Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
$32B budget would send more to schools, pensions, disabled
HARRISBURG » Pennsylvania lawmakers got their first look Thursday at a $32 billion compromise budget package as they plowed through the second-to-last day of state government’s fiscal year without a plan to pay for it or handle the state’s biggest cash shortfall since the recession.
The bipartisan spending plan will include hundreds of millions of dollars more for schools, pension obligations and services for the intellectually disabled but will demand belt-tightening across state government agencies and in its most expensive program, Medicaid. It also sees savings from a shrinking prisons population.
Preliminary votes on the package were possible late Thursday night in the Senate Appropriations Committee, with floor votes planned in both chambers on Friday. Lawmakers expected to return to the Capitol next week to figure out how to raise $2 billion-plus to cover a two-year projected shortfall, with antitax Republican leaders looking to borrow, expand casino-style gambling offerings or sell more privatesector liquor licenses.
Democrats and some southeastern Pennsylvania Republicans are pressing for a new tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas production in the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state. Lawmakers’ coming debate over the revenue will take place in the shadow of an entrenched post-recession deficit that has damaged Pennsylvania’s credit rating and left it among the lowest of states.
“Everybody better bring their notepad and pencils and tell me what they’re for,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson. “I’m tired of hearing about what everybody’s opposed to. Tell me what you’re for.”
The spending figure in the just-unveiled budget package falls between what Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf had sought in his February proposal and what the House passed in April, strictly with Republican support. Wolf’s administration had warned for weeks that the House bill would squeeze services and force layoffs across state government, but Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said Thursday night that Democrats were pleased with the final spending plan.
The package authorizes an approximately $870 million increase in spending over last year’s approved budget of $31.5 billion, or almost 3 percent, including about $400 million being added to the just-ending fiscal year’s books.
According to Senate officials, new spending includes a $100 million boost Wolf sought for public school instruction and operations, or almost 2 percent more, and $30 million more for early-childhood education, a 15 percent increase. Higher education aid is flat.
Hundreds of millions more are going to pension obligations and nearly $200 million more to improve services for adults with intellectual disabilities or autism.
The money would bump pay for the first time in at least five years for people who work with the intellectually disabled, whittle down an emergency waiting list and bridge a gap in services for students graduating high school.
Meanwhile, the package wipes out House cuts of roughly $50 million to county-run programs — cuts that counties had warned would force property tax increases — and another $50 million cut sought by Wolf to school transportation aid that had been protested by rural school districts. It also restores a $30 million grant to the University of Pennsylvania’s veterinary school, which Wolf sought to eliminate, Senate officials said.
To curb spending, the plan asks Wolf’s administration to find savings across its agency administrative budgets and in a Medicaid program that, including federal dollars, costs $30 billion. It does not say how, and Republican lawmakers say it could include cutting reimbursements to insurers that administer much of the program or asking the federal government for waivers to seek cost-sharing from enrollees.
The plan would incorporate Wolf’s push to merge the Department of Corrections and the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole into a new Department of Criminal Justice, but it is silent on Wolf’s proposed merger of the Human Services, Health, Aging and Drug and Alcohol Programs departments. Senators say they plan to set up a task force to study and make recommendations on it.