Corbett signs budget, sets off GOP rift
HARRISBURG — Gov. Tom Corbett signed the state budget 10 days late on Thursday and used his line-item veto power to spotlight what he called the Legislature’s failure to sacrifice with the rest of government or to curb rising public-sector pension costs that are fueling school tax increases.
Corbett, a Republican who is running for re-election but down in polls to Democrat Tom Wolf, delivered the news in a lively, campaign-style speech that recounted his accomplishments and took on lawmakers and public-sector labor unions.
He said he wanted to avoid any more school property tax increases to cover pension obligations, and criticized the GOP-controlled Legislature for refusing to contribute any of its approximately $150 million six-month operating reserve to help state government close a massive deficit.
Criticism from lawmakers was bipartisan, and accentuated Corbett’s chilly relationship with Republicans and solid opposition by Democrats.
Overall, Corbett struck $65 million from the Legislature’s own appropriations and another $7.2 million in earmarks and other spending items picked by lawmakers, noting that the proposal sent to him last week increased the General Assembly’s own $320 million budget by 2 percent.
“They filled the budget with discretionary spending and then refused to deal with the biggest fiscal challenge facing Pennsylvania, our unsustainable public pension system,” Corbett told reporters.
Overall, the $29 billion budget Corbett signed Thursday does not increase state taxes while authorizing $871 million in new spending, largely for public schools, prisons, pension obligations, health care for the poor and social safety-net programs.
To plug the deficit, it relies on more than $2.5 billion in one-time stopgaps, the biggest use of stopgaps outside of the three years around the Great Recession.
The main appropriations bill passed without a single vote from a Democrat.
The $72 million spending reduction, plus freezing an unspecified number of earmarks that the governor had yet to reveal Thursday, was necessary to ensure a balanced budget, administration officials said.
The pension systems for public school and state government employees represent a growing financial strain on budgets, but despite pressure from Corbett over the past couple of years, no deal has made it to his desk. As recently as a month ago, Corbett said he would not sign a budget without pension reform and legislation to overhaul the state-owned liquor system.