State budget passes

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July 1, 2012

State budget passes

Marc Levy Associated Press Sun Jul 01, 2012, 12:35 AM EDT

HARRISBURG — After days of long meetings and last-minute bills flying, Gov. Tom Corbett appeared close to signing a $27.7 billion no-new-taxes budget.

His signing ceremony was set for late Saturday night, as lawmakers overwhelmingly approved Corbett’s biggest legislative priority, tax credits to entice the construction of a new petrochemical refinery.

Still, Corbett failed in a last-ditch attempt to win support for provisions to smooth the road to opening up more privately run, taxpayer-funded charter schools.

The budget plan for the 2012-13 fiscal year that begins today would increase spending by about 1.5 percent, largely for debt, pensions and health care for the poor.

Meanwhile, it would cut businesses’ taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars and slash hundreds of millions of dollars from services for the poor, homeless, troubled and disabled.

Aid for public schools and universities would remain flat – a handful of public schools nearing financial collapse would see a little extra money – after absorbing more than $1 billion in cuts in the current fiscal year.

It was those cuts in aid and the memory of deep education cuts in the past 12 months that most rankled Democrats at a time when Corbett was pushing for tax breaks for a subsidiary of Netherlands-based oil and gas giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC.

Rep. Rick Mirabito, D-Lycoming, suggested that Shell’s CEO, Peter Voser, and his company should sacrifice the way people in Pennsylvania have been asked to do.

“People welcome to Pennsylvania. You should do what all of us are doing in Pa. You should learn to live with less,” Mirabito said. “Learn to live on $15.2 million a year without getting any tax breaks from us in Pennsylvania.”

Nearing legislative approval was a proposed $50 million tax credit that would help low-income students transfer out of the state’s worst schools – a condition that is an integral part of conventional school vouchers, a proposal for which stalled in the Legislature despite Corbett’s support.

The credit would be incorporated in the existing Educational Improvement Tax Credit program, whose 2012-13 appropriation also would be increased to $100 million from this year’s $75 million.

That 11-year-old program rewards businesses that contribute money, property or services to nonprofit groups that provide scholarships to students from low- and middle-income families who transfer to private schools or public schools outside their home districts.

Much of Saturday was devoted to trying to iron out disagreements between the House and Senate over charter schools.

In the end, the chambers traded competing education bills without the key provisions Corbett sought: putting the decision to create a charter school in the hands of an appointed state board, rather than locally elected school boards, and stripping the ability of parents and teachers to prevent the conversion of a public school building into a charter school.

Both bills stalled, possibly until fall, despite having some similar provisions.

Supporters of each bill said they were designed to strengthen state oversight of charter schools, overhaul the way the state distributes special education aid and seek recommendations to address longstanding public school board complaints over the amount of taxpayer money charter schools receive.