Berks County had no Keystone Innovation Zone credits in 2015

by Steve Reinbrecht

I want to know why the tech-entrepreneurial tidal wave that is obviously washing through many other small cities is passing Berks and Reading by.

In 2015, the state awarded almost $18 million to 239 companies across the state as part of the state's Keystone Innovation Zone.

They included companies in Johnstown, Erie, Williamsport, Harrisburg, Selingsgrove, Lancaster, Bloomsburg, Carlisle, with lots in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre and Erie and Doylestown.

Reading has a KIZ. 

How much did Berks get?

Zero.

Two Berks companies got KIZ credits in 2014.

The Reading Eagle had a story on its website about companies in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties getting tax credits.

But even though the Eagle is the major newsgathering organization in Berks and Beyond, it doesn't mention Berks' failure to incubate tech companies.

Why, other than the Eagle knows how to LOOK like a newspaper but the newsroom leaders don't know how to produce a REAL newspaper? Or is it the newsroom leaders' compulsion to assure everybody that everything is fine in Berks, so buy a new car?

The KIZ is an incentive program that provides tax credits to for-profit companies less than eight years old operating within specific targeted industries within the boundaries of a Keystone Innovation Zone, the state says.

“The KIZ tax credit program significantly contributes to the ability of young KIZ companies to transition through the stages of growth.”

Reading politician gets spanked for putting common sense above party loyalty

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Berks County Democratic Committee kicked City Council Vice President Donna Reed off the committee Saturday in a 29-24 vote.

The party ejected her because she supported Jim McHale, a Republican, over Wally Scott, a Populist, in the election for Reading mayor last fall.

That violates county committee bylaws.

I don’t follow inside city party politics. But hubbub about the city’s new mayor and its fallout will affect life across Berks County and is fodder for better local journalism.

It’s clear Reed has critics. She said many were rallied for Saturday’s vote.

An orthographically challenged Facebook page called “Friends for Ernie Schlegel” cited her “vulgar and repulsive actions in openly supporting a Republican Candidate in an election cycle.”

This, “along with her increasingly erratic behavior as a Committee Women, have undermined her ability to stand as a Committee Women for the Democratic Party,” the Friends site post says.

Reed, who is in her fourth term on City Council, seemed unrattled.

“People [at the meeting] for the most part were nice,” Reed said. “It was a protracted debate. I can still attend the meetings as I am an elected Dem official, and the chairman encouraged me to keep coming.”

The ousting had little practical effect on her, she said.

“Not really. Actually, [it] might enhance my reputation.”

I worked with Reed for years in the Reading Eagle newsroom and know she is smart, hardworking and dedicated to improving the city.

* This post was corrected Feb. 1 to say that Reed is in her fourth term on City Council.

Former mayor defends Reading’s Act 47 status

by Steve Reinbrecht

Last week, Reading Mayor Wally Scott blamed predecessor Tom McMahon, who served Jan. 5, 2004, to Jan. 2, 2012, for the city’s financial problems.

Real-long-time Reading Eagle City Hall Reporter Don Spatz duly reported Scott’s dissing of McMahon during his rambling hour-plus State of the City speech, but didn’t ask McMahon to respond. That’s shoddy reporting no editor should accept.

“He [Scott] said former Mayor Tom McMahon put the city in the financial stress it's in, and got it into Act 47, so the city's problems are the fault of this council and that mayor,” Spatz wrote.

In response, former Mayor Tom McMahon said Saturday that Scott doesn’t understand the city’s position.

“He clearly has not understood the financial history of the city, including budgets, contracts, pensions, negotiated or arbitrated settlements over the past 30 years, or he would know at least some of the reasons why act 47 made so much sense,” he wrote in an e-mail.

McMahon referred to then-state-Economic Development Secretary George Cornelius’ remarks about his decision to accept Reading into Act 47.

In November, 2009, Cornelius told Reading leaders:

“Act 47 isn’t a cure; it’s merely life support. Don’t sit back and think some state coordinator will fix things, or that the problems will resolve themselves. If Reading is to thrive as a vibrant economic driver for Berks County, if the city is to be self-sustaining, everyone in Berks County will have to work hard to make it happen.”

McMahon said he still believes the city needed to enter the Act 47 program.

“But I don't believe he [Scott] has the capacity to be able to visualize how to emerge from Act 47. 

“It was meant to give us a breather to avoid bankruptcy, which any sane person would want the city to avoid.

“It will be hard to replace the revenue stream it brought.

“I actually feel sorry for him in a way that he does not seem to have the tools to be able to deal with the job at hand.”

McMahon said Scott doesn’t understand Act 47, including the benefits it brought to the city by way of commuter tax.

“Wally's first month of childish blathering does not bode well for this city.”

Berks County has tried nonprofit journalism

by Steve Reinbrecht

The Reading Eagle has had recent stories and editorials about the owners of the big Philadelphia newspapers donating them to a nonprofit foundation.

In general, more people are reading the news than ever, but getting them to pay for it is the hard part. In any case, the world needs new ways to fund good journalism – which is necessary for good leadership on every level.

In a letter to the Reading Eagle, Kevin Murphy, president of Berks County Community Foundation, wrote: “Nonprofit ownership of news media outlets is hardly new. Propublica, The Christian Science Monitor and NPR have long provided this country with some of its best (and hardest-hitting) journalism. The list of nonprofit-owned media outlets is actually quite long, and their editorial quality seems relatively unquestioned.”

In fact, Berks County has tried nonprofit journalism, but it fizzled.

In 2009, Murpy’s organization raised more than $500,000 to start bctv.org, designed as a website to support investigative and citizen journalism in Berks. I left my job as a copy editor at the Eagle to become the bctv.org managing editor.

“The web-based Hub [news platform] will include in-depth reports on local issues by an independent investigative journalist, supported and amplified by regional citizen journalists. An editor will manage the Hub and provide web-based opportunities for community feedback, completing the information cycle,” according to the business plan, written by the community foundation.

We posted stories such as:

How painkiller addiction was driving people toward heroin abuse

How Reading Hospital was buying doctor practices

How the Reading School District had been rife with nepotism

Why many women don’t report domestic abuse

Why so few Latinos had elected positions in Reading

How Reading’s health needs were worse than the rest of the county

How it’s hard to get investors and tenants for downtown apartments

The business plan said the project was to “adhere to strictest journalistic standards and ethics.” 

That’s what got me in trouble. After three years, when the grant money ran out, BCTV executive director Ann Sheehan fired me for insubordinately posting a link on bctv.org after she had told me not to -- a link to a newsworthy statement by then-Mayor Vaughn Spencer. I was fired for doing journalism, but not one of the originally gung-ho supporters of bctv.org defended me, except for then-board member and former Reading Mayor Karen Miller. Another board member told me it was time to lose my ideals.

Since then, bctv.org has not had a professional editor. It has turned into a bulletin board for news releases. It seems to have little or no original content. See for yourself.

The reason it fizzled, and perhaps the reason Murphy didn’t mention the experiment in his letter, was that the wrong non-profit was selected.

Leaders at Berks Community Television had no interest in doing journalism or effectively promoting the project. Staff had no skills or interest to find sponsors or expand coverage to get more donations, or even spell names correctly. One of the colleges would have been a much better choice.

The Reading Eagle could use some competition, however it gets funded.

Half of bctv.org’s money was local, half was from the Knight Foundation, a non-profit whose goal is “promoting journalistic 

excellence in the digital age.”

It's not happening in Berks County.

Berk’s incarceration rates reflect those of Texas, Alabama

by Steve Reinbrecht

The United States is renowned for the rate at which it locks up citizens, and Berks reflects the trends.

Berks’ incarceration rate more than tripled from 1970 to 2014, according to new, county-level data from the Vera Institute, which calls itself “an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit center for justice policy and practice.”

In that period, the county population grew about 40 percent, from 296,000 to about 414,000.

Berks’ rising incarceration rate matched those of the U.S. and Pennsylvania until leaping significantly higher in 2001. In 2005, the latest available for state and federal figures, Berks’ incarceration rate was way above the state and national levels. Berks’ incarceration rate peaked in 2006 at 489 adults per 100,000 and dropped to 383 by 2014.

The interactive website also shows how Berks compares to counties across America with populations of similar sizes. Berks' profile matches counties in Texas and Alabama much more closely than those in Michigan, Minnesota or New Hampshire.

Berks’ incarceration rate was higher than most neighboring counties but lower than Lehigh and Lebanon counties.

In 2014, according to state figures, nearly 6,800 people were “admitted” to the Berks County jail, which housed about 1,200 a day, on average.

Vera’s website says its Incarceration Trends project “aims to inform the public debate on mass incarceration and help guide change by providing easily accessible information on the number of people in jails and prisons for every county in the United States.”

While large prisons get a lot of attention, small jails like Berks’ have driven the steep rise in the national incarceration rate. And many are in the cells because they can’t pay bail.

“One third of incarcerated men and women are in our city and county jails, and the research is clear: Reducing the over-use of pretrial detention will reduce the size of both our jails and our prisons,” its report states.

“Mid-sized and small counties—which account for the vast majority of jails -- have largely driven growth, with local jail populations increasing since 1970 by 4.1 times in mid-sized counties and 6.9 times in small counties. In contrast, jail populations in large counties grew by 2.8 times.”

The Reading Eagle is very upset about the death-penalty system, publishing thousands of words about the subject.

But what about the thousands of local people incarcerated in Berks County Jail?

A few years ago, I was astounded to learn that most people in our jail are there because they haven’t posted bail.

The Eagle did run a story Saturday about Vera’s project to examine jails at the county level across the U.S.

But did our professional truth-seekers bother to report any of the data about Berks County, a click away at the Vera Institute’s website?

Nah. Too many Christmas events to cover.

Berks economy is stagnant because of poor leadership, crony journalism

by Steve Reinbrecht

To the tax-haters in Berks County, the front page of the Reading Eagle on Friday warned that your payments to support county government are going to rise if more people and businesses don’t move here.

The reporter wrote:

“If the county's property tax base continues to stagnate, budget chief Robert Patrizio warned, commissioners are going to face some tough choices about spending and taxes in the future.

“ ‘This has to be our No. 1 initiative,’ he said of efforts to grow the county's property tax base. ‘We have to find a way to get development in this county.’ "

Off Buttonwood Street in Reading

Why won’t Wegman’s build here? Berks’ economic activity is stagnant for many reasons. And the lack of good reporting on Berks’ serious issues has contributed to our local lack of progress. You can’t fix problems until you identify and understand them.

The county’s economic-development leaders have held their jobs for years with very little to justify their often taxpayer-subsidized salaries. If they identify practical goals and report on their progress, you won’t read them in the Reading Eagle. 

Jon Scott at the Greater Berks Economic Partnership, Ed Swoyer at the absolutely opaque Greater Berks Development Fund, Adam Mukerji at the Reading Redevelopment Authority, Lenin Agudo, the community development director in Reading City Hall, Ellen Horan at the business Chamber, Crystal Seitz at the visitor’s bureau – none is held accountable for demonstrating effective outcomes.

Investors shun Berks because it’s hard to get here. What other city is so isolated? We have no passenger rail or air service. To get to central Berks from Allentown and the north, you drive for miles of one-lane congestion on Route 222. Coming from Philadelphia and the east, you drive through endless traffic lights on Route 422 in Douglassville and Exeter Township. Or take the turnpike for a fee and lots of extra miles. From the west, you’ll get a close look at dozens of intersections on Route 422 from Lebanon through West Reading. 

In the south, we did get a beautiful expressway, Route 222, which my daughters drive to Park City Mall, outside Lancaster, because Berks has no shops they like. The state provided $140 million for highway work in Berks – to improve Interstate 78 so people can drive THROUGH Berks County faster.

The lack of adequate road access is due to the county’s lack of political clout, demonstrated by the obvious gerrymandering that has made Reading irrelevant on the state and national levels.

Here is another example of local leadership failing to lead. The Democratic political machine here can’t handle its responsibilities. The city of Reading will get nowhere without reasonable diplomacy with county and state officials. But the Dems can line up no one better than Vaughn Spencer or Wally Scott to tell the city’s story and grovel for help. 

Entrepreneurs have told me they won’t invest in Reading because they perceived it was corrupt. That perception has become a well-publicized reality.

I suspect Berks County suffers from a xenophobic business climate that favors established businesses over newcomers, discouraging the kind of innovation that is fueling development in the Lehigh Valley and other places. Do banks operating locally loan to minority entrepreneurs? They are not publicly embracing new credit-risk assessments designed to make it easier for deserving poor people and young people to borrow. The Chamber of Commerce promotes right-wing policy that channels growth to the wealthy and leaves the middle class struggling, and not spending, and thus not creating demand for jobs.

From the Chamber of Commerce's tax form

Reading has missed out on economic- development aid from the state. Bethlehem and Lancaster won tax advantages over Reading because of Reading’s shoddy application. 

Berks has received a paucity of development grants from the Ben Franklin Technology Partners compared to Bethlehem, York, and Scranton. On Oct. 15, Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania announced $651,600 in loans to help young companies in the 21-county region. Berks got $25,000 for one company, about 4 percent of the total.

What’s the progress on the Ride to Prosperity? Berks didn’t regain its pre-recession peak employment [175,800 in July 2007] until December 2014, although it rose through 2015 to 177,000 in October. Economic development officials say we need “shovel ready” sites. So where are they creating them?

Our schools are mediocre. In a ranking of 681 state highschools, Wilson was 105th, Boyertown was 137th, and Wyomissing was 233rd. I’m sure our talented children can’t wait to leave. But that’s OK. Berks has also led the charge to defund public schools even further.

Do we really want visitors? If so, we need to get better people to run the visitor’s bureau. “Take a ride” is the motto; it sounds like “take a hike.” The agency, which got $50,000 in tax money in 2014, paid its president, Crystal Seitz, $135,000 that year. Is she worth it? How do we know?

Drivel from the visitor's bureau website

Once I called the bureau for information about an attraction. A staffer told me she shouldn’t tell me because the business I was interested in was not a member. So it’s clear the bureau, like so many Berks agencies, is more interested in internal politics and survival than serving its mission.

One whopping reason Berks can’t escape its lackluster growth is that Berks’ media – the Reading Eagle, WFMZ, bctv.org – don’t adequately cover the news in Berks. They hold no one accountable. They create no record to hold elected officials to. They ask no tough questions on practical issues. They don’t cover deep problems with health-care access, education, politics, or the environment because advertisers want to project the image that everything is wonderful here, so buy the new car. 

The media are happy to reinforce the world view that everything is OK in Berks County, from the environment to the economy; that people with brown skin cause our problems; and that what we celebrate is celebrated for Christian people who believe themselves white. That sells the media's products, but does nothing to solve the problems limiting our economic growth.

Berks is a great example of the biggest problem in U.S. government

by Steve Reinbrecht

Look at a map,and it's hard to find a place more gerrymandered than Berks County.

The Reading Eagle had a column about this, on a national level, in its print edition Monday. 
[Here it is on another site. I couldn't find it reprinted on the Eagle's website.]

"The result is catastrophic. Almost every member of Congress is totally protected from political accountability. " the writers said about the U.S. in general.

"Fortunately, in a growing number of states, reformers are working to reverse the damage .... Some are actually succeeding," Cokie and Steven Roberts write.

Is anybody from Berks or representing Berks working on this?