Legislators play blame game over budget negotiation impasse
Legislators play blame game over budget negotiation impasse
Author: Jason Gottesman/Monday, June 22, 2015/Categories: News and Views
As the end of Pennsylvania’s fiscal year grows closer, leaders from all four caucuses began pointing fingers in earnest Monday, blaming one another for why negotiations on the budget and related pieces of legislation like pension reform and liquor privatization have stalled.
Democratic leaders from both the House and Senate emerged from a Monday morning budget-related meeting with Gov. Tom Wolf expressing frustration at an impasse in overall negotiations they say is caused by Speaker Mike Turzai’s (R-Allegheny) unwillingness to move forward without a deal on liquor privatization.
“The hold up in my view, and I think the consensus is, that wine and spirits privatization is the thing that’s bringing everything to a halt,” said Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa (D-Allegheny).
“It’s a matter of priorities,” said House Minority Leader Frank Dermody (D-Allegheny). “We have the Speaker of the House here worried about booze and how we buy booze instead of worrying about our kids and how we’ll educate them.”
He said the budget should be about the priorities of Pennsylvanians, who he posited care about the education of children.
They labeled the liquor privatization issue as a red herring.
While the leaders stopped short of saying whether Democrats of either chamber would put up votes for any privatization plan if it meant more money for public education in another area of the budget, they said a conversation needs to take place about compromise on the issue.
Compromise rooted in modernization, as opposed to privatization.
“We’ve talked about finding common ground with respect to a modernization proposal for the LCB,” said Sen. Costa. “That’s where the governor’s at [and] that’s where we have been throughout this process.”
Rep. Dermody said legislative Democrats would support a proposal that Gov. Wolf would sign that also would return value to the people of Pennsylvania.
“We’re not going to do anything that’s going to wind up bankrupting the state of Pennsylvania and lose money for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” said Senate Appropriations Committee Minority Chairman Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia). “Everything Speaker Turzai has put out has driven us in that direction, that’s not something that’s on the table right now.”
In sum, Sen. Costa said the priority for Democrats will remain the education of Pennsylvania’s children and seeking a reasonable severance tax on natural gas extracts to fund those education proposals.
Also of priority for Senate Democrats is property tax relief and Sen. Costa said his caucus will likely unveil its proposal for how to achieve that later this week.
He said the proposal is more of a “direct approach” that provides significant relief by driving out dollars differently than other proposals.
In terms of the progress of the budget relative to the June 30 budget deadline, Sen. Costa told reporters Monday morning that he anticipates Republicans will end up ramming something through the legislature comprising of the budget and other priorities and putting a proposal on Gov. Wolf’s desk by the deadline.
He said if the governor were to veto what lands on his desk, Senate Democrats would stand behind the action.
“[We’d] begin to work to find a compromise proposal the governor finds acceptable on those two issues and what we find acceptable as well,” he said.
Later Monday, Republican leaders chided Gov. Wolf for taking off of the table any possible plan design changes for the public pension system, particularly the defined contribution-like plan in Senate Bill 1, which was said to be the focal point of what Republican leaders are working from to draft a GOP-compromise pension reform plan.
“The governor has nearly indicated in negotiations that he is willing to talk about an anti-spiking provision for current and new employees and risk sharing,” Speaker Turzai said. “The governor on his own really took off—really unilaterally—any chance for any type of defined contribution for new hires at all. We don’t think this is negotiating in good faith and we think it’s the single most important issue facing the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, both in terms of the issue itself and in terms of the budget.”
Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R-Jefferson) said Senate Bill 1 is the cornerstone for the budget and moving cost-to-carry away from cutting other lines in the budget.
“You can’t take away the hallmark part of this legislation,” he said.
Sen. Scarnati said no other budget discussions should take place before there is resolution on pension reform and liquor privatization.
Both leaders remained optimistic that an intra-party compromise can be found on pension reform and liquor privatization to fill the $1.2 billion deficit and get a budget sent to the governor by June 30.
Robert Storm
Eastern Region Vice President
www.pscoa.org