HARRISBURG — Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said Pennsylvanians face stark choices to deal with a fiscal crisis on the eve of his second state budget address.
Wolf said the budget he will propose today will meet the state’s “rightful share of the responsibility” to fund public schools and do the difficult things needed in terms of generating new tax revenue to bring state finances into balance.
He said the other choice is to continue to ignore fiscal reality and face large tax revenue deficits and new cuts to education in the range of $1 billion.
Wolf is scheduled to outline his tax-and-spend proposals for fiscal 2016-17 at 11:30 this morning before a joint House-Senate session.
The starting point for Wolf’s new proposal is the $30.8 billion compromise budget for fiscal 2015-16 that ran aground just before Christmas. Pennsylvania has been operating under a $23 billion partial budget shaped by Wolf’s veto since then.
In recent days, Republican legislative leaders have said the $30.8 billion compromise is dead. They said the governor needs to negotiate with them to finish the current budget and then reach an accord for the fiscal 2016-17 budget which faces a June 30 passage deadline.
For Wolf to start at the $30.8 billion number is not good for productive budget negotiations, said Rep. Mike Peifer, R-139, Greene Township, a member of the House Appropriations Committee.
Republican lawmakers supported a reasonable $30.3 billion budget, he said.
Wolf again plans to propose a state severance tax on natural gas production — a goal that also eluded him last year.
The House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee held a discussion Monday on two severance tax bills sponsored by GOP lawmakers.