Senate will try again to balance Pa. budget
‘Menu of options’ considered to raise revenue
HARRISBURG — It’s back to PlanA.
The full Pennsylvania Senate is scheduled to return to the Capitol on Wednesday for a two-day stay, andit could begin voting on bills to raise new revenue for the state’s cash-strapped coffers through a mixof borrowing and new taxes.
That was the plan being discussed among budget negotiators before talks were upended last week, when the House’s top Republican tried — and failed — to push an alternative proposal at the11th hour.
If the Republican-controlled Senate goes through with votes this week, it would set the stage for a political showdown — not with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, but with party colleagues who hold a commanding majority in the House.
The House would be forced to either grit its teeth and pass a proposal that its top leader, House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-
Marshall, has derided, or put off dealing with the issue until its summer break ends in September, prolonging the impasse over how to complete the state budget.
Jennifer Kocher, spokeswoman for Senate Republicans, said Tuesday that GOP leaders in her chamber have for months discussed “a menu of options” to pay for the nearly $32 billion spending plan that Mr. Wolf allowed to become law without his signature.
“We’ve now gotten to the point where we are going to order from that menu,” she said, adding that Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, has warned repeatedly that the decision will not be an easy one.
The Legislature, with just hours to spare before the July 1 start of the new fiscal year, passed the budget but without a corresponding plan to pay for it.
At the time, Mr. Wolf said he was confident lawmakers would resolve the issue quickly. But nearly a month later, negotiators have not been able to agree.
Negotiators have discussed borrowing up to $1.5 billion to cover a shortfall in last fiscal year's budget, using proceeds that flow annually into the state’s tobacco settlement fund. But they’ve wrangled over ways to raise another $700 million to cover a projected deficit in this year’s spending blueprint.
Senate Republicans, along with Mr. Wolf and a number of Democrats, appear open to raising new dollars through increased or new taxes.
Among other items, they have discussed reinstating a tax on natural gas consumers and extending the state sales tax to basic cable service.
Democrats, along with some moderate Republicans, have also pushed for a new tax on natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale. Though Pennsylvania is the only major energy-producing state that doesn’t tax extraction, GOP legislative leaders have historically been averse to it. The state currently charges a per-well “impact fee.”
It is unclear whether any of those items will make the final cut this week, should the Senate decide to go forward with a vote on a revenue package.
But a number of House Republicans, led by Mr. Turzai, are opposed to any tax increases.
It was that opposition that drove Mr. Turzai to take a gamble last weekend: He called the chamber to the Capitol for a rare summer weekend session, pushing a no-tax plan that would have relied on straight borrowing and siphoning money from special funds that subsidize everything from farmland preservation to 911 call centers.
The gamble blew up within a matter of hours. House members went home without even taking up his plan in committee, let alone on the floor.
After the plan failed, Mr. Turzai explained it away as House Republicans not wanting to “bail out” the Senate or the governor. This week, his camp has taken a slightly softer tone. Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Republicans, said Tuesday that leaders were “in conversation” with their counterparts.
On Tuesday, a few dozen demonstrators from the activist group Pittsburgh United, unions and other groups gathered outside Mr. Turzai’s district office in McCandless, arguing that his no-tax plan would put the state further in debt and threaten social services, while protecting corporate interests.
“I am embarrassed and dismayed that my representative, Mike Turzai, is pretty much single-handedly responsible for this delay,” said constituent Linda Bishop.