Thursday, Sept. 12, 2002 | 9:33 a.m.
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Pennsylvanians want the state to spend more on education and prescription drugs for the elderly, but they oppose increasing taxes and favor expanding legalized gambling to raise revenue, according to a statewide survey.
Seventy percent of the respondents said the state spends too little on subsidizing prescription drugs for senior citizens, 61 percent said too little is spent on public education and 52 percent said the same about higher education, according to the poll by IssuesPA, a project of the Pennsylvania Economy League.
Asked where they stand on various ways of raising additional money, at least 80 percent said they "somewhat" or "strongly" oppose any increase in the state's 6 percent sales tax or its 2.8 percent individual income tax. Sixty-nine percent oppose expanding the sales tax to include more items, 68 percent oppose establishing a statewide property tax and 57 percent opposed increasing business taxes.
Solid majorities favor permissive gambling laws: Sixty-five percent want to expand the state lottery, 63 percent support allowing slot machines at horse racing tracks and 59 percent want riverboat gambling.
In conducting the poll, the Millersville University Center for Opinion Research interviewed 833 randomly selected adult Pennsylvanians by telephone between Aug. 2 and Sept. 4. The sampling error margin for the survey was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Both of the major gubernatorial candidates have pledged support for legalizing slot machines at racetracks -- Democratic Edward G. Rendell to help finance his overhaul of public-school funding, Republican Mike Fisher to pay for an expansion of prescription drugs for seniors.
Rendell has also advocated expanding the state's lottery games to help raise money to expand the prescription-drug programs. The former Philadelphia mayor also has not ruled out riverboat gambling, although he has said recently that the chances of his proposing such an initiative are slim.
A campaign spokesman for Fisher, the state attorney general, reiterated that his boss opposes any expansion of gambling beyond the slots-at-tracks proposal. Kent Gates, Fisher's campaign manager, said he believes support for riverboat gambling would shrink once specific sites are proposed.
"I think many people won't want them in their back yard," he said.
Rendell's campaign spokesman, Dan Fee, said the survey "matches what Ed's been hearing" on the campaign trail. Voters are concerned about the economy and education, he said, "and they're willing to be creative about how to fix both of those."
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