REPORTER / AP: …As of Friday, Senate GOP officials said May tax collections lagged 2013-14 budget projections by more than $100 million on top of a roughly $500 million shortfall through April. That is tantamount to a potential budget gap of at least $1.2 billion because any shortfall this year would reduce the revenue projection for next year by the same amount.
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, who is locked in a tough re-election campaign against Democrat Tom Wolf, proposed a 3.7 percent spending increase in his $29.4 billion budget plan for the fiscal year starting July 1. The increase would help pay for a new grant program for public schools, shrink waiting lists for social services, address the rising cost of public-employee pensions and expand health care for the poor, disabled and elderly…
One lucrative but politically charged source of revenue is a severance tax on natural gas extraction — a prospect that Corbett has consistently opposed as an obstacle to job creation but that has support among legislators in both parties. All four candidates for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination advocated such a tax… (more)
EDITOR: Marcellus Shale interest contributed millions to Corbett’s 2010 campaign. He must be counting on them to give even more for 2014. Does he dare break with them?
PA’s projected budget shortfall is still considerably less than the corporate taxes which have been cut since Corbett took office.