By Dick Miller
WE.CONNECT.DOTS: Sunday, December 6, 2015 – The more protracted Harrisburg annual budget battles are, the more they are about personality clashes of the main players.
Take the fight for $30 billion-plus funding for fiscal year 2015-16 for example.
The latest self-imposed settlement deadline evaporated this weekend. Promising to stay in session every day — including weekends — until resolved, Republican House leaders abruptly recessed Saturday morning without saying when they would return.
This battle now is more about new Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf and the House Republican leadership, or more specifically Speaker Mike Turzai.
Turzai and David Reed are the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
Their similarity appears to end there.
Turzai, 56, became a representative in 2001 for communities in the North Hills of Allegheny County. Reed, a generation younger at 37, won his district in rural Indiana County in 2002. At the beginning of this year, Reed became majority leader of the House when Turzai moved up from that post to Speaker.
A person could conclude that since Turzai’s turf is the more urban and populous Pittsburgh region, his record might reflect more moderate deal-making postures. Reed’s base being decidedly more rural should reflect a more rigid conservative bent.
Exactly the opposite.
The battle of personalities has boiled down to Wolf versus Turzai, as the remaining GOP state legislative leadership is chagrined to learn. What other Republican lawmaker leaders do not know, or, at least, do not indicate they know is what inspires Turzai more.
Political philosophy: The intent to distance himself from a national reputation of buffoonery or the inability to corral a distinct minority of younger GOP house members.
Political philosophy: As in private liquor sales come “hell or high water?”
Turzai has been at the forefront of efforts to turn the lucrative sales of booze from state-agency driven to private vendors. Publicly he points to competitive pricing and more comfortable outlets and sales hours. Privately he reminds his cohorts that such a change would create an entire new list of political campaign check writers and remove 2,500 good-paying union jobs, mostly held by supporters of Democratic opponents.
Polls show voters in both major political parties favor private sales, leaving only Utah as the last control state. Wolf’s public response, which he calls a “compromise,” is to hire an overall private sales manager who would be required to keep present workers. This would also prevent the majority of profits from being re-routed to Walmart headquarters in Arkansas.
Earlier, political analysts believed GOP leaders would be more serious about budget settlement after Wolf took his long-coveted natural gas extraction tax off the table. Republicans exude pride over Pennsylvania being the only major energy producer without such a levy.
When Republicans indicated agreement that a small hike in the sales tax was possible, Wolf abandoned the extraction levy. Both sides then learned how far apart they remained on the overall budget. Two factors re-shaped differences.
First, Turzai remained insistent to the more zealous reform of liquor sales. Second, the minority of new zealot House Republicans continued to espouse their aversion to any tax increase as follows:
“No tax increase means no tax increase in any way, shape or form.”
Following previous Gov. Tom Corbett’s 2012 signing of an all-Republican bill to diminish voter turnout, Turzai announced publicly that the new legislation could help Mitt Romney carry the state over President Obama. Before the election, an appellate court overturned the new law and Pennsylvania remained in Obama’s column.
Bottom Line: The questions remains “Who blinks first and what spin is offered up by the blinking side?”
On the Republican side, Turzai and Reed are at odds. Reed’s desire for a settlement to minimize damage at 2016 legislative elections should win out over Turzai’s objectives that are more personal. Then, in addition, there are the Pennsylvania Society shindigs this weekend in New York. Do Republicans dare leave Harrisburg for annual ritual celebrations while a budget remains unsettled?
Conversely, how much longer can Wolf hold out? Practically speaking, it is always easier for one chief executive to change his mind than a minority group of lawmakers. All along, Wolf believes the opinions, desires and reservations of his Democrat lawmakers are secondary to his “self-declared mandate” at last year’s election.
