The Pennsylvania Subsidy System
NEWS AND COMMENT.
The State LegUlatnre of Pennsylvania at its current ?*aon wUl^bly appropriate something over S6,000,0W-about one-tenth djhetotad^eof the Commonwealth for the next two years-to msritutions o privateehanty The wisdom and justice of these appropriations, especiaUy of the method by which they are made, are now being more vigorously discussed than at any time in recent years.
The Public Charities Association concurs with the State Board of Public Charities in disapproval of the suggestion to create a new commission to make binding recommendations to the Legislature with reference to appropriations to private charities. When, however, the Board defends the present method of making appropriations, it appears to the Association that a very different question is raised, requiring a critical examination of the statement of the Board, which appeared in newspapers of December 20, 1916.
It is said, for example, in this statement: “Hearings are held … and all institutions are given the chance to present their claims for state aid.” In fact, these hearings are necessarily perfunctory, owing to the meagre time allotted to each of the nearly four hundred applicants for aid. They are rarely attended by a majority of the Board, perhaps because the members realize the futility of attempting to form a judgment in any case upon the scant information obtainable at these hearings. The statement continues: “The actual needs of the institutions are determined.” How does the Board measure the needs of these institutions? The Board has stated that it analyses “the need for the institution in its community”; “its necessity to apply for aid”; its “need of financial aid from the state”; its “ability and willingness to be in part self-sustaining.” Yet recommendations have been repeatedly made for appropriations to institutions in localities already well supplied with such facilities, as compared with other localities where no such appropriation is recommended: to institutions that receive practically no financial support in their own communities, except from pay patients, and that have apparently made little or no effort to obtain such support; to institutions so heavily endowed by private interests or so largely serving purely local purposes that the state as a whole and its taxpayers are clearly relieved of obligation to repair the relatively small deficit incurred. Appropriations have been granted to institutions that lack facilities required by law, such as laboratories, upon which the State Board of Medical Education and Licensure is now insisting. Do these laboratories come within the definition of “need” employed by the State Board?
The Public Charities Association calls attention to the discrepancies between the Board’s recommendations and the final appropriations as made by the last Legislature in 1915:
Only 21 per cent of all private institutions received appropriations equal to the Board’s recommendations. Only 6 per cent of all state and semi-state institutions received grants equal to those recommended. Seven private institutions received appropriations against the advice of the Board; and fifteen others failed . to receive grants, though the Board had recommended them. These facts are to be regarded as the necessary and logical outcome of a system which leads to extravagance and injustice, in spite of the vigorous efforts of the State Board to bring order out of chaos.
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