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Tom Corbett: 5 things to get done in second term
If Republican Gov. Tom Corbett gets elected to a second term, he said he’ll try to get two proposals that failed to pass — pension reform and liquor privatization — through the General Assembly.
So what would he do differently to get them passed?
“Maybe I communicate better. Maybe I didn’t do the best communication,” Corbett said. “But also in a second term, there’s a little more freedom, frankly, because I’m not running for re-election after that.”
Corbett made the comments during a recent editorial board meeting with several Digital First Media news organiza-
tions.
Corbett said he got a lot of things done in his first term, including a multibillion-dollar transportation bill that passed in November 2013 and unemployment compensation reform.
But here are five issues Corbett wants to tackle in a second term.
No. 1: Pensions
Corbett compared the state budget’s pension costs to “a vehicle that’s leaking oil.”
“You’re pouring more, and more, and more revenue into it every year — $610 million or more each year,” Corbett said.
The Corbett administration has said the State Employees’ Retirement System and the Public School Employees’ Retirement System are about $50 billion short of what they need to cover current and future retirees.
Corbett has proposed shifting to a 401(k)-style system, but those efforts have failed to pass. The latest plan Corbett backed, from state Rep. Mike Tobash, wouldn’t give immediate budget relief, Tobash has said. But Corbett has said it would be a start.
“Until you fix that issue, we’re always going to be looking for revenue,” Corbett said.
He has said he would call a special session of the General Assembly to tackle pensions in a second term.
No. 2: Liquor privatization
“Why are we in the business of selling alcohol? I still can’t figure it out to this day,” said Corbett, who supports privatizing the state-owned wine and liquor stores.
He said a liquor priva- tization proposal from his administration would have brought in more than $1 billion, which could have gone to education and pensions. The state House in March 2013 approved a liquor privatization bill, but it didn’t clear the Senate.
Republicans control both the state House and state Senate.
Corbett said tougher issues are generally more likely to pass in the first year of a two-year legislative session. He said pension and liquor privatization proposals didn’t receive any Democratic votes.
Later in the interview, Corbett said Democrats compromised other times, but he said they didn’t want to “give him a win” in his election year.
“It was good up through last year, good through the transportation” bill, Corbett said.
No. 3: Education funding
Corbett signed legislation in June to create a commission to develop and recommend a new formula for basic education funding to Pennsylvania school districts.
Corbett said the state needs to figure out what fair funding is and how to get there.
The commission says the new formula will take relative wealth, local taxes, price differences for regions and other factors into account.
When asked about not following the state’s 2007 costing-out study for education funding, Corbett said “it didn’t work.” He said former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell didn’t follow it.
“What is fair funding? You have to define it first,” he said.
No. 4: Jobs
“If you go back and look at the first term, the promise was f iscal dis-
Corbett said he got a lot of things done in his first term, including a multibilliondollar transportation bill that passed in November 2013 and unemployment compensation reform.
cipline, limited government, free enterprise — we’ve accomplished that,” Corbett said.
Corbett said that’s the foundation for the next term. Corbett pointed to the unemployment rate, which was above 8 percent when he took office and was 5.8 percent in August. He said about 180,000 private sector jobs have been filled.
He said there are about 250,000 open positions, and he wants to work on connecting people with them.
No. 5: Health care
Corbett said out of 500 school districts, there are about 485 health care plans that are “all different, all tailored to that district.”
Corbett said the state needs to consider consolidating them.
Wouldn’t t hat save money for the taxpayers of Pennsylvania?” Corbett said, later adding, “Do you think that we might get some economies of scale there?”