Governor Rendell Misses Deadline to Push His Spending Ways

Once again, this commonwealth has been held hostage at budget time. This comes as no surprise as this has been the standard operating procedure of the Rendell administration for the last seven years.

As a student of history, I am fascinated that before this administration, the state had a total of six late budgets since 1971.

Our current governor has, alone, surpassed the total number of late budgets of the five administrations preceding him.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that this administration purposely drives us past the June 30 deadline to manufacture a budget crisis that will force the General Assembly to cave to his exorbitant spending habits. He has done this every year without regard for the very real impact an impasse has on the commonwealth, and particularly, state employees and their families.

The June 30 deadline for a state budget has real meaning for the Senate Republican Caucus. That is why on May 6, the Senate passed a $27.3 billion budget that was a balanced, no-tax-increase budget at that time. We sent it to the House of Representatives for its consideration. Rather than bring it up for a vote, the Democrats in charge of that chamber took no floor action on the issue aside from deriding it as a horrible budget.

Meanwhile, the governor continues to propose a budget that increases spending by more than a billion dollars and spends all of the federal stimulus money in such a way that when it expires in two years, Pennsylvania will be forced to generate at least $4 billion to maintain funding at that level.

He also is touring the state to promote a 16 percent personal income tax increase. In my district, his message does not seem to be gaining traction as the constituents that contact my office, nearly 10 to 1, are against any tax increase.

One of the unfortunate sticking points in the budget impasse has been the issue of education funding. As part of his ongoing scare tactics, the governor shamefully alleges that all of the commonwealth’s school districts will be burdened by the Senate’s budget. The governor is obviously unclear on the facts.

Under the Senate Republican budget, the combined state and two-year federal funding to our schools will increase by an average of 11 percent. In a year when almost every line-item in the state budget is being cut and/or eliminated completely, the fact that our public schools will be getting an increased appropriation above last year prove they are a priority to the Senate Republican Caucus.

Contrary to the governor’s rhetoric, some school districts have responsibly balanced their budgets on the Senate’s spending plan and have refrained from raising property taxes.

While I remain frustrated at this budget process, nothing infuriates me more than the state employees being used as pawns by this governor to obtain what he wants at the budget table. He is jeopardizing the well-being of more than 77,000 state workers and their families.

I introduced legislation last session that would have put an end to this perpetual practice, but it died in the House of Representatives due to partisan politics. The governor did not want to lose state workers as leverage to obtain his personal policy goals. You will recall that in 2007, the governor unnecessarily furloughed about 25,000 state employees for one day. He stated at that time he was not allowed to pay state workers because of a court decision, Council 13, AFSCME v. Casey (1993).

In Casey, the Court interpreted the Federal Labor and Standards Act to allow for the continued employment of state employees with pay in the absence of an appropriations act despite the requirements of the Pennsylvania Constitution.

Simply stated, the Casey decision concluded that if state employees were working, they had to be paid for their work regardless if a budget was passed.
In July 2008, a one-judge Commonwealth Court decision overturned the Casey decision to prohibit the expenditure of funds in the event of a budget impasse that extends beyond the expiration of the fiscal year. This is the ruling that the governor is relying upon to mandate the "payless paydays" our state employees are experiencing, which were last seen in 1991 — and were outlawed by the Casey decision.

AFSCME and SEIU have appealed the July 2008 decision to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court arguing that the FLSA permits continued employment of state employees with pay. I submitted a "friend of the court" brief in favor of the unions’ position. We are still waiting on our state Supreme Court to take the issue up.

I strongly believe that all commonwealth employees should receive timely payment for their services. If revenue is coming into the state treasury and state employees are working, that money should be distributed accordingly.
Any economist will tell you that raising taxes during an economic downturn hinders the very growth that we need to turn the economy around.

It also is not prudent to spend our stimulus money from the federal government in such a way that it will set the commonwealth up for future funding disasters.

This governor might be term-limited, but the taxpayers are not.

Jeffrey E. Piccola, R-Dauphin County, is chairman of the Senate Education Committee.