Corbett commits $11 million to help fund racetrack and suburban shopping center improvements
Last month, the PA. State Government needed to borrow $1.5 billion to pay its current bills. Over 20,000 teaching positions were eliminated because of Corbett's school budget cuts and diversion of money to for-profit charters.
Now, Corbett has found $11 million of state tax money to spare for new projects.
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/eastpenn/mc-lower-macungie-costco-state-road-funding-20141017-story.html
$10.1 million of state tax money will go to road and other improvements to serve a new suburban strip mall outside of Allentown. This includes three different state grants, including a new $6.4 million road grant. This is in a township that is so affluent it has almost no local property tax (and had none at all for most recent years). It is also along a highway that the State spent over $100 million to build a few years ago.
This shopping center is also being funded through the diversion of $8 million of local and school tax revenues. That type of funding is legally limited to being used to address "blighted" conditions, not open land in a suburb along a major highway.
The project will include a Costco, a Target, a Whole Foods and other stores that do not normally receive state and local tax subsidies. The owner of nearby shopping centers have filed a legal challenge saying that the tax subsidies will result in unfair competition for stores and shoppers.
http://lowermac.com/library/file/TEMP/HamiltonCrossingsTIF_PlanUpdatedApril2014.pdf
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Another $1 million will go to build tunnels to improve traffic for the Pocono Raceway. Meanwhile, as noted in the following editorial, Corbett hasn't been able to find any state money to repair or replace a deteriorated bridge in the nearby low income community of East Stroudsburg that is used by tens of thousands of people every week.
http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20141019/OPINION/141019398/101134/OPINION
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One of the many positives of the Rendell administration was that they targeted most state grant funding to assist the revitalization of cities and large old boroughs and to better fund school districts with high poverty rates. Corbett knows the residents of those older communities don't vote for him and don't make contributions to him.
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Last year, Corbett committed $3 million of PA. tax money to fund a shopping center in a suburb outside of Lebanon, $1 million for a fire station expansion in one of the most affluent townships in Pennsylvania, and $3 million for a new for-profit hospital that would compete with a non-profit hospital that is only a few miles away.