Lawmakers Prep For Budget Votes, Await Plan To Pay For It
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Pennsylvania lawmakers will take up a $32 billion bipartisan spending package on the state fiscal year's final day, although lawmakers don't know how it'll be paid for.
Senate and House floor votes were expected Friday, less than 24 hours after the details became public. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the spending plan Thursday night, hours after details were unveiled.
The package authorizes $870 million in spending above the last approved budget of $31.5 billion, or almost 3 percent. That includes $400 million being added to the just-ending fiscal year's books.
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.
That 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 for in-home care services, 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 Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf to school transportation aid that had been protested by rural school districts, Senate officials said.
In a statement, Wolf lauded the plan, saying it "invests more in our schools, protects seniors, creates jobs and builds on our fight to end the heroin epidemic." He also nodded to the coming debate over paying for it, and said he looked forward to lawmakers completing the process with "a long-term, responsible solution to our budget challenges."
Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said Thursday night that Democrats were pleased with the final spending plan.
Lawmakers say they'll try next week to find $2 billion-plus to cover a two-year projected shortfall. Anti-tax Republican leaders are looking to borrow, expand casino-style gambling offerings or sell more private-sector 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.
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