“State Affairs Week elevates Coro Fellows to see the fuller picture of regional issues through a statewide lens.”
This is how CORO Fellow Larissa Davis recently characterized the CORO Pittsburgh’s State Affairs Week in Harrisburg. The CORO Fellows in Public Affairs program is a nationally competitive, full-time, graduate-level experiential leadership training program that prepares diverse and committed individuals for effective and ethical leadership. The Coro program provides Fellows with the opportunity to engage in weekly leadership training seminars; conduct group interviews with subject-matter experts; participate in eight-week placements in the government, nonprofit, and business sectors; and develop their own sense of themselves as leaders.
From March 17-19, 2014, the Fellows bussed to the State Capitol for the program’s State Affairs Week. State Affairs Week challenges Fellows to use the deeper, more complex appreciation for regional issues they have developed as a basis for exploring public policy from a state perspective. The Fellows tackled the countless policy topics by narrowing their scope and focusing on four key policy areas of the Keystone State: Economic Development, Social Welfare, Education, and Marcellus Shale.
The Economic Development learning track met with stakeholders from both the public and private sectors of economic development in the Commonwealth. They also met with those who research the implications of policies translated from theory or proposals into action. At the Pennsylvania Business Council, Peter Schoffelen, Mario Enriquez, and Larissa Davis spoke with President and CEO David Patti. From that fruitful conversation, the Fellows learned about the organization’s voice in representing the private companies that employ some of the highest number of Pennsylvania residents across various sectors. At the Keystone Research Center, the Fellows, “dove into the importance of workforce development, and the various forms of that development in Pennsylvania over time,” said CORO Fellow Larissa Davis. The group of three built upon those interactions and came in with a good understanding of the state’s pressing issues when Executive Director of the House Appropriations Committee Miriam Fox discussed Governor Corbett’s 2014-2015 proposed fiscal year budget.
The Education Learning track included Omar Brown, Gianina Marquez-Olivera, and Shikha Jareth, who spoke with an array of stakeholders and policy makers regarding K-12 education. According to Omar Brown, the largest take-away of the week was “cultural diversity in leadership is crucial at the state government level.” In addition to meeting with state Senators Teplitz, Clymer, and the education staff member for Senator Folmer, the group also had a one-one-one discussion with Sharon Ward, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center. Their conversation with Ward centered on education policy research. About the conversation, CORO Fellow Shikha Jareth, said “we learned the difference between politics and policy.”
The group with perhaps the most recent issue to geyser to the state level, Marcellus Shale, included Grace Evans, Tyre Ellison, and Patrick Flannery. The Marcellus Shale group secured a broad array of stakeholders representing commonly espoused as well as other nuanced perspectives on natural gas drilling in the Keystone State. “Marcellus Shale is an enormous resource that has the potential for tremendous business profits as well as a large enough tax base to support services inside of the state. With a proposed severance tax alone, the formation could provide as much as $400 million to the general fund in the first year.” expressed CORO Fellow Patrick Flannery. In addition to gleaning a better understanding of drilling from a representative of a district where drilling occurs as well as a government office which manages oil and gas, the group met with an industry lobbyist who provided a more in-depth perspective from his sector. Overall, the week’s meetings “were eye-opening…it was interesting that there has not been long-term planning on how to use the resource to address the needs of the state,” said CORO Fellow Tyre Ellison.
The smallest group of all had the most number of meetings and perhaps the broadest spread as they interrogated the concept and manifestations of social welfare in the Commonwealth. Katia Kelpanchuk and Ryan Mayo spoke on issues ranging from human relations to health insurance to corrections. The interview that resonated most with CORO Fellow Ryan Mayo was the interview with Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel where “Secretary Wetzel showed his dedication to a statewide vision of prisoner rehabilitation and re-entrance rather than punishment.” In a similar vein, CORO Fellow Katia Klepanchuk found the eHealth Partnership Authority interview most impactful because “it was inspiring to see an organization engaging with a complex system and being effective in modernizing it and making it more efficient.”
Having state affairs week as well as neighborhood and city level studies of the North Side and City of Pittsburgh under their belt, the CORO Fellows group aims to graduate once again to Washington DC and bring back lessons from the national level to share in Pittsburgh.National Affairs Week brings together the skills the Fellows built and understandings they’ve drawn from their experiences to a whole new level. Fellows have the opportunity to see the whole system: the national and international decisions that impact our regional and local setting. Similarly, the week allows Fellows to see how the regional and local contexts in the Pittsburgh region shape the events on the larger level.
The Fellows ask that youplease contribute to their continued growth and learning. National Affairs Week is the capstone of the Fellows program. It serves as the inspiration and challenge to develop solutions that holistically answer the complex issues that affect the communities of Pittsburgh. More importantly, it serves as an opening as the group continues to strive for a greater depth of understanding, and then make a longer-term impact in the Pittsburgh region. The Fellows are looking for your help. Please considerdonating to the CORO Fellows and help make this trip a reality.