By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Normally in mid-summer, politics drops in priority, but this year Gov. Tom Corbett, a decided underdog for re-election, is not so lucky.
He began July by signing a new state budget that even he abhors. To show the Republican-controlled legislature his disappointment, this Republican governor line-item vetoed about half of the appropriations intended for lawmakers’ benefit.
Corbett, running for a second term in the November election, began a campaign tour around the state touting pension reform as his top issue. Polls show, however, voters believe public education is the greatest concern. The same polls show people don’t understand the complexities of pension reform.
Corbett didn’t help himself. He has been citing pension reform since he took office in January 2011. He has stunningly failed to engage his fellow Republicans in the legislature to discuss or vote for pension reform. What he now offers is a Band-Aid remedy.
John Finnerty, Harrisburg bureau reporter for CNHI chain of newspapers, explains Corbett’s latest approach in this manner.
“The current plan, which has yet to face a vote in either chamber, would provide defined benefits for the first $50,000 in salary for new employees. Any employee making more than $50,000 would be eligible to contribute into a 401(k)-style plan to supplement the defined benefits pension payments. It’s part of the ongoing struggle to confront the state’s $50 billion unfunded liabilities for its two main public sector pension systems.”
It is time to pay the piper. Governors and lawmakers of both parties have enriched employee pensions (which of course includes their own!) in the past two decades. For a while, a robust market covered the grabs. This ended in the financial collapse of 2007-08.
Small wonder that the respected National Journal called Corbett a “dead man walking” this week.
FiveThirtyEight website tracks governor and legislative elections in every state, using a compilation of as many polls as possible.
At this stage in the election process, the outcome of only two other gubernatorial races in 2014 are more certain to produce Democrat winners. The chances for New Hampshire and New York are set at 100 percent Democrat victory. Pennsylvania is tied with California at about 96 percent likely Democrat. The forecast for Massachusetts, Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado and Oregon shows a 75% chance a Democrat will win in November.
Of the nine states noted above, only the Pennsylvania governorship is currently in Republican hands.
Corbett has brought all of his problems on himself. He trails Democrat challenger Tom Wolf by 20 points.
Corbett gets some credit for trying to tackle pension reform. Moreover, a majority of voters in both parties favor privatizing state liquor stores. Corbett, however, seems to have made little progress with either issue even though his party controls both houses of the legislature.
Other shortcomings will likely not be discussed in the campaign, but they demonstrate the type of failure his administration has been.
A former attorney general, Corbett put a bunch of legislators in prison and rode the corruption issue into the governorship along with a pledge not to raise taxes. He has yet to try to root out corruption. Earlier this year he successfully pushed for a huge increase in gasoline taxes to fix crumbling roads and bridges.
Even though Corbett has the most lackluster cabinet in memory, his budget secretary Charles Zogby should be fired now. The 2014-15 budget is a sham and cannot be balanced without more cuts or new taxes. Every year Zogby is too high on his predictions of revenue income. Zogby allowed his boss to make a series of little-publicized business tax cuts without corresponding reductions in expenditures.
Bottom Line: A generally supportive mainstream media will not save Corbett. Republican legislative candidates are busy formulating campaigns that do not involve Corbett. Corbett thinks he can run against the legislature, but in the voters’ minds, neither is acceptable.
