You decide. From Capitolwire.com Bureau Chief Peter L. DeCoursey:
HARRISBURG (Sept. 10) – A $27.945 billion proposed budget is expected to be announced Friday morning at a joint press conference of leaders of the House Democrats, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats.
House Democrats were ardently lobbying Rendell to agree to the deal Thursday night, administration officials said, but the governor was holding out. Chief-of-Staff Steve Crawford said at about 8:30 p.m. Thursday: “If there is a deal at this point, it doesn’t include us.
“The governor has said all throughout this process he would sign a budget if it met three goals,” Crawford said. “Those are that it have sustainable revenues sufficient for at least the next two years, and no further cuts in education and health care. The document they gave us, the document we saw and analyzed today, falls short on all three fronts.”
Budget negotiators say the proposed state spending plan will be funded by about $1 billion in new recurring revenues, which include a new 25-cent tax hike on cigarettes to garner $114 million, a rededicated cigarette tax for a similar amount, a $373 million revenue increase from restoring the Capital Stock and Franchise levy to its 2008 level of 2.89 mills from its 2009 level of 1.89 mills and a new sales tax on the tickets and punch cards and other items used in small games of chance, for $100 million this year. The plan projects $100 million to come from leasing more state lands for natural-gas drilling, and about another $100 million from legalizing table games.
Administration revenue analysts disputed that those measures would garner as much as legislative leaders said. For example, they said the $200 million to be raised by the small games of chance tickets tax and new natural gas drilling leases would actually be $64 million.
Crawford and budget negotiators said the budget proposal contained no “off-line” or “off-budget” items used to artificially lower the total spending number.
Doesn’t sound like a deal to me, but we’ll see.
