Author: julrich

State Treasurer Joe Torsella stepped back into the political fray this week when he authorized a short-term loan to get the commonwealth’s general fund through a few lean days.

That move comes after he spent about two months refusing to authorize a loan on the grounds that the budget wasn’t balanced. It technically still isn’t, and now the whole situation has many Republicans calling hypocrisy.

Torsella’s reasoning for giving the loan is that Governor Tom Wolf has now pledged to take unilateral action (mainly borrowing) to keep the commonwealth’s books balanced. He has sketched out a rough picture of how he plans to do that, but there’s been no official proposal released, and many of the component parts of Wolf’s plan appear less than guaranteed.

Meanwhile, Torsella still has to decide whether he’ll authorize another, much larger loan later in the month. If he doesn’t, the commonwealth could miss major payments to public schools.

Plus, the legislature is scheduled to return to Harrisburg Monday following their cooling-off week. But no one seems to know what they’re going to do—including lawmakers themselves.

The Philly Inquirer’s Angela Couloumbis and the AP’s Marc Levy explain.

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At the beginning of this week, it seemed as though Pennsylvania’s three-months-late, unbalanced budget was finally heading toward a resolution. But then, one after another, various plans to close the gap sputtered out.

By Wednesday afternoon, negotiations had suffered their worst collapse yet.

Governor Tom Wolf called a surprise press conference to draw a “line in the sand,” and put forward a revenue plan that would borrow against the state-run liquor industry for the next two decades in order to resolve last year’s shortfall.

House Republicans and Democrats bitterly blamed each other for failing to come up with their own solution, and Republicans also held Wolf responsible for jettisoning their attempts to compromise. In a speech, Wolf lambasted Republicans for refusing to throw support behind a natural gas severance tax—his preference for closing the state’s structural deficit.

The PLS Reporter’s Jason Gottesman joins us for a step-by-step breakdown of what went wrong, and helps answer Harrisburg’s new million-dollar question: where do we go from here?

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Pennsylvania has been drilling natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation for about a decade now, and in all that time, a question has come up over and over without ever being resolved: is the commonwealth getting enough money out of it?

Democrats, like Governor Tom Wolf, usually say no. They want a new tax on the gas that comes out of the ground—a so-called severance tax. But Republicans tend to say the current tax structure—which includes corporate taxes, plus an impact fee for every new hole drilled—is plenty, and taxing more might drive out business.

The issue is now coming to a head, once again, as lawmakers try to find enough money to balance a $2.2 billion hole in their overdue budget. WITF’s own StateImpact Pennsylvania reporter Marie Cusick joins us to help pick apart the convoluted politics of drilling.

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The state budget isn’t done, major bills are coming due, credit rating agencies are breathing down lawmakers’ necks, and it’s time for House Republicans to decide what they’re willing to do to fill a $2.2 billion deficit.

The problem is, the caucus itself may not even be unified enough to rally around one plan.

This week saw a bloc of conservative members introduce a proposal they said would raise well over $2 billion by transferring surplus money from the state’s special funds—which go toward things like transportation projects and agriculture programs.

Supporters said the plan wouldn’t impact services. But it got immediate backlash from Democratic House members, both parties in the Senate, and the Wolf administration—who all say it absolutely would.

Steve Esack of the Morning Call and Liz Navratil of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette join us to talk about the dynamics that are at play in the legislature as the state creeps closer to fiscal crisis.

Plus, we’ll discuss the surprise departure of Pennsylvania Representative Charlie Dent—one of Congress’s most moderate Republicans.

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When it comes to balancing Pennsylvania’s budget, there’s a phrase you’ll hear over and over from Republicans: “we don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” And most Democrats say the opposite, with equal conviction.

The one thing everyone agrees on? There’s definitely a problem.

As the impasse over the ’17-18 budget creeps into its second month and lawmakers remain sequestered in quiet negotiations, ABC 27’s Dennis Owens decided to crunch the numbers to see who was actually right about spending. He came away with the conclusion that…it’s complicated.

Dennis joins us to discuss how PA’s tax scheme compares with those in surrounding states, why it’s so tricky to determine whether we should tax more or spend less, and how some lawmakers hope to reroute what they see as excessive spending to fill the deficit.

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Apart from House members flitting in and out of various low-profile meetings, the state Capitol has been mostly deserted this week, and devoid of official legislative activity.

The only exception was Wednesday, when House State Government Committee chairman Daryl Metcalfe convened an “informational meeting” on Lieutenant Governor Mike Stack’s heavy use of government money. Paula Knudsen and Brad Bumsted, of L&P’s The Caucus, have been reporting on Stack’s spending for several months, and their stories provided much of the fodder for Metcalfe’s meeting. They join us to discuss this week’s developments, as well as implications for the largely-symbolic lieutenant governor’s office.

The AP’s Marc Levy also stops by to talk through the ways various factions of House Republicans are looking to deal with the state’s $2.2 billion budget gap, and the prospect of a rapidly-dwindling bank account.

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The Pennsylvania constitution is clear: residents of the commonwealth have a right to clean, safe drinking water.

But that doesn’t mean the funding to make sure that happens is always available.

Over the last decade, cuts to the Department of Environmental Protection have drastically reduced Pennsylvania’s complement of water quality inspectors. That means the onus of making sure drinking water meets health and safety standards is falling on fewer and fewer people.

The situation is bad enough that the federal government has sent multiple notices warning that water inspections aren’t up to par. But with the state already having trouble paying for its daily expenses, there’s not much money left to improve DEP staffing and infrastructure.

PennLive’s Wallace McKelvey walks us through the situation.

 

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With the legislature on an indefinite recess and budget negotiations effectively paused, this week we focus on a different—but ever-present—part of state politics: the often-tangled web of money and influence that, to a considerable extent, shapes policy.

Veteran reporter Brad Bumsted, who does investigative works for L&P’s The Caucus, talks us through a few stories he has reported lately. How did one of the state’s top union officials also became involved with deciding unemployment compensation appeals? Who are the most powerful lobbyists in Harrisburg, according to politicians? Why are Pennsylvania’s ethics laws so lax?

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