Corbett signs Pa. plan after late snag

MARC LEVY and MARK SCOLFORO Associated Press

HARRISBURG — A new Pennsylvania state budget is in place after a Capitol signing ceremony by Gov. .

Corbett approved the budget shortly before midnight, reaching his goal of enacting a new spending plan before the new fiscal year was to start.

The budget signing follows a dizzying week of lawmaking and deal cutting by the GOP majorities in the House and Senate.

The $27.2 billion spending plan makes deep cuts to education and human services but doesn’t raise new taxes to cope with a drop in state revenues and the loss of federal stimulus money.

It’s the first time in nine years the state budget has been completed before the start of July. The Republican governor made the deadline by less than 15 minutes.

Corbett waited on passage of a key school property tax measure.

The House passed itless than 90 minutes before the midnight end of the state’s fiscal year.

Majority House Republicans passed the bill over Democratic opposition.

The bill then had to receive approval from the Senate, but top senators had said earlier Thursday that they opposed certain provisions of the bill, which would further limit the ability of school boards to raise property taxes.

Signing the property-tax bill was a top priority of Corbett’s before the Republican-controlled Legislature closes session and lawmakers leave Harrisburg for their traditional two-month summer break.

Thursday was the last day of the state’s fiscal year, and Corbett has repeatedly pledged to sign the budget before the new fiscal year begins today.

One of the changes in an amendment added to the bill by the House late Wednesday night caused ripples with Senate Republicans.

The amended bill would eliminate most existing exemptions from a so-called “back-end” referendum requirement for certain school property tax increases that exceed a rate similar to inflation. It also would place too many restrictions on districts that have construction debt or need to erect new school buildings, Scarnati said.

The disagreement over the school tax bill — which is opposed by the state’s largest teachers union and the Pennsylvania School Boards Association — emerged a day after the House sent Corbett a nearly $27.2 billion budget bill for the fiscal year 2011-12 that begins Friday.

At this late stage in the legislative session, legislative leaders and the governor have hammered out complicated agreements regarding which measures to approve, so a fight over a critical element of the freshman governor’s agenda could have implications beyond the bill itself.

It has been nine years since a state budget has been approved on time. The spending plan passed both chambers of the Legislature this week without a single Democratic lawmaker voting in favor.

The amendment added to a broader school tax bill late Wednesday would still permit exceptions for pension and special education costs, but would change the wording of those exceptions. Pension and special education costs have accounted for the majority of the exceptions that school boards have sought in avoiding referendums since the law was passed in 2006.

In a state with 500 school districts, just 14 referendums have been held, and all but one were defeated.

Debate on Thursday morning in the House centered on massive public schools and public welfare bills.

The schools bill passed with Republican support after several hours of debate in which Democrats decried the cuts to education aid the GOP has agreed to. In particular, Democrats questioned why the poorest school districts would sustain the biggest cuts in aid.

Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, said the state’s students improved their school test scores for eight years under Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell as education spending rose every year. He argued that Republicans should use a state cash surplus to ease the size of the cuts.

“We have the funding to do that,” he said. “So pound your chests, and the children are going to suffer.”

But House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, countered that many of the state’s worst-performing schools also spend the most per child, and said the boom in Philadelphia charter school enrollment indicated that the existing system has failed them.

“We care about each and every kid in the commonwealth, and we want to make sure he or she has the opportunity to have the best life that that (American) dream can provide that child,” Turzai said. “And I am also pro-taxpayer, because we are not going to throw good money after bad.”

On the public welfare bill, Democrats decried provisions unveiled barely a day earlier that would grant broad authority to the Corbett administration to fast-track major changes to a range of human services and welfare programs.

The administration could increase co-pays, eliminate eligibility or curtail services, authority it requested to help meet the spending cuts approved by the Legislature.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans rejected an effort by Democrats to attach a provision to a budget-related bill that would have slapped a levy on the state’s booming natural gas industry.

As a result of the new budget. the 120,000 students at 14 state-owned universities will see higher tuition and technology fees this fall.

Also, a bill that would punish Pennsylvania’s financially troubled capital and dozens of other small- to medium-sized cities for seeking federal bankruptcy protection received approval to go to Corbett.