Pennsylvania budget: Gov. Tom Wolf to make announcement at 10:30 am

In announcing his decision to exercise his line-item veto authority on the .3 billion House GOP-crafted spending plan the Senate sent him last week, Wolf referred to the budget as “garbage” and “doubly frustrating because we were so close to a reasonable” compromise budget that would have spent $500 million more – mostly for education.

Wolf said he will selectively veto items in the $30.3 billion budget passed by the legislature but will allow some emergency funding to be released for schools, social services and county services.

The governor called for lawmakers to get back to Harrisburg to rework the plan: “This budget is wrong for Pennsylvania”, Wolf said.

Senate Republican leaders planned a noon news conference to respond to Wolf’s announcement. But they said the state won’t be able to responsibly take on debt without fixing its structural deficit. But Hite says by providing half of the year’s basic education subsidy, the governor’s action delays the deadline.

Senate GOP leaders chided the governor for creating a “crisis situation” that could have been avoided if he had vetoed line items instead of rejected entire budgets as he did with a similar GOP proposal when the fiscal year ended in June.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, said he was pleased that Wolf released the additional money for schools and social services.

School districts across the state have had to borrow at least $900 million in total in order to stay open.

Wolf also vetoed the 95 million dollars in education cuts sought by the Republican led proposal and chastised lawmakers for what he called “simply leaving town without finishing the job”. “I get that people are exhausted of this stalemate, but we were nearly there”. It also lacks some supporting legislation and funding for state-related universities, including Penn State. That plan would require up to $1 billion in unspecified tax increases. Hite says it’s not immediately clear how much money the district would get from Governor Wolf’s emergency appropriation.

“I want to see the implementation of the full budget agreement that we had in place”, Costa said.

“We’ve been operating this year with a lot of unanswered questions”. I had worked patiently and persistently with Republican leaders over the past many months to agree on a compromise budget. The Senate then sent Woolf the $30.3 billion budget approved by the House.