Site last updated: Saturday, April 27, 2024

Log In

Reset Password
MENU
Butler County's great daily newspaper

State nears record

Budget battle now 7 months

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania government will set a modern state record for gridlock when Gov. Tom Wolf sends lawmakers a new spending plan and warns them that they must fix the deficit and fully fund schools, or force schools to close and local taxes to increase.

Wolf’s fight with lawmakers is now seven months deep into the current fiscal year, with billions of dollars for prisons, hospitals and schools in limbo and frustrated lawmakers unable to see a way to a compromise.

The first-term Democrat will deliver an approximately $32 billion plan to the Republican-controlled Legislature on Tuesday. The key to that plan, and resolving the fight over the current year’s budget, is breaking down Republican resistance to a $1 billion-plus tax increase. That could prove especially difficult in an election year.

Wolf wants the money to close a long-term deficit that has damaged Pennsylvania’s credit rating and to boost aid to public school systems that have among the nation’s biggest gaps between wealthy and poor districts. However, Republicans, who have amassed their largest legislative majorities in decades, have their own list of policy objectives, and Wolf has had to juggle the competing priorities of House and Senate Republicans.

In all, it amounted to a year of historic partisan gridlock, with lawmakers warning repeatedly that Harrisburg is becoming like Washington, D.C.

In Monday statement, Wolf gave a preview of what he will tell lawmakers.

“We have a choice,” Wolf wrote. “We must choose a path that funds our schools, eliminates our deficit, and puts Pennsylvania back on track. It is time for us to finish the job and restore Pennsylvanians’ shaken faith in their government. It is time to fund our schools.”

More in Business

Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter

* indicates required
TODAY'S PHOTOS