For the first time in a while the Governor (Ed Rendell) and the state legislature agreed on a budget for the Commonwealth before the deadline of July 1st. Both sides got some of want they wanted with Rapid Edward and the Democrats getting more money for education and an obscene amount of borrowing for a long wish list and the Republicans can point out the plan doesn't have any tax increases.
This item irks me: $800 million from slot-machine revenues for dams and water and sewer facilities. We were told that tax revenue from the slots would be used to lower school property taxes with some allowance to offset the local costs of hosting the casinos. Now with this new pool of new money every politician and others can't resist the temptation to spend it on something else. Some people with a history of getting local governments to finance their ventures are even proposing to use $250 million of slots money to guarantee a bond issue to build a cargo airport near Hazleton that no shipping company will commit to using.
Thanks to Capitol Ideas for his heroic coverage of the budget negotiations over the weekend. It probably involved too much stale coffee, fast food and antacids.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI work for a nonpartisan organization called Americans for Limited Government, and we're trying to reach out to bloggers who are concerned about government's ever-increasing size and power.
You seem to have a lot of insight into the political situation in PA, and I just wanted to throw out the fact that, if you find anything noteworthy that ALG could publicize on a national level (e.g. wasteful/unethical spending by government officials), please feel free to let us know. We publish a daily feed (which we encourage bloggers to use: http://getliberty.org/blog ), and we're more than happy to cover 'limited-government' state issues as they arise.
Keep up the good work!
Isaac MacMillen //
ALG Blogger Outreach //
isaac@getliberty.org