Corbett visits fair, meets GOP leaders
Govenor Tom Corbett on Wednesday defended the lack of progress of his major proposals on transportation, the privatization of liquor stores, and pension reform when he visited Butler County.
He was here Wednesday night to meet with county Republican officials at The Art Center in the city and to visit the Big Butler Fair in Franklin Township.
Corbett failed to get any of his three key proposals passed by the Legislature before the July 1 state budget deadline, despite having Republican control in both the House of Representatives and Senate.
“I don't think we could've done anything differently,” said Corbett, who passed most of the blame on to Democratic leaders.
Corbett said the Legislature simply ran out of time over the last week on state worker pension reform and that leaders are going to work with him on the bill in September.
But Corbett urged bipartisanship on issues concerning funding for transportation and the privatization of state liquor stores.
“The transportation package that came out of the Senate came out in a bipartisan manner,” he said. “Now we're over in the House, and because of the spectrum of Republicans in the majority, there aren't enough votes on the Republican side to get to the mark needed. So we need to build a bipartisan bill in the House also.”
“The majority vote will be Republican but Democrats have to come to the table.”
Corbett said the transportation bill was set up in a bipartisan manner in the House, but Democratic leaders shot it down in the final week to stop his liquor bill in the Senate.
“What happened this week is Democratic leadership told their members not to vote for it,” Corbett said about the transportation bill. “Keep in mind when it came out of the committee in the House, it came out bipartisan. But then the leadership said no. And they did it, in my opinion, because they wanted to stop the liquor bill that was over in the Senate.”
Corbett added that many people believed the liquor bill would not succeed in the Senate if the transportation bill failed in the House.
“I am very disappointed in Democratic leadership playing politics over good policy.” Corbett said.
But the governor remains confident that each proposal will pass, despite a more challenging political climate in the fall when elections are closer.
“My expectation is we're going to come back, work all summer on transportation and pensions and getting votes for the liquor control,” Corbett said. “We'll get it down on the Senate and get it passed.”
Corbett also defended his handling of the budget against criticism from state Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-12th.
Metcalfe said Corbett spent too much time on his proposals and failed in the most important task of getting the budget done on time. Metcalfe said the budget for general appropriations was signed into law, but the fiscal code, tax code, education code, and welfare code bills were not finished by the July 1 deadline.
“The progress of the budget?,” Corbett said. “On time, no new taxes, increased funding for education, increased funding for people with disabilities, and increased funding for law enforcement.
“People criticize governors for everything. Mr. Metcalfe should worry about his own business.”
