PA Budget Standoff One Week Old and No Resolution in Sight-Monday, July 6, 2015
by News Department on 07/06/15
The Associated Press-HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s budget standoff is nearly a week old and the first substantive talks to resolve it are scheduled today.
With state agencies operating and state employees getting paid through existing state tax revenue, there is little sense of a crisis atmosphere in Harrisburg considering state government lacks the full authority to spend money without a bipartisan budget deal.
Today’s talks are to involve top aides to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and legislative leaders of both parties. The Legislature is in recess. The impasse started last Tuesday when Wolf vetoed a $ 30 billion Republican budget bill sent to him hours before a passage deadline.
The veto punctuated a partisan war of words as Wolf and the GOP-controlled Legislature clashed over taxes, spending priorities, linked issues such as property tax relief, privatizing liquor sales and conflicting mandates from voters last November.
Wolf and legislative leaders appeared together the following day to announce the restart of budget talks while acknowledging major differences stand in the way of a compromise.
The lack of a budget means delays in state payments to contractors, vendors and grant recipients. Nonprofit agencies that help the poor and disadvantaged could really feel the pinch starting later this month.
“The folks that are going to see the impact first are the human services agencies,” House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R- 62, Indiana, said. “We’re starting to hunker down,” Gary Drapek, president of United Way of Lackawanna and Wayne Counties, said. “You have a situation that could be very detrimental to a lot of people in the commonwealth but there is no sense of urgency to it.”
Wolf has pushed an ambitious first- term agenda to bridge a projected $ 1.2 billion deficit, restore previous education cuts and provide school property tax relief through a combination of tax hikes and tax shifts, including a severance tax on natural gas production.
The vetoed GOP budget bill contained no new taxes or tax increases. It included more than $ 200 million in anticipated revenue from the sale of state liquor stores and shifted unspent funds to help bridge that deficit.
GOP l awmakers also passed two companion bills to move new state government and school employees from a traditional defined- benefit pension plan to a defined- contribution pension plan, similar to a 401K investment, and to privatize the state- owned liquor stores. Wolf vetoed the privatization plan Thursday.
The GOP’s $ 30 billion budget would be the largest in state history, Sen. Lisa Baker, R- 20, Lehman Township, said.
“While it does not contain all of the funding restorations and spending additions that numerous advocacy groups have been seeking, most taxpayers will find it hard to accept that this level of spending starves state government,” she said.
Rep. Marty Flynn, D- 113, Scranton, sharply criticized the GOP budget for having no severance tax and property tax relief.
“We ( Democratic lawmakers) had no input whatsoever on the budget,” he said.
Baker offered some advice on what to expect in the weeks ahead.
“If history is a guide, there will be mix of strident public commentary and behind- thescenes negotiations until a settlement is reached,” she said. “Since this is the first budget for the Wolf administration, it is impossible to say how long the process will take, or when a settlement will be reached, or which elements will be included in the final package.”
