Gov. Tom Corbett

HARRISBURG — Plans to privatize state-controlled liquor and wine sales, send more kids to privately operated schools, slap a levy on Pennsylvania’s booming natural gas industry and improve transportation funding — can it all fit into the state Legislature’s three-month fall session?

Gov. Tom Corbett and his fellow Republicans who control the state Legislature seem intent on trying. At the same time, lawmakers will have to deal with the politically touchy exercise of redrawing the borders for Pennsylvania’s legislative and congressional districts.

Next year is an election year, when legislators might rather put off heated or sensitive issues. That means the fall may be the best chance before 2013 to reach a consensus on liquor sales, education, gas drilling and transportation funding issues.

State senators return today to Harrisburg from their traditional summer break for the first of 23 voting session days scheduled through Dec. 14. The House returns next Monday for the first of 27 scheduled voting days, also ending Dec. 14.

The only item required by the state constitution is that a five-member panel, including four lawmakers, redraws the boundaries of all 253 legislative districts, as they do every decade.

Corbett acknowledged the other four issues for legislators will be a lot to handle.

“You have four very big items for a legislature to deal with in a short period of time because next year is election year,” Corbett said Thursday on WPHT-AM. “So if we’re going to get stuff done, it has to get done in this session between now” and the end of the year.

He said “school choice” was his top priority, a subject that includes overhauling the startup process for charter schools and creating taxpayer-paid vouchers to help students pay tuition at private or religious schools.

In some instances, Republican lawmakers are waiting for Corbett to put forward his own proposals and campaign publicly for them. One unknown is whether the governor’s priorities and those of leaders in the House and Senate — all Republicans — will line up to produce major accomplishments.

Asked about school choice, House Majority Leader Mike Turzai said simply: “That’s certainly one of the priorities for the governor.”

Turzai said he will put his energy into tax and business issues, including cutting business taxes, encouraging pipeline construction, and privatizing liquor and wine sales. The Republican from Allegheny described these measures to prime a sluggish economy as “really tangible pieces that allow the private sector to say, ‘Hey, there’s something going on in Pennsylvania. We want to be part of it.’”

On state-controlled liquor and wine sales, Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, has questioned the rationale for privatization at this time. The issue also is drawing heavy opposition from unions, Democrats and some rank-and-file Republicans.

“Folks are more worried about where they’re going to find their next job,” said Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny. “There’re a half-million people out of work. They’re not worried about where they can buy their next bottle of wine. To me, that’s outrageous.”

In the Senate, Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, said Marcellus Shale issues were a top priority: the long-debated tax or impact fee on the industry and the expansions of safety inspections to a network of virtually unregulated pipelines that gather and ferry the gas from well sites. School choice is also at the top of his list.

Pileggi said his caucus also would like to see funding increased for Pennsylvania’s beleaguered system of highways, bridges and mass transit agencies, a goal Democrats strongly support.

But transportation funding is a charged issue in Pennsylvania, and Republican lawmakers warn that Corbett will have to lead the way by saying what kind of higher taxes or fees he will support and rallying public opinion behind it.

With regard to school choice, Senate Education Chairman Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, said negotiators from the House, Senate and the Corbett administration have worked hard this summer on developing a plan they all could support.

The potential is there to find common ground, but the measure must pass no later than December and the governor must pound the pavement, legislator-to-legislator and town-to-town, to build support for ideas new to Pennsylvania, Piccola said.

“The governor has to get involved in this, both internally in the Capitol and also outside the Capitol around the state,” Piccola said. “He’s got to show that this is part of his plan to improve education.”