PA Headlines 3/4/22
HARRISBURG – PennLive is reporting… About half of Pennsylvania voters surveyed said they support removing the state from the liquor business, according to a new Franklin & Marshall College poll. But the poll released on Thursday also found that if voters had the opportunity to decide on liquor privatization through a constitutional ballot referendum, they were slightly less inclined to support that manner of accomplishing it. Rep. Natalie Mihalek, R-Allegheny County, who has sponsored a constitutional amendment to privatize the liquor system, said the poll’s findings reflect the feedback she has received about her idea.
“There’s a general sentiment that ‘yeah, it doesn’t make sense for the state to sell liquor’ but then on the how to get rid of it, I know people are sometimes reluctant to change the constitution,” she said. The survey found 52% of voters — including 65% Republican and 55% of independents polled — favored removing the state from the liquor business, a percentage that hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years when that question was polled. Thirty-six percent opposed selling off the liquor stores and 13% were undecided. When asked about using the constitutional amendment to achieve liquor privatization, it found less than half — or 46% — of voters supported that idea. Meanwhile, 42% opposed it with the remainder undecided.
But in the grand scheme of things right now, perhaps privatizing the liquor stores isn’t dominating voters’ attention. What is, the poll found, is economic concerns. More than one in three voters — 35% — said they are worse off financially than they were a year ago, which Yost said is the largest proportion in five years. What’s more, a near equal percentage of Pennsylvania voters — 32% — remain pessimistic about the conditions of the state and nation with 77% of voters who said they were worse off financially this year saying the state is headed in the wrong direction. Mihalek, the state representative, said she wants to go the constitutional amendment route on the liquor business because efforts to privatize the system through legislation have been derailed by lobbyists and special interests.
She believes Pennsylvanians have had experiences since the last run at liquor privatization that soured their taste for the state-run liquor system. Specifically, she cited the inconvenience of having to visit two separate registers to buy food and wine at the grocery store and being limited to two bottles of certain spirits over the holidays due to rationing related to supply chain issues. “This is something that has been talked about for decades on end and we can’t find a way to get it done,” Mihalek said. “That’s why I chose this route because it’s kind of taking the question of should-we or should-we-not away from the politicians and leaving it to the people. And if the people say we should, then we have our work cut out for us.”
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — AP is reporting… Pennsylvania’s biggest public pension system will begin to sell off its investments in Russia and Belarus, after its board unanimously voted to do so Thursday in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The $72.5 billion Public School Employees’ Retirement System is one of the nation’s biggest public pension funds. The vote targets what it says are almost $300 million directly invested in Russia and Belarus, which is less than one-half of 1% of the fund’s total assets. Belarus has been a key ally of Russia in its attack on Ukraine.
The board’s motion has a caveat: that divesting must be consistent with the board’s prudent fiduciary duty. But the motion also decreed that the system will make no future investments in Russia or Belarus until it votes to change that policy. Governors and lawmakers in numerous U.S. states have been taking actions to pull state investments from Russian companies, while encouraging private entities to do the same. In Pennsylvania, lawmakers have begun drafting legislation to require the state Treasury Department and the state’s three public pension funds to divest Russia-related holdings.