BUDGET BARNSTORMING
Gov. Wolf pushes spending priorities in his final year
With revenues exceeding forecasts, a healthy rainy day fund, a growing economy and no proposed tax hikes, this is the right time to make the investments contained in his $43.7 billion budget, Gov. Tom Wolf told a crowd of supporters inside Phoenixville Borough Hall on Wednesday.
Wolf and his revenue secretary, C. Daniel Hassel, arrived in Phoenixville from Pittsburgh for the second of two stops on either side of the state in a daylong push to build support for his budget priorities.
Throughout his seven years in office, Wolf said he has proposed budgets that have “tried to make the lives of Pennsylvanians better” and this one, his last, is no different.
“Smart investments aren’t a burden to taxpayers,” said Wolf, a Democrat. “They’re a down payment on a better future for all of
us. Smart investments now that help Pennsylvanians thrive can actually help lower costs to taxpayers in the future. Education is a great example of this.”
Since he was first elected, Wolf has struggled to increase the state’s share of public education funding and to make the distribution of that funding fairer. In 2016, he signed the bill creating the fair funding formula crafted
by a bipartisan committee instituted by his predecessor, Republican Tom Corbett.
The formula aims to provide increased funding to school districts with increasing student populations, and to those with a decreased ability to fund schools through local property taxes. And each year, despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s school funding remains so unfair the state has been
sued to improve it, he insisted has moved the state closer to funding fairness in education.
“Each year, I haven’t gotten everything I’ve asked for, but we’ve gotten more and more each year” for public education, Wolf said.
Over the years, Pennsylvania has increased public school funding by $2 billion and last year’s budget included a bipartisan agreement for additional “level up” funding, to bring under-funded districts such as Pottstown, which is the 10th most under-funded in the state, closer to parity, he said.
His current budget proposal calls for $1.8 billion more for education with $300 million of that set aside for the poorest school districts.
A former business owner, Wolf said contrary to conventional wisdom, businesses do not succeed by “cutting to make ends meet. They continue to make investments to grow. Investment in the people of Pennsylvania is not fiscally irresponsible and a good education is an investment in our future.”
He noted that Pennsylvania has more colleges, universities and post-secondary schools than most states, and yet its population