Gov. Wolf off to good start with budget
Although there may be some devils in the details, I believe that with some exceptions, Gov. Tom Wolf is off to a good start with the budget blueprint he has presented for the upcoming fiscal year.
He should be given credit for tackling reasonably well a huge deficit that is estimated to be $3 billion for the current year and the next.
Certainly General Assembly Republicans will bristle at the plans to derive more revenue from businesses, but they should recognize that in seeking no hike in the state sales or income taxes, consolidating state departments and seeking greater efficiency, and eliminating several thousand positions, the governor has made huge concessions, reversing his path of the prior two years.
One glaring omission in his plan is to address the burgeoning cost of pensions, mandatory spending which will consume a whopping $5.9 billion of state spending in the next fiscal year. Any pension law changes made now will not have an effect on state spending for some time, but the procrastination we have seen for years becomes more costly with each day that passes without action. I hope the General Assembly will send the governor a reasonable and humane pension reform bill and that he would sign such legislation.
The governor boasts of enacting “historic liquor reform.” I suppose in a state which has inflicted Prohibition-style Big Brother liquor sales for decades, the small improvement made in the sale of alcohol is no small feat. Legitimate “historic liquor reform”, though, would entail freeing private merchants to sell liquor as virtually every other state in the nation allows.
I regret that the governor could not resist another jab at his predecessor, continuing to blame the Corbett administration for a drop in total education funding when he knows that the situation occurred because temporary federal funding elapsed.
We have a liberal governor and a conservative General Assembly. I have to believe that the citizens of the commonwealth find something to admire on both sides, hence compromise should be the watchword.
Let us avoid at all costs the budget debacle that took place two years ago, in which non-profit entities were held hostage, crimping or halting their operations. To add insult to injury, our “leaders” did not have the decency to reimburse them for the costs that were inflicted on them due to the intransigence of the elected officials. Let us also avoid letting the approval of the next budget come down to the wire. How refreshing it would be if a bipartisan agreement could be produced well in advance of June 30 for a change, if our legislature could adopt some comity as the operation of the federal government degenerates even further.
I have disagreed with Gov. Wolf on fiscal policy, but at this time in which the character of our nation has been changed for the worse, it is gratifying that a decent and compassionate man is in office to show the world that
Oren M. Spiegler is a resident of Upper St. Clair.