The PA General Assembly runs on a biennial basis. LAMPa’s Policy Council sets a policy agenda before each session begins and revises as necessary midway through the term. Below are the policy priorities and issue areas LAMPa will be focused on in as we begin this session. Other priorities or specific policies may be added throughout the session, in accordance with ELCA Social Teaching.
State Food Purchase Program Funding
The PA Department of Agriculture’s State Food Purchase Program (SFPP) is the Commonwealth’s most significant source of support for the efforts of Pennsylvania food banks, and other providers of essential nutritional assistance, including our congregational and community food pantries. SFPP has made it possible for these providers to acquire and distribute food in all 67 counties. LAMPa will work with food banks and other hunger advocates for strong funding for SFPP. Requesting $35 million.
Promoting Fresh, Local Food Systems
LAMPa will work with synods and congregations to provide education, resource development and advocacy on how to get fresh foods to local communities. Campaigns may include development of advocacy on use of SNAP benefits, building local food policy councils, support for farm-to-school or farm-to-food bank programs, community gardening and eliminating food waste. This includes supporting continued adequate funding for the Pennsylvania Agriculture Surplus System – PASS. Requesting $11 million and a separate line item in the budget for PASS.
Senior Nutrition
LAMPa will work within the Pa. Hunger Action Coalition to obtain state funding to support the Senior Food Box Program to assist lead agencies with costs incurred in recruiting and ultimately providing service to more seniors in PA, as well as state funding to support initiatives and partnerships that play a critical role in getting the food box to the senior’s doorstep. Requesting $1 million.
Child Nutrition
Building on our success in achieving universal school breakfast in the Commonwealth, LAMPa will work for increased state investment in the school lunch program and continued support of summer EBT for children who qualify for free and reduced lunches during the school year.
Addressing Climate Change
LAMPa will work to promote greenhouse gas emissions reductions to mitigate climate change, including equipping congregations to make sound choices regarding their own practices, such as energy consumption. This includes working to secure funds to adequately monitor and regulate such emissions as well as promoting energy efficiency and development of clean sources of energy. In this work, LAMPa will encourage sustainable development across Pennsylvania, but particularly in areas whose economies currently depend upon fossil fuel extraction or processing. Working with Lutheran Disaster Response, we will support efforts to create resiliency and opportunity among the most vulnerable populations – frequently of low-income and racially or ethnically marginalized communities — who face the brunt of the effects of climate change here and around the globe.
Protecting Clean Air, Water and Land
LAMPa will work to protect the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink by advocating for adequate funding for agencies charged with enforcing and promoting those protections as well as assistance for landowners attempting to prevent or mitigate pollution. We will also work to prevent rollbacks in regulations that would threaten health and safety.
Sustainable Development
LAMPa will encourage economic development in Pennsylvania that is sustainable for all of creation, including workers and those who depend upon them. This includes supporting the efficient, equitable and environmentally appropriate expansion of broadband, electric vehicle and other infrastructure improvements, building upon success with the Solar for Schools legislation.
Addressing Homelessness and Housing Insecurity
LAMPa will work to direct resources toward prevention of homelessness, as well as the safe rehousing and appropriate services for those who are unsheltered. This includes funding for pilot projects to build upon successful eviction prevention programs developed in several counties during the pandemic, testing them in other counties. We will also continue our work to extend and adequately fund the Whole Home Repairs program. We will encourage inter-agency cooperation to support individuals and families so that they do not lose their homes, and to quickly locate people back into housing instead of temporary shelter. This includes advocacy for legislation to seal eviction records in certain cases. LAMPa will work with ministries, including Lutheran Disaster Response, to raise the voices of those who lack adequate shelter.
Safeguard Benefits and Access to Benefits
Safety net programs such as food, income and energy assistance lift thousands of families out of poverty. While working to encourage program efficiency and maximum participation of those eligible, LAMPa will remain vigilant to attempts to cut such safeguards or create costly hurdles for our most vulnerable neighbors.
Increase the Minimum Wage
LAMPa will support an increase in the minimum wage in Pennsylvania that will take into account the impact on nonprofit organizations, including: phasing in to lessen the impact of increased costs on our social service safety net; that new revenues be earmarked to increase reimbursement to help lessen the impact of wage increases and a formula that ties future increases of the minimum wage to an annual wage index.
Prohibiting LGBTQIA+ Discrimination
It is currently legal in Pennsylvania to discriminate against persons in employment, housing, and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. LAMPa will support legislation that ends that discrimination.
Reducing Hate Crime
Incidences of reported hate crimes are at their highest level in decades. LAMPa will work within the Pa. Coalition Against Hate to update Pennsylvania’s hate crime laws for uniformity, extend protections to threatened communities, and give law enforcement the tools it needs to prevent and address hate crimes across the commonwealth, including education for rehabilitation of perpetrators.
Safeguarding the Right to Vote
Overwhelmed voting systems not only threaten the right of each individual to have their vote counted equally, but also contribute to an inability to effectively govern by reducing public confidence in the legitimacy of elections. In order that government may effectively serve the public good, LAMPa will oppose measures that would suppress voting and those that safeguard suffrage and promote confidence in the legitimacy of the process (such as pre-canvassing.)
Standing for Welcome
LAMPa will help congregations create welcoming communities and oppose legislation that would target immigrants for unjust treatment or seek to deny refugee resettlement efforts. This includes legislation that would force local municipalities to use their own resources to assist Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, thereby threatening trust between local law enforcement and their communities.
Drivers’ Licenses
LAMPa will advocate for “Not for Voting” drivers’ licenses for all who qualify, regardless of citizenship status, as a way of combatting poverty as well as promoting safety and security on our roadways and in our communities.
Educating our children is a collective imperative that has positive social and economic benefits. Every public school must have the resources necessary to enable every child to meet state academic standards, be prepared for post-secondary success, and become productive, knowledgeable, and engaged adults. This includes high-speed internet access. LAMPa will work to ensure that Pennsylvania adopts and maintains an adequate and equitable system of funding public education – one that makes significant strides toward undoing the harms of systemic racism.
LAMPa will continue to work to ensure that all Pennsylvanians have access to high-quality, affordable health care. This work will have a particular focus on reducing racial disparities in both access to care and in health outcomes. LAMPa will continue to press for medical debt prevention, price transparency (facility fees), affordable prescriptions and preserving facilities in underserved areas. LAMPa will also work to safeguard access to reproductive care in accordance with this church’s teaching on abortion.
Building on the success of targeted prevention efforts that have helped reduce gun violence by 42 percent statewide, LAMPa will advocate for increased investment in these high-risk-community-based strategies such as mentoring and addressing the roots of violence, including trauma and extreme poverty.
In addition to advocating for universal background checks, LAMPa will work to advance Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) legislation, also known as “red flag” laws, allow family and police to petition judges to temporarily confiscate firearms from a person at risk of harming himself or others. That person would get an expedited hearing before a judge and could have their firearms seized for three months to a year. The legislation would grant police a search warrant to take a person’s guns if there’s probable cause they haven’t been relinquished.
