By Chris Comisac
Bureau Chief
Capitolwire
HARRIBSURG (Oct. 1) – The second act of the gubernatorial debates wasn’t much different than the first act, even though the setting was.
Tuesday’s “Breakfast with the Candidates,” a roundtable discussion format held at KYW Newsradio 1060’s studios in Philadelphia, featured many of the same talking points expressed by the candidates during the first debate. KYW Newsradio Special Contributor and veteran news anchor Larry Kane moderated the discussion, with CBS 3 Anchor Chris May and KYW Newsradio Reporter Cherri Gregg offering questions for the discussion.
And as it was with their first go-round, neither Gov. Tom Corbett or Democrat Tom Wolf produced what anyone would consider a decisive blow for their election cause. Wolf was more aggressive than his first debate outing. However, during the second debate’s back-and-forth discussions, both men, sitting next to each other at a table, got some shots in on their opponent.
Education funding and spending was again a major topic of discussion, with Wolf continuing his accusation Corbett cut funding by $1 billion and Corbett countering that those cuts came before he took office.
“The cuts that came to education when he [Corbett] became governor caused property taxes to go through the roof … and property tax payers know who to blame for that,” said Wolf, when asked if he would be willing to raise state taxes to help lower those property taxes and replace the $1 billion of federal stimulus funding that was used to backfill state education spending cuts mostly made during the last two years of the Gov. Ed Rendell’s administration.
Corbett punched back. He said members of the Rendell administration indicated they took “a calculated risk” cutting state spending and using temporary federal money to replace it, and then asked Wolf if “it was a risk worth taking?”
Wolf didn’t respond directly to the question, instead restating Corbett cut the money. However, earlier in the debate, Wolf said, “Every administration has challenges; if education were a priority, you would have worked through those challenges … we need to deliver on the constitutional mandate to provide a thorough and efficient education to all of our children – we need to figure that out.”
Figuring that out means not only developing a fair school funding formula, but also providing more funding, said Wolf.
He said “hundreds of millions of dollars could go to education” if a 5-percent severance tax were to be imposed on natural gas drilling, something for which he has said he would push if elected. He also suggested he could generate “hundreds of millions of dollars of savings” that could be directed toward basic education by altering the current charter school funding formula – which would mean less money for charter schools. Wolf said Medicaid expansion will likewise save hundreds of millions of dollars, and there could be more money made available by plugging existing state tax loopholes.
Wolf characterized those ideas as “easy things to do … that could be done pretty quickly,” although he acknowledged some of them would need legislative approval. He also expressed confidence he could work better than Corbett (although Corbett pointed to bi-partisan policy wins on transportation and unemployment compensation reform) has with the Legislature, even a Republican-controlled one.
In addition to reaffirming his opposition to 5-percent severance tax “while the industry is in its infancy,” Corbett noted one of Wolf’s proposals is to increase the state’s share of education funding to 50 percent, from its current level around 32 percent, intimating Wolf’s funding plans wouldn’t be enough to cover that increase.
“If it’s 50 percent, as Mr. Wolf wants it to be 50 percent, then he’s going to have to increase the budget by another $3 billion just to get to the 50-percent level,” said Corbett, who added his administration is working with lawmakers to develop “a new funding formula that works for every school.”
When pressed by Gregg to talk more about the “human element” of education, not necessarily the dollars and cents side of it, Corbett said, “The human element is affected by the way we budget and the way we spend our money.”
Corbett argued that one of the major drivers of state and the local government spending – and at the local level, tax increases – has been the significant growth in pension benefit costs. Recent state credit rating downgrades identified unsustainable state spending, driven by public pension plans that aren’t properly funded, as the primary reasons for the rating downgrades, which could increase the cost of state borrowing in the future.
Both Wolf and Corbett said the state has to pay what it owes to the pension system, that the current state law setting those pension payments – Act 120 of 2010 – is inadequate with regard to what the payments should be, but neither offered a way to ensure continued payments, which will in a few years rise another $2 billion or so to around $4 billion annually, and stay there for a few decades.
On whether it would be better to switch new state employees to a 401(k)-style plan, instead of the current defined benefit pension, Wolf said the current system offers far more income security for state employees when they retire than a 401(k) would.
Corbett countered: “The only reason for that security is because it’s on the back of taxpayer to continue to fund it thereafter; long after the decisions are made, a generation from now, our children are going to be paying for the decisions that were made back in 2001, 2002 and 2003 – that’s where the security comes from.”
Pension payments are just one of many items on which Wolf has said the state must spend, spending plans questioned by Corbett during the debate.
“… I would love to make all those promises too if we had the money,” said Corbett, before being interrupted by Wolf who argued Corbett made promises to not raises taxes, which Wolf said he broke.
“Property taxes went up, gasoline taxes went up, the cost of borrowing is going to go up,” said Wolf.
Corbett, who also noted pensions are driving property tax hikes and the cost of borrowing issue, countered Wolf’s gas tax hike critique by arguing gas taxes did not go up. The governor explained the 12-cent tax at the pump was eliminated and an artificial cap on wholesale gas taxes was eliminated.
Corbett has noted current gas prices are no different, and are actually slightly less in many areas of the state, than they were last year at this time. He added during the debate the additional money being generated by the transportation funding law is going toward needed repairs to give Pennsylvanians “safer” road and bridges.
The debate discussion also turned to a tax Wolf has said he plans to raise on some, but not all Pennsylvanians: the personal income tax.
As he has been during the last several weeks of his campaign, Wolf was again on the defensive when pressed to provide details about his income tax proposal. He skirted offering specifics, other than to say the middle class – which he defined as “between $70,000 and $90,000 on an individual tax return” – would see lower income taxes, with higher wage earners getting a tax hike. His plan would exempt a certain amount of income and then apply a five-percent tax, not the current 3.07-percent tax, on the remaining income – figures he says he gave as an example to the media when explaining his plan. CLICK HERE to read a Capitolwire analysis using those figures.
On funding government services, the governor was forced to defend his administration’s recent borrowing to ensure the state has money to operate while it waits for revenues to come in throughout the remainder of the current fiscal year.
“A lot of it depends on how the money is flowing in” to the state’s accounts, said Corbett, noting that this has happened many years, including during the years when Wolf was Revenue Secretary for the Rendell administration.
Wolf, at one point, accused Corbett’s administration of “cooking the books,” because the revenue estimates came up $700 million short of what was anticipated during the 2013-14 fiscal year, and he expressed similar concern about the current fiscal year’s budget.
Corbett bristled, reacting, “So you’re accusing me of a criminal act?”
“I’m accusing you of overestimating what the revenues were going to be,” responded a slightly taken-back Wolf.
“We balanced it on the books; the revenue did not come in [as expected] but that’s happened in many administrations in the past,” countered Corbett. On Oct. 1, 2008, then-Revenue Secretary Tom Wolf announced the state was already $564.8 million below estimates for the 2008-09 fiscal year ended up $3.2 billion short of revenue estimates, despite predictions a year earlier that Rendell administration revenue estimates were overly rosy.
The two also tangled over jobs, with Wolf relying on oft-cited job growth figures that show Pennsylvania near the bottom of the nation’s states in that metric, and Corbett countering the growth figures are not unlike where Gov. Rendell was at the end of his first term, and the state has added 180,000 private sector jobs with 250,000 more awaiting employees on the state’s JobGateway website. Corbett said the real work is in linking people in need of jobs with the available positions.
The two were in general agreement when the discussion turned to hate crimes, an issue in the headlines following a recent attack on a gay couple in Philadelphia: they are both against such crimes and would sign legislation adding the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” to the protected classes listed within the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, although Wolf said he would also support specific legislative changes to the state’s crimes code.
There was also a bit on levity midway through the debate as Gregg peppered both candidate with more personal, and somewhat humorous, questions during what she and Kane called “the lightning round,” finding out both candidates prefer French fries over chocolate, beer over wine, and dogs over other type of domesticated pets.
For those who didn’t get a chance to listen or watch the debate as it took place, it will be re-aired Monday, Oct. 6, by the Pennsylvania Cable Network at 6 p.m. For those living in the Philadelphia broadcasting region, CBS 3 plans to rebroadcast the debate on Sunday, Oct. 5 at 1 p.m.
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