Pa. House sends budget to Corbett
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HARRISBURG -- After almost six hours of contentious debate, the state House late Wednesday sent Gov. Tom Corbett a $27.15 billion spending plan that allows him to keep his campaign promises of signing a budget on time and with no tax increases.
Those factors made it a key victory for the new administration, though Mr. Corbett didn't get everything he wanted. He'll have to wait until fall for lawmakers to consider his highly touted plan to provide private-school vouchers to low-income children whose neighborhood public schools are under-performing.
When Mr. Corbett signs that general-fund bill, likely later today, it will be the first on-time budget in nine years. It also will be the first time since at least 1970 that state spending will be less than the previous year.
The spending bill passed the House Wednesday in a 109-to-92 vote that mostly followed party lines.
A handful of related budget bills are still working their way through the Legislature. Those include a plan for how education dollars will be distributed to school districts.
Democrats are unhappy with that distribution formula, saying that the poorest and most rural school districts will lose the most.
They also have voiced concerns about a provision in the still-to-be-approved welfare code that they believe provides too much discretion to the administration to alter benefit eligibility and change other guidelines.
Passage came over the objections of Democrats, who say the budget under-funds education, health care and human services. They complained that spending reductions will force school districts to raise local taxes in order to compensate for funding reductions.
Republicans have an answer for that: legislation that would require voter approval for property tax hikes that exceed an inflationary index. That bill could come to a vote today -- that, too, over Democrats' objections.
First Published June 30, 2011 12:00 am
