This editorial by The Inquirer Editorial Board appeared in said paper, July 11th, 2018.

A brief commentary by Community Rights US Media Team member Curt Hubatch: It is said that if “the state” is going to exercise state preemption the issue at hand must be of state-wide concern, and it must protect, rather than violate, basic rights. The state also presumes that a majority of the body politic is against measures like a living wage, regulation of gun sales, and taxing tobacco and soda pop. Then, as Community Rights organizer Ben Price writes in his article titled: Matters of State Concern: The Tyranny of Preemption, “‘the state’ acts as if it – through the people’s state representatives – has been directed to obliterate such uppity behavior by mere communities of people.” He then goes on to ask, “An honest discussion about state preemption must answer this question: Does the preemption violate the right of self-government by the community?” 

It’s this question that I long to see more journalists, elected officials, and fellow citizens bring to mind and ask when higher levels of government negate legislation and laws enacted at the city, county and town levels. Laws that protect the health, safety and welfare of  its citizens. Isn’t that why government at any level is instituted in the first place?

– Have Philadelphia and state government ever not been at odds? On the one hand, the state, embodied by both its lawmakers and residents, tends to think of Philadelphia as the place that all the tax money collected in Pennsylvania goes to take care of a crumbling education system and lots of poor people. Meanwhile, the metro area’s contribution to the state’s General Fund far exceeds its share of the population.  That’s why it’s so irritating when the long arm of Harrisburg tries to reach into the city’s ability to govern itself.  There’s the state takeover of the school board and the Parking Authority in 2001. Then there are the state’s attempts to preempt Philadelphia from enacting a wage equity bill that passed City Council, regulation of  certain gun sales, a living wage, and now this:  The state has preempted the city’s right to enact new regulations on tobacco sales. MORE…