Pat recognized even before taking office that one the greatest challenges facing the Commonwealth and school districts was the costs of our pension programs.

His Expertise in finances and understanding of actuarial assumptions has made him a leader on this issue and his colleagues have consistently turned to him for advice on this subject. Pat understands that a pension system that is unsustainable is not only a tremendous burden on taxpayers, but also will lead to significant job insecurity for our teachers and state workers.

That is why Pat authored multiple reforms that have reduced pension costs to taxpayers in excess of $30 billion, significantly eliminating the financial risk that the state retirement systems pose to our state and its citizens, while still providing a competitive retirement package for state employees and teachers.

With the Commonwealth’s pension liabilities reaching staggering heights (over $80 billion) and growing each day and the state’s contributions to school district pensions increasing from $290 million to a whopping $2.1 billion (a 618% increase) over the past decade, the General Assembly took historic action this summer to restructure the state’s two public employee pension systems.

The resulting legislation has been hailed by national groups as being the pension reform measure having the most impact in the country. This new law transformed state employee and teacher pensions to reflect today’s workforce with a 401(k)-style plan that provides employees with options and portability.

Under the new plan, new employees and lawmakers will choose between three retirement options, including a full 401(k)-style plan or one of two side-by-side hybrid plans that include both a traditional pension and a 401(k)-style option. Current employees will have the opportunity to opt into one of these plans as well, if they so choose. Lawmakers are treated just like every other employee – new lawmakers will be placed into the new plan; current lawmakers will have to choose to opt in. Current retirees will see no changes to their benefit.

A key part of this legislation is the shared risk provisions where if investment assumptions are not met, the employee pays a higher percentage into the plan and if the state returns higher than assumed returns, the employee pays a lower percentage into the plan. This will ensure that even in the state’s traditional pension plans, the entire burden of market investment loss is not all on the taxpayer.

An analysis of both systems shows that if investment return projections are missed by 1 percent, taxpayers will realize a savings of $27 billion when the new plan is fully in place. At the same time, employees share in the benefit if the investment returns exceed expectations.

The plan also includes the vital component of portability, ensuring that employees can take their benefits with them if they choose a different career path. More than 75 percent of teachers and more than half of state employees leave their job before they reach 20 years of service. These employees would fare better under the new system.

The Pew Charitable Trusts remarked that passage of this bill “represents the single largest pension reform, in terms of protecting taxpayers, in U.S. history and combined with the Act 120 (see below) funding reform, represents the largest turnaround for any state.”

Even before this historic pension legislation, Pat had long supported providing an appropriate sharing of risk between employer and employees in pension plans as most commonly reflected in private sector pension plans.

Accordingly, he also drafted Pennsylvania’s Pension Reform Act of 2010 which fundamentally reformed Pennsylvania’s public pension systems and saves the Commonwealth and school district taxpayers $30 billion in pension costs. This legislation made impactful changes to the traditional defined benefit plan for new employees by:

• Establishing a new shared risk component of the defined benefit plan to help protect the Commonwealth if it is unable to reach its actuarial investment assumption rates. This helps to prevent a repeat of the Commonwealth’s current situation of having $80 billion of unfunded pension debt.
• Increasing the employee minimum vesting periods in their retirement plan from 5 years of service to 10.
• Increasing the length of service requirements for new employees from 35 years of service to a combination of years of service and age of individual equal to 92. This promotes sustainability by not providing a full pension annuity to school district and state workers who do not meet higher minimum retirement age requirements.
• Limiting a new member’s annual retirement benefit to not more than the member’s final average salary.

While some people just talk about government reform, Pat Browne has been leading the effort.

Pat has led in advocating for and introducing legislation to reform how government operates and to provide more transparency in state government to taxpayers.

Independent Fiscal Office

Pat sponsored a bill that established an Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), a non-partisan bi-cameral agency with expertise in financial matters. The IFO serves as a “watchdog” over legislative budget affairs, providing objective information on program performance and ensuring the efficient utilization of taxpayer resources. The duties of the IFO include:

• Preparing revenue estimates for Federal funds, State revenues and any other funds. It must include any projected surplus or deficit for a given fiscal year.
• Providing an assessment of the Commonwealth’s current and projected fiscal condition by November 15 of each year and a projection of what the fiscal condition will be during the next five years.
• Developing performance measures for various executive departments and programs.
• Analyzing all tax and revenue proposals, including their economic impact, submitted by the Governor or the Office of the Budget.

The IFO has become a universally-accepted independent provider of objective financial   information for all of state government in budgeting and financial reform.

PennWATCH

With an interest in providing transparency for taxpayers and expanded access to state spending records, Pat authored legislation that created the Pennsylvania Web Accountability and Transparency (PennWATCH) Act, which expanded the public’s access to state spending records by creating and maintaining a free, searchable, database-driven budget website. The “PennWatch” website provides annual appropriation information and funding actions or expenditure information for all Commonwealth agencies.

The website also identifies vendors, the amount of funds they received and the state agency initiating the funding actions or expenditure. This legislation has given the public an unprecedented opportunity to fully monitor the fiscal activities of state government.

Pat recognizes the importance of vibrant and robust cities and urban centers to the overall economic success to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

That is why Pat has proposed and supported initiatives and incentives that have encouraged investment and redevelopment of Pennsylvania urban cities.

As someone who grew up in the Allentown area and continues to live there, Pat shares the concerns of many Allentown residents over the tremendous struggles the city of Allentown has faced over the past four decades. Committed to finding a way to bring the city back to the prosperous and vibrant place it used to be, Pat sought to develop an alternative way to address the city’s financial struggles.

That is why Pat developed the first-of-its-kind tax incentive plan – The Neighborhood Improvement Zone (NIZ) – as a way to level the playing field for distressed cities and allow them to compete with more attractive, lower-cost suburban properties, while also providing long-term benefits and revenues to the state. This was a 10-year endeavor from when Pat first started drawing up legislation until the buildings began to rise from the ground.

The one-of-a-kind, 130-acre Neighborhood Improvement Zone, permits tax revenues – except for property taxes – generated by new development to be put back into projects within the zone to continue and expand the redevelopment efforts.

This innovative alternative community development funding mechanism has already spurred more than $1 billion of new development investment in Allentown. It has created thousands of new jobs and more than $4 million in recurring property tax revenues for the City of  Allentown, the Allentown School District and the County of Lehigh.

It wasn’t long before this legislation became a model for other revitalization projects in other distressed cities and municipalities throughout Pennsylvania. This led to the creation of the City Revitalization and Improvement Zones (CRIZ), which has afforded a similar tax financing program to smaller cities in Pennsylvania with Bethlehem and Lancaster being awarded the first two CRIZs.

Understanding that the bedrock of a vibrant urban center is its neighborhoods, Pat has been aggressive to ensure that the state is a consistent partner with Allentown and its community groups in neighborhood initiatives. Through his leadership, Pennsylvania was a substantial financial partner in the Hanover Acres and Cumberland Gardens rebuilding initiative. Pat has executed on joint ventures between the state, private business and community development groups in the rebuilding of housing stock in some of Allentown’s most challenged neighborhoods. Pat has consistently served, through his senior staff, as an active resource for the 7^th Street “Main Street” Corridor revitalization program.

One of Pennsylvania’s most valuable resources is its seemingly endless compendium of cultural and historical assets. Understanding this fact, Pat established the Legislative Arts and Cultural Caucus with the charge of bringing together members of the General Assembly and leaders in the arts and cultural community to advance the strength and value of these assets across Pennsylvania. He has advanced the charge of the caucus with tangible results for Allentown and the Lehigh Valley’s other urban centers by ensuring the state’s involvement in many arts and cultural capital projects including the Allentown Symphony, the Allentown Art Museum, the Lehigh Valley Heritage Center, the Civic Theater, The Divinci Science Center, Arts Quest and the Northampton County Heritage Museum.

Providing for and protecting our children.

Pat’s commitment to future generations of Pennsylvanians is clear in his legislative advocacy for children and young adults.

• Pat wrote legislation that helped strengthen Pennsylvania’s child protection laws by recognizing that perpetrators can be as young as 18 and expanding the definition of aggravated assault in child abuse cases. In addition, it created the new offense of “intimidation or retaliation in child abuse cases” which not only protects the victim but also the reporter or witness who acts on behalf of the abused child. This legislation was part of a 10-bill package aimed at providing sweeping improvements to PA’s child protection laws following the recommendations made by the Pennsylvania Task Force on Child Protection.

• With the long-term effects of concussions becoming a national concern, Pat authored legislation that increases awareness and prevention of traumatic head injuries among Pennsylvania’s scholastic athletes. The measure sets clear guidelines for getting injured students off the playing field and ensuring that they are healthy before they can return. The “Safety in Youth Sports Act” requires students showing symptoms of a concussion to be sidelined until evaluated and medically cleared by an appropriate medical professional. As part of the campaign to focus on head injuries and concussions, Pat worked with brain injury awareness advocates and the National Football League, including former players, and former athletes who have suffered severely from the effects of concussions and head injuries.

• Pat sponsored the “Ounce of Prevention Act,” which sets standards for investment in nurse home visiting programs that provide support for at-risk families and their newborn children.

• To promote better, more effective coordination of service to at-risk youth by county government departments, Pat authored legislation that will allow for the sharing of county agency, juvenile probation, drug and alcohol, mental health and education records in certain cases involving juveniles.

• Pat sponsored the “Child Abuse Responsibility Act,” which increases accountability by supervisors for child abuse committed by their employees.

• Pat authored the “Interstate Compact on Child Custody Act”, which protects children in custody disputes across state lines.

Keeping the commitment to our children and their education

Pat Browne has always made our children’s education a top priority. He’s been a strong supporter of early childhood education initiatives having written the law that allowed for the development of the “Edward Donley Children’s Campus” in Allentown

Pat served on the House Education Committee and continues to serve on the Senate Education Committee, including serving for a time as Vice Chair of the committee, and has distinguished himself as a leader among his colleagues when it comes to education initiatives and ensuring that our children are provided a quality education.

Specifically, Pat has focused on ensuring that Pennsylvania provides adequate and fair funding for students and school districts. It was this focus that led to Pat authoring the Pennsylvania “costing-out” study, which was the foundation of the first comprehensive formula used by the state to fund education based on the actual cost to educate a student. He also authored two bills that created two commissions to develop new ways for distributing education funding. Each commission developed and recommended groundbreaking legislation that changed the way the state’s education dollars are allocated to ensure a more equitable distribution of funding.

• Pat authored a measure that created the “Special Education Funding Commission” to address the fact that the current formula did not effectively match the needs of Pennsylvania students with the cost of providing those services. The 15-member panel was charged with developing methodologies for a new formula to allocate any new state special education funding – beyond 2010-11 levels – in a manner that recognizes the actual number of physically- and mentally-challenged students in a school and the various levels of their need for services.

Pat served as Co-Chair of the Commission whose recommendations were approved unanimously by the General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor. The new formula includes factors reflecting students’ needs based on three cost categories – low (category 1), moderate (category 2) and high (category 3). The formula also includes factors reflecting community differences such as market value of real estate, personal income, property tax rates, district population and district geographic size.

• Pat authored legislation that created the Basic Education Funding Commission, which was charged with developing a new formula for distributing state funding for basic education. The 15-member group held 15 hearings over 11 months and heard from more than 110 individuals including superintendents, school board presidents, business leaders, nonprofit organizations and parents before making their recommendations.

As was the case with the Special Education Funding Commission, Pat co-chaired this commission and again was successful in the development and unanimous approval of a new formula. The Commission determined that allocation of basic education funding needs to provide for accountability, transparency and predictability. The main objective of the new funding formula is to fairly distribute state resources according to various student and school district factors. The new formula takes into account the specific needs of students: relative wealth, local tax effort, geographic price differences, student enrollment levels and the ability of local districts to fund their schools.

Pat’s work as a champion of quality education initiatives, however, started before the creation of the commissions and development of three new funding formulas.

• Pat served as a member of the Pennsylvania Legislative Commission on Urban Schools, whose recommendations led to the creation of the “Education Empowerment Act,” which increases school district accountability in meeting student performance standards and led to historic improvement of education quality in the Allentown School District.

• Pat also authored a statewide study to determine the basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the State’s academic standards and assessments. The results of the study were used to develop the first major reform in Pennsylvania’s education funding formula in over 30 years.
• Besides authoring studies and developing new formulas for adequate and fair education funding, Pat has been a fierce supporter of increased funding for education, specifically in challenged districts like the Allentown School District.
• Pat was instrumental in securing increases in Basic Education Funding ($200 million), Pre-K programs ($25 million), Head Start ($5 million), early intervention programs ($10.4 million) and Special Education Funding ($20 million) in this year’s (2016-17) state budget.

• Without Pat’s advocacy and ability to deliver results, Allentown School District and other Lehigh Valley Schools would not have received the record level of school funding they they have received through the state budget process. He has successfully secured historic increases in funding for basic and special education services for Lehigh Valley school districts. During his service in state government, Pat’s advocacy has increased Allentown’s share of state funding from 34% of total funding available to the school district to nearly 60% of total funding.

• Pat recognized that Allentown School District was being underfunded and that school districts like Allentown, which face significant challenges – poverty, truancy, high number of English as a second language students – are in need of higher education funding increases than an average school district just to afford students the opportunity to succeed. That is why he sought and was able to secure for Allentown the largest increases in funding of any school district in the state.

• From the 2002-03 school year to the 2016-17 school year, Pat was able to secure an additional $72 million increase in funding – or a 204% increase – as compared to the average school district funding increase of 70%. During that period, the Philadelphia School District, with its 32 members of the General Assembly, received a 72% increase in funding .

Since being elected to the legislature, Pat has had a prime focus in providing support and developing programs and services to promote the health and educational development of Pennsylvania’s most at-risk children starting at a young age. These programs include: Pre-K Counts, Head Start and Keystone Stars.

• While few were talking about this need for early education initiatives and intervention, Pat was working with then-Governor Tom Ridge to develop these programs and to secure  resources to make them work. Two decades later, he still continues to fight for early childhood education programming and has successfully lead the state budget and legislative process to ensure these programs thrive through increased funding and technical support.

• Since the start of his state service, when Pat was one of the lone voices advocating for this funding, early childhood education programming is now, not only receiving overwhelming bi-partisan support in the General Assembly, but also support from a broad and diverse group of community leaders including providers, law enforcement, business, military and athletics. With this follow foundation, Pat co-founded and co-chairs the bicameral, bipartisan Early Childhood Education Caucus, which now has more than 125 legislative members and is the largest caucus in Harrisburg. Its charge is simple, but imperative: to aggressively advocate for high-quality early childhood care and education programs in Pennsylvania.

• In his role as Co-Chair of the Early Childhood Education Caucus, Pat has helped secure the largest new investment in Early Childhood Education funding in the Commonwealth in Pennsylvania history.

• In the last two budget cycles, Early Childhood Education programs have seen increases in their funding levels higher than any other program area in the state budget. In the 2014-15 state budget, Pat and the Early Childhood Education Caucus were successful in securing an additional $10 million for Pre-K Counts and Head Start and another $30 million for early childhood education programs in the 2016-17 state budget.

• Thanks in large part to Pat’s leadership and dedication, this year more than $244 million is being invested in Early Childhood Education programs and services (Pre-K Counts, Head Start and the Stars Programs) providing access for more than 48,000 students to participate in the program.

Leadership that’s Working for Us

Pat Browne has developed a successful track record of writing and supporting laws that have made a positive impact in today’s challenging and competitive market.

Another area where Pat’s private sector experience and education have made him a trusted resource and sought-after sounding board for his colleagues is in financial and tax issues. That is why it made perfect sense that not long after being elected to the Senate, Pat was named chair of the Senate Finance Committee. The Finance Committee’s primary task is to review legislation affecting Pennsylvania’s tax codes.

Pat believes that keeping state spending and taxes low and under control promotes an economic climate where businesses will invest and create opportunities for hard-working Pennsylvanians. His belief is that a good and growing economy comes not from increased government spending, taxes and regulations, but by giving businesses the freedom and the tools to expand and create new jobs. This mindset has been the driving force behind some of Pat’s most important legislative accomplishments.

• Pat authored legislation that provided one of the largest tax cuts for seniors, working families and small business people in the history of Pennsylvania. Since its adoption in 1995, it has saved Pennsylvania families and employers over $5 billion in state taxes.
• Pat wrote the law that enacted the tax cuts key to then-Governor Tom Ridge’s plan to radically improve Pennsylvania’s economy and provide for a fairer tax system for our citizens. Important provisions of this law included:
  • Reduction in Pennsylvania’s highest-in-the-nation Corporate Net Income Tax.
  • Phase out of the job killing Capital Stock and Franchise Tax – a tax that stripped capital away from employers even if they lost money.
  • Elimination of the inheritance tax on transfers of assets between spouses.
  • Elimination of the tax on retirement annuities.
  • Expansion of the Personal Income Tax Forgiveness program to thousands of additional families and senior citizens.

• Senator Browne sponsored the “Pennsylvania Job Creation Act of 2006,” which initiated important tax cuts/changes to make Pennsylvania’s climate for job creators more competitive. This legislation:

1. Eliminates business taxes on the investment of new jobs, real estate and equipment in Pennsylvania.
2. Expands the use of business losses to offset future income earned by Pennsylvania business. This is crucial to allow our job creators to weather a recession as well as to promote the creation and expansion of new high tech, bio tech startup businesses in the Commonwealth.

• Pat was a strong supporter of and worked diligently to help craft and pass a major investment of $2.4 billion in transportation projects to fix Pennsylvania’s existing yet deteriorating roadways and bridges and invest in new roadways to meet the state’s ever-growing need for vehicle capacity. Pat’s advocacy for infrastructure improvements, especially for the Lehigh Valley, led directly to the funding necessary to complete the widening Route 22 and other overburdened roadways and bridges throughout the Lehigh Valley.
• Pat authored the expansion of the “Employment Incentive Payment Credit” (EIPC) to provide employers with tax credits for employing Pennsylvania citizens with mental and physical disabilities.

• Pat wrote the “Small Business Jobs Investment Act,” which allowed for greater access to private capital by small business corporations. It also eliminated Pennsylvania’s infamous capital stock tax from single owner Limited Liability Companies and Professional Service Corporations.
• A strong supporter of alternative energy development, Pat wrote legislation which advanced tax credits for business investment in alternative energy technologies.

• Pat wrote the “School Property Tax Rebate Act,” which was the first state-sponsored property tax reduction in Pennsylvania history.

• Pat wrote the “Tax Uniform Procedures Act,” which creates a tax system with compliance that is fairer and easier for both individuals and businesses. This was the first major reform of the appeals and audit section of the Tax Reform Code in 30 years.

• Pat authored the expansion of the “Employment Incentive Payment Credit” (EIPC) to provide employers with tax credits for employing Pennsylvania citizens with mental and physical disabilities.

• Pat sponsored reforms to the $52 Emergency Municipal Services Tax to provide relief for workers while ensuring that taxing entities use the revenues in a fiscally-responsible manner.
• Pat authored the “Pennsylvania Institutions of Purely Public Charity Act”, which established the first ever comprehensive criteria for determining exemptions from real property and sales taxes by Pennsylvania State-related universities, hospitals, private universities, nursing homes and other charities. It also established criteria to ensure that unfair competition by charities with private for-profit businesses is mitigated.