This article looks at Senate Bill 367, which has opened up all Pennsylvania State Universities - excluding Penn State, Temple, Lincoln and Pitt - to natural gas drilling and other resource extraction industries as a means to fund public education. Continues after the fold.
An excerpt from this article was cross posted from Raging Chicken Press
we must understand that this attack on public higher education along with the other attacks – via previous budget cuts – on K through 12 education have gone beyond the old passé privatization approach, embracing instead a “Shock Doctrine” approach. For those who may not know what “Shock Doctrine” is, it is the new form of privatization. It essentially uses a disaster – either natural or man-made – as an excuse to privatize public services such as education. A text book example of this approach is what happened to the New Orleans Public School district after Hurricane Katrina decimated the city. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and the PA Republican dominated legislature – and now the PASSHE Board of Governor’s led by Chancellor Cavanaugh – are using their man-made financial disaster to sell off Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education.
In Pennsylvania, we’ve been told this myth – this lie – that we need to cater to the natural gas industry, that we need to allow this industry to pillage our environment, our parks and our state forests, and we have been told that they need to do this with as little government interference as possible – whether it’s the laissez faire regulations from the Department of Environmental Protection or too-little-too-late, one-time severance fee they have to pay. Essentially the natural gas industry is getting a free ride, while essential public services are gutted to the bone, roads and bridges continue to crumble, and tens of thousands of people are stripped of welfare and state-supported medical insurance. And what happens to cash-strapped schools and universities in such in environment? They have to go begging at the feet the natural gas industry to have proper funding restored. The shift in distribution of these funds, from the public’s responsibility through taxation to these essential services going to the industry, has created the “shock” treatment that the state universities and public school districts are receiving. Before I demonstrate these shock doctrine therapies, let’s take a look at who exactly sits on the PASSHE Board of Governors.
The Board of Governors
Members of the PASSHE Board of Governors may not exactly have direct ties to the natural gas industry (excluding the Governor and some legislators), but they are key decision makers that fundamentally shape the future of the State System of Higher Education. They consist of the governor, legislators and businessmen who hold or who have held high-ranking positions. They are the ones responsible for allowing these attacks to education to happen because like most businessmen or pro-business hawks, they believe that government and services should be made into a commodity that they can profit from.
Along with Governor Corbett, state legislators or gubernatorial appointees include: Senators Jeffery Piccola (R) and John Yudichak (D), Representatives Matthew Baker (R) and Michael Hanna (D), and Ronald Tomalis – the Secretary of Education. Senator Piccola is the Senate Education Chairman and is a large proponent of privatizing public education through vouchers and school choice legislation. Senator Piccola has also received endorsements from organizations such as the Thomas Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Senator Yudichak is the minority leader for the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy committee, and he describes himself as someone who will “fight for higher education.” He is also a critic of the governor’s environmental policies regarding the Marcellus Shale. According to Representative Baker’s biography, he is the “fill-in speaker” when Speaker Sam Smith is unable to attend, and Baker chairs on the House Health and Human Services Committee. Representative Hanna –The Democratic House Whip – was a critic of the governor’s first round of cuts to public higher education in 2011, and he wrote an op-ed for the Center Daily Times entitled “Keep Higher Ed within Working Families Reach.” He also sits on the Pennsylvania Fish and Boating Commission, and last year when legislation was proposed to open Pennsylvania waterways to drilling, he asked his constituents to weigh in and decide if they would want to pay more fees for fishing license and raise taxes to prevent drilling in Pennsylvania waterways. Lastly, Ronald Tomalis was Governor Corbett’s Secretary of Education Appointee, and he is an advocate for privatizing public education. According to PASSHE’s Board of Governor’s Website, Tomalis was the “director at Dutko Worldwide/Whiteboard Advisors, where he was the principal adviser to numerous nonprofit education groups and foundations, along with for-profit education related companies. “
This is an example of “words and deeds,” where these legislators, especially the Democrats, may say one thing, but their actions do not match their words.
I am not as well-versed about the businessmen who sit on the Board of Governors, but I do know that the Chairman of the Board, Guido Pichini, has benefited off of state ran contracts in the PASSHE system. Mr. Pichini is the president of Security Guards Inc. – a security contracting firm based in Wyomissing, PA. His company is contracted with Kutztown University to write parking tickets, a cash cow for the university. So not only is this man making money from his company writing parking tickets, he is dipping his hand into the cookie jar a second time serving as the Chairman as the PASSHE Board of Governors.
Continues on the website.