HARRISBURG (Feb. 8) – Dr. MeeCee Baker, one of Pennsylvania’s best-known agricultural educators, joined Wolff Strategies, LLC, to help the firm form and extend partnerships and alliances among the state’s agricultural producers, commodity groups, government and consumers, the firm’s managing partner, John Barley, announced today.

Dr. Baker left her post of coordinator of agricultural education with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture in January. Baker was appointed to that position by PA Governor Edward G. Rendell and served under the PA Secretary of Agriculture Dennis C Wolff (no relation to company founder George B. Wolff). Among Dr. Baker’s accomplishments at the department was the creation of a comprehensive agricultural education website offering curriculum and lesson plans for classroom teachers www.marketplaceforthemind.com  which is providing an average of 10,000 document downloads a month for educators.

“We see MeeCee as the ideal person to help communicate the challenges confronting agriculture today to policy-makers and consumers alike,” Barley said. “Further, her work in agricultural education and literacy will bring a new dimension to the Wolff Team.”

Dr. Baker is an active farming partner with her husband, Dr. Robert Mikesell, in Juniata County, Pennsylvania, and has been an assistant professor at Penn State University and instructor at school districts in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. She still maintains an active adjunct professorship at the North Carolina State University. In 2002, she was one of four educators nationwide designated an “Agriscience Teacher of the Year” by the National FFA Organization. She also served as the first woman president of the National Association for Agricultural Education and has won several national awards for agricultural education innovation.

“While I’ve spent most of my professional career in the classroom, it has become clear to me through my work with the Department of Agriculture that there is an urgent need for basic agricultural awareness and understanding in the community as a whole,” Dr. Baker said. “Food today is taken for granted in America with only one in 100 people earning their living from production agriculture. We need everyone to become informed consumers, decision makers and ultimately voters. This can be accomplished by telling the complete story of contemporary agriculture.”

NOTE: Wolff Strategies is Pennsylvania’s most influential public affairs firm focusing on agricultural, food, and rural issues. The firm is the outgrowth of one of the state’s first professional lobby practices founded more than 50 years ago by George B. Wolff. The firm’s services encompass lobbying, public affairs strategy and management, organization management, event planning, community relations and coalition-building and regulatory liaison.

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Picture yourself in a field of lush green clover surrounded by little green men – leprechauns – celebrating March and Saint Paddy’s Day while frolicking and searching for that bountiful pot of gold, i.e. the FY 2008/09 state budget proposal! Faith and begorrah! It is here and it weighs in at a mind-boggling $28.3 billion – a mere $1.1 billion over the current budget. Yes, laddies and lassies, the hunt is on for more funding for education, healthcare, alternative energy projects and more!

FY 2008/09 Budget Proposal
Governor Rendell made his annual budget presentation early last month detailing his proposal for allocating a $28.3 billion spending plan for FY 2008/09. Education is one of the major recipients in the proposed budget increase. A projected $499 million increase in funding for basic K-12 programs in response to a commissioned costing-out report (what it costs to educate a student from K-12) is the first step in a six-year process for achieving the recommended $4 billion increased investment in education to ensure quality education in all school districts. Other educational programs that will realize an increase over current budget allocations include pre-K funding, the “Science, It’s Elementary” program, dual enrollment and alternative education programs. Agriculture was on the receiving end of some of the budget benevolence through an increase in crop insurance coverage (from $1.5 from the current budget to $3 million in FY ’08/09), funding for the new farm-school nutrition initiative – Healthy Farms, Healthy Schools, continued investment in agricultural projects via the $25 million remaining in the First Industries Fund, and a continued commitment to farmland preservation through a $30 million investment. On the flip side of that “coin”, however, were budget cuts that affect many important programs such as a 30% reduction to the Ag Excellence Programs, a 30% cut in the PDA’s ag research budget with substantial cuts for Penn State and ag extension, and reduced funding for conservation districts.

Several weeks of budget hearings will allow the state’s agencies to share their budget requests and lawmakers to begin the process of trying to balance fiscal responsibility with program needs. One distraction that sullied last year’s late passage of the budget and which shows promise of being eliminated from future budget negotiations was the Governor’s one-day furlough of “non-essential” state employees. If legislation recently introduced and passed in the Senate continues on its fast track towards final passage, state employees would no longer be subjected to furlough to exert pressure during budget negotiations.

Open Records See the Light of Day
At long last the much-anticipated and embattled open records bill passed the House and Senate and garnered the Governor’s approval. What began last January in response to voter dissatisfaction over the scope and manner of the 2005 pay raise and the subsequent defeat/resignation of several legislators, including key leaders, culminated in passage of amendatory language to the Right-to-Know law. Passage of this bill now puts the burden of denial on the state agency when a request for records is submitted. In addition to opening up this access and changing the process for requesting public records, the legislation creates an independent Office of Open Records which will handle these requests and the fees for photocopying the documents. With the Governor’s signature, John Q. Public will now have access to a wealth of information on the state’s operations including financial records. Specific concerns regarding personal privacy issues delayed earlier movement of the bill. Except for records that would divulge social security numbers, criminal investigative materials, personal bank account information and medical records, Pennsylvania state operations may now be an open book.

You Do the Math
As part of Governor Rendell’s budget proposal he also introduced a stimulus package referred to as Protecting Pennsylvania’s Progress. Not unlike the federal program that promises a rebate to American taxpayers in May, one item in the Governor’s stimulus package proposes a one-time $200 to $400 rebate to a segment of Pennsylvania taxpayers with dependents whose income doesn’t exceed $32,000 annually. The recipients of these payments would be identified by their tax filings and checks could be sent within eight weeks of receiving the tax filings. Funding for this stimulus package is based on a projected $500 million state revenue surplus and significant borrowing. Other provisions in the overall stimulus package would triple the job creation tax credit (from $1,000 to $3,000 per job), extend tax credits for the Keystone Opportunity Zones, lower rates on state loans, increase the RCAP (redevelopment capital assistance projects) funding to $750 million, support the Jonas Salk Legacy Fund for health-related research ($500 million), the Energy Independence Strategy ($850 million) and the Rebuilding PA program which provides money for the state’s infrastructure with $700 million divided among bridge projects, rail-freight improvements and airport capacity expansion. New capital funds of $37 million would also be dedicated to the repair of 38 state-owned, county and local unsafe dams. Along with the surplus and borrowing plans, Governor Rendell proposes a 7-cent surcharge on every $100 in property insurance premiums sold in the state to help mitigate flood relief projects, suggesting that, on average, this tax would only cost homeowners 42 cents a year. Don’t carve any of these figures in stone. The budget process has “only just begun.”

Burning the Midnight Oil…and Doing Laundry
If turning off lights when leaving a room, waiting for a full load of dishes before running the dishwasher and turning back the thermostat before retiring for the evening don’t constitute enough of an energy savings for you, take heart. A bill that has passed the House of Representatives and is headed to the Senate for vetting would mandate the installation over a ten-year period of smart meters for all Pennsylvania households. Such meters would track and charge electricity usage based on the “time of day” use, allowing consumers to take advantage of performing many energy-intensive tasks during off-peak hours to take advantage of the cost savings, i.e. using major appliances after normal working hours – doing the laundry, running the dishwasher, etc. later in the evening when rates are lower. Coinciding with the installation of smart meters would be a required reduction for utilities in overall energy output by 2.5 % (and peak demand by 4%) by May of 2013. These measures are the beginning of many coming attempts by legislators to mitigate the impact of much higher fuel costs when the electric rate caps are removed statewide in 2010 and 2011. Projections of price increases between 30 and 50 percent of existing rates have legislators scrambling to find ways to reduce that rate shock current.

Water Over the Dam
That the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem is in trouble because of nitrogen and phosphorus degradation of the once pristine waters over the last twenty-plus years is not a startling revelation. Documentation regarding the decline in the water quality has led to the organization of numerous groups fighting to “Save the Bay”, and through the efforts of the tri-state collaboration of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, each state has developed plans for meeting specific pollution reduction levels by 2010. In Pennsylvania, the Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy proposed by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) issued an unfunded mandate for sewage plant upgrades that many municipalities fear could raise sewage rates 55 percent or higher estimating the total cost statewide at $1 billion. In response, several municipalities have joined together in a lawsuit to contest the short timeframe and overwhelming costs of upgrading their systems.
When drafting the tributary strategy, the DEP understood that there would be increased costs for nutrient reduction at sewage treatment plants but felt that it would be cheaper for municipalities to provide funding to reduce the nutrients through an agriculture nutrient trading program than to spend money for sewage plant upgrades. (This concept was established back in the ‘80s between New York City and farmers in the Hudson Valley where the city paid farmers to install expensive conservation practices on their land which was a successful program that served as a model for other states to use.) Municipalities, however, are reluctant to embark on a trading program because most of the trades occur on a year-to-year basis and they cannot be guaranteed with certainty the availability of credits in succeeding years. However, an investment in plant upgrades would assure compliance with regulations for years to come. For the time being, it appears that the lawsuit will serve to delay the necessary upgrades while the condition of the bay continues to deteriorate.

Farm Food Safety Audits
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture is offering Pennsylvania farmers who are interested in improving on-farm food safety practices the opportunity to receive reimbursement for costs up to $400 towards the successful completion of agricultural practices or handling practices audits. The audits will help farmers identify and address areas of food safety concern. Interested parties can access an application for a Good Agricultural Practices and Good handling Practices Cost-Sharing Program at www.agriculture.state.pa.us or can contact the department at 717-705-9513. The deadline for receiving applications is January 15, 2009.

Gone Fishing!
Dedicated anglers are likely anticipating the first day of trout season and contemplating spending time at their favorite fishing holes as Spring gets closer. Taking the bait from proponents who supported a longer timeframe for certain one-day licenses, the Governor signed into law Act 2 in mid-February, legislation that allows for the sale of One-Day Resident and One-Day Tourist fishing licenses from March 15 (previously April 1) through April 30 of any year. The law also caps at $1 the transaction fee for purchasing licenses through the Pennsylvania Automated Licensing System (PALS) and increases to $5 the cost of a replacement license. Hope you catch the big one!