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Updated 2 hours ago
Compared to his first budget presentation, Gov. Tom Wolf tempered, somewhat, his enthusiasm for tax increases in his address Tuesday to the state Legislature. Now it's all about living within the state's means, depending on what exactly “means” means.
And yet “predictable” best describes a proposed $32.3 billion spending plan that consolidates some departments (as previously announced), holds the line on the state sales and income taxes (with the governor's race around the corner) and casts its bread — realized or otherwise — upon the waters of the politically favored. Included in this grand bargain are $1 billion in new taxes, and it spends over $500 million more than the current budget, according to Rep. Eric Nelson, R-Hempfield.
And once again we're presented with many of the same supposed revenue generators, and a few new ones, which are no more credible than what was proposed last year.
There's a 6.5 percent severance tax on natural gas drilling, previous proposals for which have fizzled; an overly optimistic $150 million in revenue from expanded gambling; and a controversial flat, $25-per-person tax in every Pennsylvania municipality that relies on state police protection (sure to please rural lawmakers).
But, by golly, there's flexibility enough to plow an additional $100 million into basic education and $75 million more into early childhood education.
Maybe if the Wolf administration and lawmakers dedicated more attention to the drivers of the state's estimated $3 billion deficit — unsustainable public employee pensions, the economic illiteracy of corporate welfare — the Guv's budget address wouldn't have been so pathetically predictable.
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