HARRISBURG — Democrats redoubled their efforts Friday to paint Gov. Tom Corbett and his fellow Republicans as needlessly forcing local tax increases, school layoffs and tuition increases across Pennsylvania by going forward with a plan to enact deep cuts in aid to public schools and universities while squirreling away surplus cash.

Three-quarters of the state’s school districts are increasing property taxes, about 11,000 teachers are being laid off and students at 18 state-supported universities in Pennsylvania may be facing double-digit percentage increases in tuition, said state Sen. Vincent Hughes, of Philadelphia, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

“It’s clear that we’re leaving a lot of folks without jobs, we’re creating an environment to increase taxes and local property taxes across the state and we’re doing it while we have a substantial budget surplus,” Hughes said.

On Friday, Hughes said the surplus through the nearly complete fiscal year is on pace to surpass $700 million. A portion of that, most likely one-third or less, would be used in a tentative $27.15 billion budget deal whose details are largely under wraps by Corbett and the leaders of the House and Senate’s Republican majority, who negotiated it in private.

Lawmakers are working to assemble the legislation and schedule committee and floor votes to pass the budget before the new 2011-12 fiscal year begins at the end of next week.

The plan under consideration would cut about 3 percent from the current year’s $28 billion budget as Corbett and his fellow Republicans who control the Legislature have scoured state government for cuts without raising new taxes to fill what they call a multibillion-dollar budget deficit.

Democrats say, given the strong tax collections, the deficit is well below $2 billion and that such massive cuts are unnecessary.

More than $1 billion would be cut from public schools and higher education, under the Republicans’ current plan, although GOP lawmakers point out that their plan is a substantial improvement over the more than $1.6 billion in cuts from public schools and higher education that Corbett originally had sought.

Part of the agreement that has emerged are cuts of nearly 20 percent in state aid, or about $220 million, for the 14 universities in the State System of Higher Education, as well as Penn State, Temple, Pitt and Lincoln.

Slippery Rock University is among the 14 state universities that would be affected by state budget cuts.

After a 90-minute House Appropriations Committee meeting dominated by Democratic protests, Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, defended the proposed cuts — 18 percent for the state system, 19 percent for the other four “state-related” schools — as a dramatic improvement over original cuts of more than 50 percent sought by Corbett in the budget he proposed in March.