Pension bill’s collapse derails bipartisan state budget deal

House Republicans haven’t given details about the amount or duration of the spending package.

“A stopgap budget does not solve Pennsylvania’s problems, and if the legislature sends a stopgap to Governor Wolf, he will veto the entire bill”, Jeff Sheridan, a spokesman for the governor, said in a statement.

It includes $150 million in additional aid for public schools; the bipartisan deal backed by Wolf would have delivered $350 million, a 6 percent increase.

Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati told reporters after a meeting with House Republican leaders Wednesday there doesn’t seem to be sufficient support for the pension bill, and without it the Senate won’t agree to tax increases.

Wolf said Republicans “inexplicably blew up a bipartisan budget deal” that House GOP leaders had helped negotiate. They said little after they left a meeting with leaders of the Senate’s Republican majority. Lawmakers are rushing to approve a bipartisan budget before Christmas.

“Everybody knows that I walked into the speakership seven weeks ago with this process already in place”, he said.

The spending bill narrowly survived a series of procedural votes.

The historic stalemate in passing the state budget has raised fury on both sides of the aisle, with Governor Wolf warning he will veto a stopgap measure if such a proposal reaches his desk due to the “devastating consequences” that would result.

Others warned the bill was vulnerable to a court challenge, and noted that it did not provide any immediate budget relief to school boards or lower the two pension systems’ unfunded liabilities. “Folks back home don’t want us to kick the can down the road any further”.

Republicans said the tax bill would make revamping tax laws next year easier by clearing away those extensions now.

The House, which was expected to vote on the budget bill advanced by the Senate and supported by the governor, was let out and placed on a six-hour call.

After months of negotiating, a budget framework was in place.

“If you can’t find something you don’t agree with in the bill, you must not be looking hard enough”, said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. House Democrats and some House Republicans prefer an increase in the personal income tax, 3.07 percent to 3.3 percent. It would keep, but cut in half, the traditional pension benefit for future employees and put certain new limits on the future pension benefits of current employees.

If lawmakers don’t decide on a budget by midnight, they’ll break the record for the longest time without a budget in Pennsylvania, according to the Associated Press. The budget wasn’t complete until tax hikes to support state aid for universities and colleges were approved that December.

On Monday the credit rating agency downgraded debt issued by the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging, the state’s largest service provider to senior citizens, largely because of the budget impasse.