Public Policy – Page 3

Paid Leave: Good for Family, Good For Enterprise

September 24, 2018

Families are the building block of civil society. Businesses are also an integral foundation of civil society. Paid family leave policy is important because it impacts families and businesses. Our society is ready for a practical blueprints that give families access to better leave policies while also enabling businesses to do the good they are often afraid to do.

We recognize that family leave is good for families:

A study published in The Journal of Mental Health Policy and Economic found that maternity leave led to women reporting fewer depressive symptoms, reduction in severe depression and overall improvement of mental health. (source)
A study from Columbia University found that fathers who take two or more weeks off are more active in their child’s care nine months later. (source)
A study from the National Institutes of Health found that paid parental leave can reduce infant mortality by as much as 10%. (source)

We recognize that family leave is also good for business:

Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of Youtube, reported that when Google increased their paid maternity leave from 12 weeks to 18 weeks, their retention rate of new mothers increased by 50%. Wojcicki said: “Mothers were able to take the time they needed to bond with their babies and return to their jobs feeling confident and ready. And it’s much better for Google’s bottom line — to avoid costly turnover, and to retain the valued expertise, skills, and perspective of our employees who are mothers.” (source)
In California, a state with an implemented paid leave policy, 90% of businesses surveyed said the policy either had a positive effect on productivity or no noticeable effect (meaning no harm.) (source)
At Demme Learning, We offer 8 weeks of fully paid parental leave. We have found through company surveys that this policy helps boost morale and we have also seen how this policy helps to retain our employees.

Paid leave policies cost money which can make it prohibitive to business implementation, especially for smaller businesses. Often businesses are afraid that they can’t afford to implement such policies even though they might want to. In light of this, how might the government help the private sector do the good they want to do?

Senator Marco Rubio recently rolled out a Federal parental leave plan that shifts future Social Security Benefits to pay for parental leave.

From TheHill.com,

Under Rubio’s bill, which he introduced this week, a new parent that elects to participate would receive an amount equal to three months of what they’d get in Social Security benefits. Households that receive the benefit can use it however they want as long as they take at least two months of leave, and spouses in two-parent households would be able to transfer the benefits to each other, according to Rubio’s office.

Rubio’s office said that most parents making below the median family income of about $70,000 would be able to have the benefit cover more than 70 percent of their wages for two months, and that many parents on the lower end of the income spectrum would be able to use the benefit amount to help finance longer-term parental leave.

I like what Senator Rubio is trying to accomplish but ideally, the most effective initiatives will be found at the state level and with individual businesses. For example, Pennsylvania could adopt an incentive plan that gives tax credits to employers that provide paid leave policies. A similar concept was included in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for a federal tax credit for employers who provide paid family and medical leave.

The Society for Human Resource Management reported,

Under new Section 45S of the Internal Revenue Code, employers that voluntarily offer qualifying employees up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave annually under a written policy may claim a tax credit for a portion of the wages paid during that leave.

To receive the credit, employers will have to provide at least two weeks of leave and compensate their workers a minimum of 50 percent of their regular earnings. The tax credit will range from 12.5 percent to 25 percent of the cost of each hour of paid leave, depending on how much of a worker’s regular earnings the benefit replaces. The government will cover 12.5 percent of the benefit’s costs if workers receive half of their regular earnings, rising incrementally up to 25 percent if workers receive their entire regular earnings.

It will be interesting to see how this issue continues to evolve as we move through the midterms and into the 116th Congress.

Gentrification is Anti-Family

April 19, 2018

When you think of a vibrant city, what kinds of people do you envision? The artsy hipster barista? The forty-something entrepreneur dressed in jeans? The fashionable women in high heels enjoying rosé in an outdoor canopy cafe? Now try to picture another demographic living in the city: a family.

As a general rule, cities aren’t designed (or redesigned) to accommodate the needs and desires of families. A series on cities from The American Conservative describes how more and more cities are being transformed into what the industry refers to as the Vibrant Urban Neighborhood. “The VUN—with its standard-issue bike shops and vintage clothiers, its “authentic” live-work spaces and dive bars, its predictable purveyors of vinyl records and locally-sourced foodstuffs, its de rigueur venues for generically hip “live music,” its uniform throngs of overwhelmingly unmarried and childless active or aspiring knowledge workers ritualistically intoning the shibboleth of “diversity”—has metastasized from those erstwhile white-hot centers of hipness—Williamsburg, the Mission, Wicker Park, Silverlake—converting Bell Town and Bushwick, Echo Park, Seward, and the Pearl District, transforming D.C.’s H Street Corridor, LA’s Highland Park, and dozens of other districts.” (source) This approach to city development is eager to attract young working professionals but doesn’t plan for how these working professionals can “remain in our cities as they age, change, or grow.” (source)

A city made or remade to accommodate young adults doesn’t require good schools. It doesn’t need to provide a diversity of housing options beyond the studio and one-bedroom apartments. Affordable eating options aren’t really on the radar and neither are playgrounds. In short, a city not built to accommodate families won’t be able to accommodate families.

Even worse for families is the process of gentrification. Indeed, gentrification is inherently anti-family. When a city undergoes this process of becoming the kind of place that attracts young, childless urbanites, it raises rent prices, often resulting in driving out poorer families that can no longer afford to reside in the city or at least forcing them to allocate more of their income to basic housing.

As we seek to revitalize and develop our cities, we must remember our obligations to the family. Being consistently pro-life means promoting the flourishing of all people of all demographics.

Pedal to Preserve 2017: Farmland Preservation Trust

April 18, 2017

Cow helmet image 1

Did you know that Lancaster County is home to 425,336 acres of farmland spread out over 5,462 farms? According to the Lancaster Farmland Trust, “Lancaster County’s farmland and the industry it supports provide more than 51,000 jobs and contribute more than $4 billion to our local economy each year.”

On June 3, 2017, the Trust will host the Pedal to Preserve, a bike ride to raise money in support of the Trust’s conservation work. The event included three marked routes allowing participants to choose between 6, 20, and 51 mile rides through Lancaster County’s pastoral countryside.

The Trust was established in 1985 and its mission is to “preserve and steward the beautiful, productive farmland of Lancaster County that reflects our heritage, supports our economy, protects our environment, nourishes our health, and enhances our quality of life.” The Trust website explains that:

Land conservation offers many benefits to the community, including attracting jobs, enhancing property values, safeguarding a valuable way of life for future generations, ensuring an adequate, fresh food supply, and protecting the quality of the environment.

To learn more about preserving Lancaster County’s farmland, and to sign up for this years, Pedal to Preserve, visit the Trust’s website here.

A City Transformed – Book Review

July 31, 2016

Lancaster City is one of the oldest inland cities in the United States of America. It was originally settled in 1709 by German immigrants, the Pennsylvania Dutch. Lancaster was originally known as Hickory Town and was designed by James Hamilton. Lancaster was chartered as a city on March 10, 1818. During the Revolutionary War, Lancaster was the capital of the American colonies for one day, September 27, 1777, when Congress was fleeing from the British. Lancaster was also capital of Pennsylvania from 1799 till 1812.

In his book A City Transformed, David Schuyler traces the history of redevelopment in Lancaster City from 1940 through 1980. Schuyler is Professor of American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College and he has spent a lot of his academic career exploring the challenges cities faced during the second half of the 20th century.

In the postwar years, cities across America faced drastic economic decline. Lancaster was one such city and in order to try and address this decline, the city adopted various urban renewal programs with the goal of revitalizing the city and particularly downtown. Sadly, as Schuyler documents, most of these government-driven programs were failures that often exacerbated the problems. One of the greatest issues facing Lancaster was the need for affordable housing. Schuyler writes that “the discovery of a crisis in housing was the initial step in the development of a comprehensive urban renewal program for Lancaster” (pg. 35) After the Lancaster newspaper drew attention to the substandard living of poor residents in Barney Google Row and Shanytown where the “houses” were shacks with no running water or electric, Lancasterian leaders decided that something needed to be done. Unfortunately over the course of the next several decades, providing adequate housing for poorer families would prove a harder task than what was imagined.

Pertaining to housing, Schuyler documents in heartbreaking detail the unintended effects of gentrification with the Church-Musser plan for townhouse development which led to large increases of rent driving out poorer families from their homes. Schuyler also explores the ugly reality of segregation and the ways in which racial tensions also hurt families and kept them from accessing affordable housing.

One recurring theme in A City Transformed is how government intervention consistently made things worse. For example, during the summer of 1965, Lancaster’s leaders decided to demolish the historic west block of Lancaster despite intense public opposition. Schuyler writes that “despite the concerns, citizens voiced at the September 1964 public hearing, and despite editorials that warned against turning downtown into a rubble-strewn wasteland … members of City Council and the Redevelopment Authority abandoned a policy that had prevented premature demolition and adopted a new one that ensured it.” After demolishing the west block, the block sat vacant for almost a full decade and became known as “our hole in the ground” (pg. 87).

A City Transformed is a sobering account of Lancaster’s history here in the 20th century and the struggles for economic sustainability and affordable housing. Despite the best interests of Lancaster’s leaders, often the very initiatives that were hoped to alleviate the problems of the poor and revitalize the economy had the opposite effects. Nevertheless, the book is also a celebration of the enduring spirit of Lancastrians, their compassionate conservatism, and their work to try and make the city a better place for everyone.

Seeking the Good of The City

July 24, 2016

City of Charlotte

In May of this year, Montgomery County, one of the largest and wealthiest suburbs in DC, held a forum on urban development. Paul Grenier, writing for The American Conservative, commented on what he saw as a divide in the way the word “development” was being used. On the one side, council member Marc Elrich and economist Michael Shuman used the word development to refer to the good of the city. Grenier explains that “They asked qualitative questions about how to create as good a city as possible, and how to make the economy serve the interests of that good.” On the other side were the well-paid consultants who focused on “growth” and fixated on the development of the economy.

Grenier notes that this divide represents the difference between classical thought and modern thought. Whereas classical thought emphasizes the particularities of local communities and emphasizes the shared pursuit of citizens for the common good, modern thought strips away the particular quirks of particular places and instead emphasizes the universality of the market.

Council member Elrich began the forum by asking “what is the best kind of city.” Such a question likely conjures up thoughts of the local coffee shops and the diner where everyone knows your name and the older buildings with a strong sense of history. Elrich refers to “small spaces” which I take to mean those places that provide a sense of intimacy and locality. If development means seeking the good of the city, not just its growth, then perhaps creating (or more often, preserving) these small spaces might be just as important as bringing in big corporations with the hope of stimulating the economy and driving growth.

While small spaces often create jobs and generate market growth, participation in the big, global market can generate even greater profit. But is that really what matters? Can the good of the city really only be understood materialistically? Grenier, in parsing through this difference of thought between classical and modern thought writes:

Modern politics has no well-defined location, not any more than the global marketplace has a location. Classical politics, by contrast, takes place in the city. The city is what classical politics is about.

From the perspective of classical political thought, the city is the optimal scale for organizing political life because it is a scale that is sufficiently complex to allow for human flourishing, but not so huge that the crucial questions can’t be addressed by means of reasoned debate. Scales larger than that—such as the national or the global scale—are so vastly complex that such a conversation can no longer be concrete and to a purpose.

Michael Shuman believes that truly good economic development consists of applying four rules:

Maximize the percent of local industry and trade that is locally owned.
Emphasize local self-reliance, not as a means of becoming disengaged from the wider (including global) economy, but so as to engage with it from a position of strength.
Maintain high labor and environmental standards.
Create, or maintain, a social, institutional and investment framework that fosters a sort of local entrepreneurial eco-system.

Economic growth is important but it is not the only or even the most important rubric for measuring the flourishing of a city. More important than mere economic growth is the ability for small spaces to give room for tightly knit communities to have the kinds of conversations about justice, goodness, and beauty that grow the human spirit and cultivate friendships.