The Pennsylvania budget is growing messier by the day.Appropriations Chairman Dwight Evans announced yesterday that the budget is $147 million more than Governor Rendell originally requested.
The proposed budget was originally 4.2% higher than the current budget, but Evans felt that amount was too low and pushed it up to 4.8% with his amended version.
A press release from Evans office states "With today's action, the bill is poised to move to the floor for debate the week of June 23 if necessary." Ironically, the same release states that Evans is "committed to finalizing the budget by June 30."
Evans must really be committed to getting the budget passed before the deadline: he left a whole week to debate the bill. Good thing he kept it locked in committee all that time!
However, Evans is relying upon optimistic assumptions for the budget to even have a possibility of passing by the deadline. He is assuming a deal can be brokered with the Senate and Governor's office. If no deal is reached, it is likely that 250 to 300 amendments will have to be debated on the floor.
This portends a situation which will allow for either limited debate or extending past the budget deadline.
Furthermore, Governor Rendell is now threatening to take rather unprecedented steps and classify government workers as either "essential" or "nonessential." Once the June 30th deadline passes, those workers deemed "nonessential" will be furloughed.
The State Senate tried to avert this distinction by introducing legislation to classify all state workers as "essential." However, Rep. Evans was effectively able to kill that for the time being by holding it in the House Appropriation Committee where he amended the bill to include $20 million from the rainy day fund to pay state workers' salaries.
Did I mention it's good that Evans had the budget locked in committee for all these months?
No comments:
Post a Comment