PA Budget Process Stalls Over Revenue Component

The $1 billion would theoretically come from higher tobacco taxes, brisker wine and liquor sales, more legalized gambling and tax delinquents.

With hours to spare before the start of the new fiscal year, the Republican-controlled legislature gave its final sign-off to a $31.5 billion spending plan that Gov. Tom Wolf said he can support.

The Senate must now vote on the bill. But Democrats and Republicans feuded over the precise amount of money necessary to balance the budget.

Regarding daily fantasy sports, the proposed legislation would allow operators to apply for a 30-day licence from the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board in exchange for paying a 5% tax calculated on their previous year’s adjusted revenues. It includes a $500 million increase in education spending.

“If all of their members who voted for the budget would do the right thing and vote for the revenues to fund it, which you would think would be expected of any of us to do, we wouldn’t have this problem”, Rep. Joe Markosek (D-Allegheny) said.

Mr. Wolf said he has not agreed to the House-passed bill and hopes the Senate can fix it. As is the case with bills and laws elsewhere, this would be for intrastate online gambling, meaning that only people within Pennsylvania’s borders would be able to play on the Pennsylvania sites.

In a Tuesday letter, 24 groups, including Greenpeace USA and the League of Conservation Voters, urged senators to oppose any motion to reconcile differences between the House- and Senate-passed energy legislation.

The planned measure would additionally authorize the state’s global airports to offer slots to their ticketed passengers in exchange for a one-time fee set at $5 million for Philadelphia worldwide Airport with Pittsburgh required to pay $2.5 million.

The Pennsylvania Senate is planning quick action on the House’s just-passed budget bill, a day before the state government’s fiscal-year deadline.

We’ll be very pleasantly surprised if a 2016-17 budget is in place on time.

Governor Tom Wolf has said he is amenable to online gambling and the other reforms contained in HB 2150, but he qualified his support by saying it has to be part of a larger revenue package.

Even if lawmakers can pass a spending plan and have it signed by the Governor by midnight tonight, an agreement on new revenue will have to wait until after the Fourth of July holiday, Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman said.

Lawmakers from both parties expressed frustration at being asked to vote on a spending plan before seeing how the state will pay its bills. But House leaders are staying quiet about the details of their plan to increase taxes on tobacco products.

The spending plan passed by the Senate calls for a 5 percent increase, or $1.5 billion.

“For the second year in a row, we are standing up for Pennsylvania taxpayers by holding the line on the governor’s original tax-and-spend proposals”.