Capital Rants

Rendell deserves ‘A’ for deed, ‘D’ for delivery

By MARK FRANKLIN

Yesterday, I was telling my fellow editors how one of our reporters was attending a meeting with community leaders. They had gathered to discuss ways to help residents pay their heating bills this winter.

I mentioned how Gov. Rendell planned to address the group — and six others like it meeting across the state — via conference call and joked that he planned to ride in like the white knight and save the day.

As it turned out, that’s just what happened.

The governor announced dramatic increases in LIHEAP, the state program that helps folks cover heating costs. Eligibility limits will be raised. The amount of grants to those who qualify will more than double. The bottom line: About 110,000 more Pennsylvania families should qualify for assistance this winter.

Now, I’ve been a frequent critic of the governor’s penchant for spending money, especially this year when you just knew the state’s revenue projections were unrealistically rosy.

But this is a case of spending money where it’s badly needed. Yes, oil prices have dropped pretty dramatically in the last couple weeks. By Friday, the marketing director for one local oil company told us it had dropped the winter lock-in rate by more than $1 per gallon, to $3.69.

The lock-in price last year: $2.59 per gallon.

Folks, that’s a 42 percent increase.

So the extra funding is sorely needed. Will it be enough? Who knows? Predicting what will happen with oil prices seems more difficult than predicting the wild gyrations in the stock market of late.

As for the governor’s theatrics — having community leaders sit around gnashing their teeth about a problem for two hours and then delivering the good news about addition funding — well, we could have done without that.

The atrocity is complete

By MARK FRANKLIN

So, let me get this straight.

I can travel to Washington, D.C., and tour the 19 museums that make up the Smithsonian Institute for free. But if I journey to Gettysburg to tour the new museum at the nation’s most important Civil War battlefield, I’ll be forced to pay a $7.50 admission fee.

Within the National Park Service, I can visit all the Richmond National Battlefield sites or Independence National Historic Park in Philadelphia for free. Heck, I can even tour Fort Sumter in South Carolina for free, if I can hitch a boat ride across the Charleston Harbor.

But, in Gettysburg, where the tide of the Civil War turned and where Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the greatest speeches in U.S. history, a museum tour will cost me $7.50.

Yep, the atrocity is complete. Earlier this week, the Gettysburg National Military Park approved the museum admission fees the Gettysburg Foundation had requested.

That would be the same Gettysburg National Military Park that foisted this public-private partnership on the American public. At the time of its unveiling, the partnership was supposed to be a role model for parks everywhere to follow. The promise: a grand new battlefield museum at no taxpayer expense that would be free to the public.

Well, I guess in the minds of the folks who run the Gettysburg National Military Park, keeping one promise out of three ain’t bad.

Look, the idea of fees at national parks isn’t new. Civil War buffs are confronted with fees at Manassas, at Antietam, at the Appomattox Court House.

But those fees are substantially lower than the new ones in Gettysburg. And a museum fee was never part of the debate in Gettysburg.

Had it been, as the price tag climbed from $52 million to more than $100 million, as the price tag for the cyclorama restoration climbed from $1 million to $15 million, there might have been more discussion about whether this museum really needed to be quite so grand.

What have we learned from the experience?

That Congressman George Radanovich (R-California) and former Congressman James Hansen had every right to be concerned about the escalating cost of the battlefield museum project when they held a Congressional hearing on the topic back in 2002.

That whoever wins this year’s 19th District Congressional election should push for another Congressional hearing in 2009 to sort out just what went wrong in Gettysburg.

And that it would be pure folly for any other national park to follow the Gettysburg example.

Get ready for Nov. 4

By MARK FRANKLIN

For political junkies — heck, for anyone who has seen a snippet of the Katie Couric interview with Sarah Palin — Thursday’s vice-presidential debate is must-see TV.

But voters who arrive at the polls Nov. 4 are going to be confronted by lots of names besides McCain and Obama. And, folks, you’d better be prepared to cast an intelligent vote, because those other candidates will have a big impact on you, too.

Take, for instance, the electricity bill you pay each month. Pretty substantial, right? Well, those bills are scheduled to increase dramatically in 2010. And if your pain is going to be alleviated or postponed in any way, the decision will be up to members of the Pennsylvania House and Senate, not to anyone sitting in an office on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.

This election will determine who holds House seats representing every community in York County. Voters in places like York Haven and Dillsburg, Wrightsville and Dover will help elect state senators.

So each week between now and the election, The York Dispatch will be asking candidates about a key issue in this year’s election. Coincidentally, the first question was about the pending increase in those electricity rates. The latest deals with how the state should pay for road improvements, now that the federal government has nixed the idea of tolling Interstate 80. Next week, candidates will be addressing school spending and property taxes, a key issue in this state for years.

So make sure to check out the answers to help determine who deserves your vote.

As for the presidential election, we’ve added lots of handy tools to our election guide, including …

* An interactive database that will allow you to see who from your community has donated money to the presidential campaigns.

* An informative graphic showing the positions McCain and Obama have taken on key issues.

* Heck, you can even check out campaign songs they and previous presidential candidates have used, and hear some lyrics that just didn’t fit.

And keep checking back. There will be more to come as Nov. 4 approaches.