In this May 26, 2021 file photo House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa. Republicans and Democrats are feuding over whether Pennsylvania's roughly $40 billion budget package negotiated behind closed doors and passed within hours of becoming public includes money for the state auditor general to begin auditing election results.

HARRISBURG — Republicans and Democrats are feuding over whether Pennsylvania’s roughly $40 billion budget package negotiated behind closed doors and passed within hours of becoming public includes money for the state auditor general to begin auditing election results.

House Speaker Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster, maintains that budget legislation carries $3.1 million for Auditor General Tim DeFoor to create a bureau of election audits with broad authority to subpoena materials and review votes counted, ballots, ballot envelopes, election machine logs and pre-election machine tests.

Gov. Tom Wolf and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature say there was no agreement to fund an election-auditing bureau in budget legislation on Wolf’s desk, and there is nothing in the legislation requiring funding for it.

Separate election legislation that authorizes the auditor general to begin auditing elections was written unilaterally and passed by Republican lawmakers and is headed for a veto by Wolf. Every Democratic lawmaker, except for one, voted against it.

Cutler’s office said DeFoor has the authority to independently create an election-auditing bureau, even if Wolf follows through on his threat to veto the GOP’s election bill.

“We expect him to create that bureau with that money,” Cutler’s spokesperson Michael Straub said. “If he decides that it takes legislation to create the bureau, then we’ll work with him to get that done.”

Democratic lawmakers contend that DeFoor has no such authority, and are urging Wolf to use his line-item veto authority to eliminate any funding for an election-auditing bureau.

Cutler called the auditing provision a way to start “rebuilding trust in elections,” but Democrats accuse Republicans of eroding trust in elections in the first place by peddling lies.

“We take election integrity very seriously and do not want to perpetuate the former president’s lies and conspiracy theories,” House Minority Leader Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia, said Tuesday.

DeFoor’s office said Tuesday that it does not have the authority under state law to audit an election.

Counties run elections and state law limits the auditor general’s auditing of counties to fiscal matters, such as whether a county is forwarding tax revenue that it collects on the state’s behalf, DeFoor’s spokesperson April Hutcheson said. Budget legislation on Wolf’s desk carries a $5.7 million total funding increase, or 13%, for the Department of the Auditor General.