Harrisburg, October 20, 2011 – Testimony before a joint legislative hearing today strongly supports the call for changing the authority and restrictions in Pennsylvania law relating to municipal government, state Senator Judy Schwank (D-Berks) said after the hearing. 

 “It’s obvious that our current laws no longer give communities the tools they need to look after their well-being. In too many cases, we already are seeing towns and cities entering into slow death spirals,” said Schwank, a former Berks County commissioner and past-Chairperson of the State Planning Board.

 Witnesses appearing before the panel on Thursday painted stark pictures of the fiscal problems facing communities across the state, including many that now or in the foreseeable future will be unable to provide basic services because of declining tax bases and increasing demands as their populations shrink and age.

 “We have to turn this around and begin to seriously deal with these issues as a state. The problems are enormously complex, and some of the answers have the potential to be tremendously challenging politically,” she said. “If we don’t begin to act, everything else we do to encourage economic development and jobs across Pennsylvania will have unreasonably limited meaning and impact.

“It’s not enough, as one of the witnesses pointed out, to get troubled communities to the point where bills are paid. They still have to be places where people want to live.”

 Schwank made her comments following the first of two scheduled joint hearings by the Senate and House committees on Local Government, the Senate Community, Economic and Recreational Development Committee and the House Urban Affairs Committee into the effectiveness of the Municipalities Financial Recovery law, popularly known as Act 47 for financially-distressed communities.

Since Act 47 became law in 1987, more than two dozen communities including Harrisburg and Reading — a city which Senator Schwank represents — have sought its protection.  Only six municipalities have completed recovery under Act 47; 11 municipalities remained under Act 47 for more than a decade.

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