Laurels & lances: Storms, gas and taxes

Laurel: To fast action. The June weather has been wild, with both bouts of high temperatures and strong storms.

On Wednesday, a powerful thunderstorm came through Southwestern Pennsylvania, leaving its mark on area communities. West Penn Power reported about 12,500 customers without electricity throughout the region early Thursday. Duquesne Light noted almost 2,300 more.

Those outages could be attributed in part to a number of downed trees. The number of fallen limbs and uprooted trees did more than impact power. They obstructed traffic and crashed into homes.

The good part is how quickly the situation was handled — not only by the police, firefighters and electric company employees who sprang into action, but also by neighbors who reached out to each other and did what they could.

At a time when so much divides our communities, it is heartwarming to see that when rough winds blow, people offer up their hands to get through it together.

Lance: To gas gone wild. It seems unlikely that Congress will take up President Joe Biden’s suggestion of a gas tax holiday — or that Pennsylvania would follow suit with its more than 300% higher gas tax. That just means that Pennsylvanians will continue to pay some of the highest prices in the country when they fill up their tanks.

That leads to situations like the event in Lower Burrell where the BP station offered gas at more than half off for a short period of time — underwritten by Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania, a libertarian political group.

People lined up as much as three hours early to fuel up, with cars staged in a nearby shopping center parking lot. The 150 available tickets for the event were gone within 45 minutes.

While that small group of people had an easier time at the pump, Pennsylvanians who have suffered for years under oppressive state gas taxes are being hit even harder now as gas tops $5 a gallon.

On the watch list: To school district budgets. If there’s anything harder to handle than gas prices, it is probably Pennsylvania’s property taxes — especially those funding schools.

Districts are struggling too, trying to find a way to meet the needs of students and fulfilling obligations to employees but still trying to keep taxpayers in mind. That is hard amid high inflation, skyrocketing gas prices and other post-covid demands.

Some, like Highlands and Franklin Regional, have had to raise taxes. Others are trying to hold the line. Greensburg-Salem held the line on its taxes, but is doing so by trimming staff positions in its business program. While the subject matter will be covered in other ways, the real impact will be fitting the retiring staff member’s 200 students into other classrooms, which will increase class sizes.

There’s no telling yet which is the right way to go. It’s just another example of how much Pennsylvania taxpayers and school districts need the property tax reform that has been long talked about but never delivered.