in Pennsylvania, yet our state has fallen behind. Families are leaving for better jobs, educational options, and quality of life in other states. But policymakers can usher in a new era of prosperity for Pennsylvania.

Here are 30 policy ideas that provide educational opportunities for our children, protect families’ paychecks, help Pennsylvania businesses compete, and respect our workers.

By championing these policies, lawmakers can unleash Pennsylvania’s potential to lead the nation and usher in a new era of prosperity for future generations.

1 – Expand Tax Credit Scholarships

The Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) provide a lifeline for thousands of low-income and middle-income Pennsylvania students. Funding for these scholarships comes from businesses that receive a tax credit when they donate. In 2021–22, arbitrary program caps denied over 63,000 K-12 student applications. Pennsylvania should implement an index that automatically would expand credits in proportion to student needs. 

2 – Lifeline Scholarships

The Lifeline Scholarship program would establish Education Opportunity Accounts for families to use toward tutoring, private school tuition, or other educational tools that best meet their kids’ individual needs. Ideally, the state should deposit a portion of the per-pupil education funding into an account for families. Current legislation creates a new funding stream for students living in the catchment area of a low-achieving district with accounts between $5,000 and $10,000.

Source: Pennsylvania Department of Education; Commonwealth Foundation.

3 – Refundable Tax Credits

A refundable tax credit can offset educational expenses for a nonpublic school to allow families, no matter their income, the ability to choose. After enrolling in a nonpublic school, a parent or guardian would claim the tax credit on their annual tax return. The parent would then receive the credit, similar to the Child and Dependent Care Enhancement Tax Credit. Low-income families would have the option to receive relief up front, ensuring those who can’t foot the bill for educational costs can also benefit.

4 – Charter School Independent Authorizer

School districts alone hold a monopoly on authorizing brick-and-mortar public charter schools, creating an inherent conflict of interest that stifles charter growth. As a result, Philadelphia area charters maintain a vast waiting list of nearly 20,000 children. Twenty-four states have some form of independent authorizer, whether an independent board, a higher education institution, or a nongovernmental agency.

Source: Pennsylvania Department of Education.

5 – Open Enrollment

Pennsylvania students should have access to any public school, regardless of their home address. Today, families can request a transfer to another district, but the home school district can refuse if it is not convenient. Families should be empowered to choose the school that best meets their children’s unique needs regardless of their address. Pennsylvania should end address discrimination and mandate open enrollment policies that allow families to switch schools without out-of-pocket costs.  

Unleash a More Prosperous Pennsylvania

6- Reduce Regulatory Red Tape

Pennsylvania imposes roughly 164,000 regulations, which exert a significant drag on the economy. Any regulation costing more than $1 million should require legislative approval. Pennsylvania should also allow legislative repeal of a regulation by concurrent resolution and establish a regulatory reduction program. 

Source: Mercatus Center.

7 – Taxpayer Protection Act (TPA)

Pennsylvania state government has historically overspent in good economic times, requiring tax hikes following recessions. The TPA is a constitutional amendment, based on successful reform in Colorado, that would provide a long-term solution by controlling spending. The TPA limits spending growth to an index based on inflation and population growth to keep government spending in line with taxpayers’ ability to pay. 

Sources: Pennsylvania Office of the Budget, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

8 – Prioritize Tax Relief

Pennsylvania is scheduled to reduce the Corporate Net Income Tax (CNIT) from 7.99 percentage points in 2025 to 4.99 by 2031. While an improvement, 7.99 is among the top ten highest rates in the nation. Lawmakers should accelerate the CNIT decline. Moreover, they should lower the Personal Income Tax to 2.8 percent, along with zero-based budgeting, to ensure every dollar of state spending is supported.

9 – Avoid Carbon Taxes

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a multi-state agreement that seeks to put caps on energy production and charges generators for CO2 emission allowances. This effectively represents a new tax on electricity. Likewise, Governor Shapiro proposed a state-only carbon tax on utilities called the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Act (PACER). Both policies would lead to lost jobs and higher energy costs without significantly impacting emissions. CO2 emissions decreased by 10.8 percent from 2022 to 2023, the most significant decrease since the 1990’s thanks to natural gas. 

10 – Create Grid Reliability Standards

The Pennsylvania General Assembly must pass legislation to create an energy-source-neutral standard of grid reliability tied to least-cost generation planning. This legislation must ensure that any generation and resource changes maintain or improve the reliability of the electric grid, considering the latest technological breakthroughs to achieve these goals.

11 – Reject Subsidies that Threaten Reliable Electricity

Pennsylvania’s energy costs are rising, and warnings of rolling blackouts are becoming more common as the current regional transmission organization, PJM, struggles to balance federal and state policies forcing the closure of reliable power plants with no reliable replacement. Pennsylvania should reject subsidies and generation planning schemes, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard (PRESS), that make our grid unreliable and increase costs. Lawmakers should work to realign market incentives away from harvesting subsidies and toward people’s need for affordable and reliable power.

12 – Require Work for Able Welfare Recipients

More than one million healthy adults in Pennsylvania receive SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid (health care). Work, training, or community service requirements paired with integrating workforce development and case management services (called the One Door model) can help beneficiaries boost their incomes to regain independence.

13 – Regular Welfare Eligibility Verification

Welfare programs, like Medicaid, base eligibility on income or medical status. The state should verify income, residency, and household composition information twice a year and regularly cross-check death, residency, and wage records. 

14 – Focus Medicaid on Health Care

The Shapiro administration is pursuing a new waiver, called Keystones of Health, to expand Medicaid to cover housing and food services. Pennsylvania should avoid duplicating services and adding another layer to the current disjointed safety net when individuals already complain of the complexity. There are strong health benefits related to employment. A federal waiver to require parents of school-aged children to work or ending work waivers for adults without dependents is the best way to improve housing and food security for Pennsylvanians. 

15 – Expand Scope of Practice

Nurse practitioners (NPs) are highly trained medical professionals and can provide comparable services to a physician in their specialty. In Pennsylvania, NPs can only practice if they enter into expensive collaborative agreements with physicians. Allowing NPs to practice independently, as is done in 27 other states,will increase access to primary care providers.

16 – Remove Bureaucratic Barriers to Employment

Pennsylvania licenses over one hundred occupations including 50 lower-income occupations. These restrictions are even more burdensome for those with criminal records. Pennsylvania should continue to reduce and eliminate outmoded licensing laws that discourage gainful employment.

17 – Defined Contribution Pension Plans

Pennsylvania’s defined benefit pension systems remain seriously underfunded. Switching to 401(k)-style defined contribution retirement plans presents less risk to taxpayers and benefits workers, allowing them to change jobs and not worry about losing retirement savings. Additionally, defined contribution plans offer similar levels of retirement income as defined benefit plans. 

18 – Privatize Liquor and Wine Sales

The current government-run liquor monopoly is a financial drain and a consumer headache. The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) holds a $850,000 liability. Moreover, the PLCB constantly loses customers to other nearby states through “border bleed.” A private system would increase choice, convenience, and customer service. 

19 – Modernize Election Law

Most Pennsylvania voters believe that the state needs to update its election laws. Measures that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat include voter identification, clear and reasonable voting deadlines, and a clean and consistent election administration process.

20 – Juvenile Justice Reform for Safer Communities

Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system is quick to institutionalize youth for their first offense, yet research shows community supervision can better reduce the chance of a juvenile committing another crime. Reforming the system to encourage safe diversion for first-time offenders along with supervision options in the community can prevent crime and preserve resources for high-risk offenders. 

21 – Paycheck Protection

Paycheck protection would stop government unions from using taxpayer-funded resources to collect money used for politics. Using taxpayer resources to collect political contributions is already illegal for elected officials. Government labor union executives should not have access to this special privilege. 

Sources: The U.S. Department of Labor Office of Labor-Management Standards and the Pennsylvania Department of State Campaign Finance Database.
Includes only the first two reporting cycles of 2024. 

22 – Workers’ Choice

The initial unionization votes by teachers and most other government employees occurred more than 50 years ago. None of the teachers working in our largest school districts had the opportunity to vote on selecting the union representing their interests. Workers deserve to choose who represents them. 

Source: Commonwealth Foundation.

23 – Notification of Employee Rights

Since the 2018 Janus decision, Pennsylvania’s government unions have lost over 50,000 members and fair share fee payers. Requiring employers to notify employees of their rights under Janus may help thousands of workers escape union membership.

Source: Teacher Freedom.

24 – Freedom to Resign

In Pennsylvania, government union executives benefit from the “maintenance of membership” clause, which limits member resignations to a brief 15-day period at the end of an often multiyear collective bargaining agreement. This is not fair to workers; an employee should always have the freedom to resign from union membership. 

25 – Protect Public Employees’ Personal Information

After the Janus decision, union executives pushed for legislation that requires employers to furnish unions with employees’ personal contact information. This legislation gives unions unprecedented access to employees, exposing them to unwanted solicitations and cybercriminals. Public employees’ personal information must be kept private and secure.

26 – Workers’ Bill of Rights

Public employees represented by a labor union often have limited insight into their union’s operations and decision -making processes. At the same time, union leadership tends to resist rank-and-file employees’ exercise of individual rights. The Public Employees’ Bill of Rights, modeled after the federal government’s “Union Member’s Bill of Rights,” provides statutory support and a private right of action for public employees who demand greater transparency and accountability from public sector union executives. 

27 – Education Choice for Children Act

Parents are demanding more education options. Pennsylvania’s tax credit scholarship program has a persistent waiting list. A federal scholarship program will help families gain access to quality nonpublic schools, no matter their address.

28 – Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Renewal

Without an extension, tax cuts from the TCJA will expire in January 2026, including higher income tax rates, a lower child tax credit, and the elimination of full expensing for certain capital investments. Pennsylvanians experienced an average tax cut of $1,169 in 2018 and the creation of 8,700 new jobs in the first year.

Energy production in the United States has been crippled by destructive policies. President Trump ended the Biden LNG export pause, which chilled plans to build a new LNG terminal in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania is the top state electricity exporter, making repealing the EPA Power Plant Rule a critical next step for reliable, affordable energy.

Federal permitting quagmires are especially harmful to Pennsylvania, where fully subscribed pipeline capacity prevents gas from getting to market. Reform like the REINS Act is key. The act requires Congress to approve major federal agency rules and rules with an impact of $100M or more before they take effect.

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Criminal Justice Reform

Legislation Moves to Reform Licensing Laws for Citizens with Criminal Records

  • Jessica Barnett
  • June 16, 2020

With a unanimous committee vote, the state House has opened the door to prosperity for 3 million Pennsylvanians. This week, the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee passed legislation helping incarcerated citizens…

Media

Read More: Legislation Moves to Reform Licensing Laws for Citizens with Criminal Records

Regulation

PLCB is Bad for Business

  • June 2, 2020

The PLCB harms Pa. businesses in an industry that has been decimated by COVID-19.

Fact Sheet

Read More: PLCB is Bad for Business

Regulation

Economic Aspects of Liquor Privatization

  • May 28, 2020

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) is a highly unprofitable monopoly with extraordinary powers that have recently been used to increase prices and harm businesses.

Fact Sheet

Read More: Economic Aspects of Liquor Privatization

Education

Understanding Cyber Charter Schools

  • Colleen Hroncich
  • April 2, 2020

Misconceptions abound when it comes to cyber charter schools—and opponents use that confusion to attack this important option. In the current era of school shutdowns, it's more important than ever…

Fact Sheet

Read More: Understanding Cyber Charter Schools

Criminal Justice Reform

Can Criminal Justice Reform Unite America?

  • Charles Mitchell
  • February 5, 2019

The following op-ed first appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  Are partisan division and political bickering unavoidable in American politics? The headlines make it seem so, but it’s not true.

Media

Read More: Can Criminal Justice Reform Unite America?