Bureau Chief
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (May 25) – Calling it “a new day” and a “cultural shift” in the state Capitol, Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, and Rep. Seth Grove, R-York, unveiled a list of policy proposalswhich, if adopted, they said would direct over $3 billion towards the Commonwealth’s deficit.
Accounting for more than $2.5 billion of those savings are changes to various programs and operations under the purview of the state Department of Human Services ($922 million, with $500 million of that due to Medicaid expansion), pension reform ($600 million), lapsed state funding ($319 million), budget reconciliation ($200 million), GO-TIME ($158 million), reforming state healthcare costs ($153 million) and tax amnesty ($150 million).
“For too long, budgeting in the Commonwealth has been set to autopilot,” said Grove during a state Capitol press conference Tuesday.
“Where we are today is a result of 35 years of doing the same thing … year after year, doing the same thing, over and over – we have to change,” added Wagner, who later called the current situation “unsustainable.”
“In the private sector, when expenses go up, we call it ‘expense creep,” Wagner said. “Well this isn’t expense creep, this is like an expense rocket ship up here.”
The state’s Independent Fiscal Office in late January projected state expenditures, without any new spending, will grow by $1.9 billion in Fiscal Year 2016-17, compared to the current budget year, or more than 6 percent. State revenues are expected by the IFO to grow by approximately $564 million, or 1.8 percent.
“We’re turning rocks over” to find, figuratively, “pennies, nickels and quarters,” said Wagner, adding this is what private sector entities do “each and every day” to balance their budgets.
Grove explained, “These are option we’re putting on the table” for discussion before getting to the governor’s tax proposals, which he said amount to “extracting more money from taxpayers.”
Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration, while open to discussing ways to reach an agreement on the 2016-17 state budget, doesn’t think much of the proposals put on the table by the Taxpayers’ Caucus.
“Governor Wolf looks forward to continuing his discussions with the legislature in an effort to reach agreement on a 2016-17 budget that is truly balanced, fixes the deficit and makes targeted investments in areas like education and combating Pennsylvania’s heroin crisis,” said Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan in an email. “But what we cannot do is continue to rely on gimmicks and smoke and mirrors, which is what the Taxpayers’ Caucus report calls for.”
Wolf has proposed a $33.3 billion budget, including $2.72 billion in new or increased taxes, for the 2016-17 fiscal year, which represents a more than 10-percent increase over the current year’s state budget expenditures.
Added Sheridan: “We encourage Senator Wagner and Representative Grove to work with us to come up with real solutions to our budget problems, just like many of their colleagues are doing, but today’s report is error-filled and presents savings that are either accounted for in the governor’s budget, have been proposed in the past, but have never received support, or are impossible to achieve.”
The $658 million in savings from GO-TIME and Medicaid expansion are already incorporated into the Wolf 2016-17 budget, said Sheridan, who argued the $422 million of other savings from the DHS identified by the caucus report would “result in reduced or eliminated services for seniors, children, and the disabled.”
The administration also panned tax amnesty – despite it being used to great effect by former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, even though he originally opposed the idea – as something that would cost the state money by “rewarding delinquent taxpayers that will otherwise pay the full amount owed due to the Department of Revenue’s collection efforts.”
They were equally critical of the caucus report’s claim of $600 million in savings from pension reform, noting that none of the current pension proposals available for legislative consideration offer any immediate savings. Additionally, the proposals to reduce management fees the state’s pension systems pay don’t approach $600 million in savings.
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