Sen. Corman Speaks At Press Club
Sen. Corman Speaks At Press Club
By Jason Gottesman
Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R-Centre) was the featured speaker at March’s Pennsylvania Press Club luncheon.
His remarks touched on a number of different areas including Gov. Tom Wolf’s budget proposal, how to best utilize the natural gas industry, and the need for pension reform.
Sen. Corman began his remarks discussing Gov. Wolf’s budget.
“I heard a lot of the comments from the governor’s team, his PR team, talking about how it’s a bold, new, fresh plan for Pennsylvania, with which I would respond with: Governor, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree on that one,” he said.
Specifically addressing the component of the proposal reducing property taxes, Sen. Corman noted it is inappropriate for the governor to compare his plan with Republican plans since House Bill 76 and Senate Bill 76 totally eliminated property taxes and a proposal by Rep. Dave Reed (R-Indiana) reduced property taxes on a dollar-for-dollar basis, both of which he said were lacking in the governor’s proposal.
He said the plan looks most like what Gov. Bob Casey put forward in 1991, which he noted was shot down in a referendum by voters 80 to 20.
“They knew unless there was a mechanism to keep taxes down or eliminate them, they were just going to go back up,” he said. “This plan is nothing new, it’s something that’s been batted around for a long time.”
Discussing Gov. Wolf’s proposal to raise the sales tax by ten percent and expand which items are subject to the tax, he questioned whether the plan is fairer noting it taxes things like child care, textbooks, and funeral expenses.
“This is real money,” he told attendees. “This not something that’s going to be not missed by the average person who is working in Pennsylvania today.”
He also called the sales tax proposal and other tax proposals offered by Gov. Wolf—including the cigarette tax proposal—regressive since they impact lower income Pennsylvanians at a greater percentage.
Moving to a discussion of the severance tax, Sen. Corman said the proposal by Gov. Wolf was “a small idea,” noting while Pennsylvania is abundant in natural gas, there is little demand for it.
He said an innovative way of trying to procure revenue out of Pennsylvania’s natural gas resources is to develop the infrastructure to get it to market and floated the idea of leasing the right-of-way on the Pennsylvania Turnpike as a revenue option.
“At least we’re trying to figure out new ways to create revenues, to create jobs,” he said. “Not just taking revenue from people who have it and giving it to people who don’t have it, that’s just an old idea.”
On education spending, Sen. Corman detailed the governor’s proposal regarding the charter school reimbursement fund and called it “an old Rendellian WAM.”
He noted the current proposal would drive more money out to urban schools and cautioned the governor to wait on touching the funding mechanism until the Basic Education Funding Commission finishes its job.
Lastly discussing pension reform, Sen. Corman stated no other issues will be discussed until there is real, substantive pension reform.
“We need to resolve that first so we can move forward,” he said.
He addressed the rumor that Gov. Wolf would like to wait until the Fall to consider pension reform, Sen. Corman said if that is the case then the budget will not be completed until the Fall.
“Pensions is the budget,” he said.
He chided the governor for taking out a $3 billion bond to put toward the PSERS unfunded liability and cautioned on turning that soft debt into hard debt.
“Do we really want to bet on Wall Street again without making any substantive changes,” he asked.
Discussing what the Senate pension reform legislation will look like, he indicated it will include a substantive design change moving public school and state employees from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution 401(k)-type plan.
“It’s going to right size the benefits, it’s going to deal with design change,” he said.
Sen. Corman offered that he expects the bill to be filed in April with hearings to follow in the anticipation that the bill will be acted upon by the full Senate sometime in May.
Touching briefly on the recent issues with Acting State Police Commissioner Marcus Brown, Sen. Corman said the governor has decided to back the nominee and Col. Brown will receive a confirmation hearing and an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
He added that the Acting Commissioner’s actions were “not good enough” for the man who is to lead the top law enforcement agency in the Commonwealth and noted when one enters into public life they have to understand there might be criticisms offered at them.
Sen. Corman said he expects nominations to be moving through the Senate sometime after that chamber returns to session.
Asked about his own gubernatorial aspirations, Sen. Corman quipped this year he hopes to be Coach of the Year for the Bellefonte Little League. More seriously, he noted he is focusing on doing the job of Senate Majority Leader for the time being.
Robert Storm
Eastern Region Vice President
www.pscoa.org