The way Tuesday’s state budget negotiations ended left Republican legislative leaders anticipating that when talks resumed on Wednesday, Gov. Tom Wolf would finally give them an answer as to whether he would accept a potentially budget-impasse-breaking offer that the GOP put on table last week.

Instead, Wolf cancelled the 1 p.m. meeting.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed Discusses What He Sees Are The Possible Choices The Governor Has Reed, R-Indiana, advises that Gov. Tom Wolf cancelled Wednesday’s budget talks when the GOP legislative leaders had hoped to get Wolf’s answer to the offer they put on the table last week. They saw their offer of $400 million more in basic education funding in exchange for pension reform as having the potential of bringing an end to the 57-day budget impasse if the governor accepted it.
House and Senate GOP leadership said the meeting was not rescheduled but were told it would not take place later this week.

Wolf’s spokesman Jeff Sheridan placed the blame for the need for more time on the Republicans. “Republican leaders changed their numbers regarding pension savings three times during yesterday’s meeting and cannot provide clarity on the details of their pension reform plan,” Sheridan said.

He also made it clear that the House’s failed attempts to override 20 budget lines on Tuesday didn’t help.

“Throughout budget negotiations, Governor Wolf has worked hard to compromise on issues ranging from pensions to the severance tax, but he has been met with obstruction culminating in yesterday’s unconstitutional attempt to override his veto that simply wasted time and effort,” Sheridan said.

Gov. Tom Wolf Discusses Tuesday’s Budget Meeting And House’s Plan To Hold Override Votes Of His Budget Veto Wolf shares his thoughts on where the state budget talks were left following Tuesday’s meeting with legislative leaders.

“Furthermore, the governor is very concerned about Republican leaders’ refusal throughout negotiations to discuss a commonsense severance tax to fund education and their resistance to discussing investment in education at all levels – early childhood education through higher education – not just basic education.”

The House and Senate Republican legislative leaders seemed perturbed as they left Tuesday’s budget meeting that the governor left them hanging on their offer of giving him the $400 million increase in basic education funding for schools he wanted in exchange for their pension reform proposal that the GOP wants.

On Wednesday, they questioned what the governor was waiting on and whether the governor understands the building crisis that the now 57-day budget impasse is creating for human service agencies and schools.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana, said in calling to cancel the meeting, the governor’s staff indicated “they need more time to go over the pension proposal and education funding. It’s his education funding proposal … so I’m not sure where they are not understanding their own proposal on education.”

As for pensions, he and Drew Crompton, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson County, said they answered the administration’s questions about the pension proposal last week and at Tuesday’s session. The pension systems also provided their analysis of the proposal.

Crompton expressed doubt that the governor’s reason for delaying a response to the lawmakers had anything to do with lack of clarity about the GOP’s offer.

“This is about his inability to say yes and his inability to say no,” Crompton said. “When you can’t say yes and you can’t say no, you wait and you hope something else happens. I don’t know what that other thing is that they are hoping for whether it’s pressure or something else … I don’t know what additional pressure is going to build in the next two weeks or two months.”

The crisis that the impasse has created is already here, he and House GOP leaders said. Social services are laying off people. Schools have opened and some are beginning to look to borrow money. College students await their student grants.

“If he wants it to get worse, that’s on him,” Crompton said. “We don’t want it to get worse. We didn’t want to get into this situation in the first place.”

“Whatever the answer is that helps us move forward,” Reed said. “If it’s yes, we move forward aggressively to the rest of the budget. If it’s no, we understand what’s off the table from both perspectives. We got to figure out what the next step is. If it’s no, I’m going to provide you guys a counteroffer on Monday, then we know what to anticipate. But to just be here hanging out in limbo … clearly delays the process at a very critical time.”

Both pointed out the governor was the one who vetoed the entire $30.2 billion state budget plan that the GOP-controlled Legislature sent him on June 30, disrupting the flow of state dollars to agencies that depend on it.

Now they are looking at other alternatives to drive out state funding until a finalized budget gets done, which possibly could include calling the House and Senate back into session before their scheduled return on Sept. 21 to attempt to pass a stopgap budget to provide funding to agencies and schools.

Even though the governor hasn’t given them his final answer to their offer, Crompton said the Senate GOP leaders are sensing they know what it will be.

“There’s no likelihood, in our opinion, at this point that he will say yes,” Crompton said. “It’s nice to hold that and dangle that carrot for maybe a week, a couple more weeks, who knows. But unfortunately, this guy is beholden to the interest groups he’s beholden to and he hasn’t shown any ability to be the middle guy that he tries to pretend that he is.”

PennLive – August 26, 2015 – Read article online