Shale, vouchers, liquor privatization, transportation, charter school reforms all left waiting
By Eric Boehm | PA Independent
HARRISBURG — Taxpayers may be wondering why they are paying for a full-time Legislature, after a three-month session during which the General Assembly tackled few of the big issues facing Pennsylvania.
Lawmakers received an automatic pay increase on Dec. 1, but as they head home for a two-week holiday break, a natural gas drilling fee, public education reform, liquor privatization and transportation infrastructure improvements remain on the table.
The past session has shown that even when the state House, Senate and governor are flying the same party flag, they are not on the same team.
When Republicans stormed in to control the state House and seized the governorship for the first time in eight years in January, the Pennsylvania GOP was dreaming big. After passing a state budget on time and without a tax increase, Republican leaders prepared to address various big issues in the fall legislative session.
But when lawmakers returned here in September, each of the “big three” had their own priorities, and compromises have been difficult to come by.
For Gov. Tom Corbett, it was an education reform package with its vouchers for students from low-income families in the state’s worst performing schools, expansion of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit, or EITC, program, financial and academic reforms for public charter schools, and improved teacher evaluation system that considered student test scores.
For Senate President Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, the priority was completing a three-year legislative battle over a tax or fee structure for natural gas drilling companies tapping into Pennsylvania’s rich Marcellus shale deposits.
For House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, privatizing the state’s monopoly on liquor sales took center stage. This initiative also would bring a one-time financial windfall of about $1.6 billion to the state.
These three issues moved at some point during the fall session, but none reached completion. Because the legislative session is two years long, the Republicans have until the end of November to complete their agenda.
But the failure to act on some key issues in the first year has left the Republican majority open to criticism.
“They have failed, at every turn, to make working, middle-class families a priority. This has been a year of failure for the Republicans who control state government in Pennsylvania — failure on jobs, failure on transportation and failure to enact a fair tax on natural gas companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale,” House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Allegheny, said this week.
Erik Arneson, spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Chester, defended the GOP's accomplishments for the year, which included passing environmental regulations for natural gas drilling, increasing transparency by putting all government spending online and setting higher standards for agencies that want to pass regulations.
As for the outstanding issues? Progress was made, he said.
David Patti, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Business Council, a trade association based in Harrisburg, defended Republicans for passing a balanced budget and several other laws — including tort reform and changes to the state's unemployment compensation laws.
Some of the bigger issues are ambitious goals that will not be achieved quickly, he said.
"I don't always measure success as the number of bills passed," Patti said of the big ticket items. "I'd rather they take the time to do it right, even if it means a few extra weeks."
As for those remaining big issues in 2012, here is where they stand:
The state Senate passed a school voucher bill in October, and the state House passed an EITC expansion bill, but fell short of the votes needed to move the governor’s voucher plan or charter school reforms.
The plan to privatize the state liquor stores was watered down in a House committee, but still got a thumbs-up from Turzai. However, it never made it to the House floor for a vote and the state Senate has been disinterested in the subject.
Scarnati’s shale fee plan is the only one of the three that has seen success in both chambers. Two days after the state Senate passed a shale fee and regulation bill in November, the state House passed its version, which was modeled after proposals from Corbett’s Marcellus Shale Commission.
Despite weeks of backroom negotiations, differences between the bills could not be resolved and will be settled by a conference committee, consisting of three House members and three Senate members, in January.
Scarnati said last week that he was disappointed that a shale bill could not be delivered before the end of the year, but stressed the importance of a well-vetted proposal.
“With a good faith effort by all, we can find some resolution and have it done when we’re back in January,” Scarnati said. “We haven’t lost our goal. We just didn’t reach the date.”
Internal disputes between Republicans were exposed, when Turzai told reporters last week that Marcellus shale and school reform “were never our issues.”
“We didn’t campaign on it. That’s the governor’s,” he said.
A fourth major issue — the middle child of Harrisburg politics — dealt with the state’s crumbling and increasingly expensive infrastructure.
Republicans and Democrats in both chambers said they wanted to address much-needed repairs to the state’s roads and bridges. Republicans pushed for an improved infrastructure to lure businesses to Pennsylvania. Democrats saw the initiative as a means of providing a short-term jobs program to boost employment.
Corbett’s Transportation Funding Advisory Commission presented a plan to increase transportation-specific funding by $2.5 billion annually, mostly by uncapping a portion of the gasoline tax and increasing registration and license fees. However, the governor left its recommendations on the shelf, citing concerns over the state’s slowly recovering economy.
The transportation package went nowhere.
But lawmakers did receive an automatic 3 percent pay increase — they will make $82,000 this year —and collect $158 per-diem payments for each legislative session day this fall.
