Dec 14, 2015 4 min read

WAYNESBURG – Even with the marathon budget negotiations still in flux, state Sen. Camera Bartolotta said Monday it’s clear that no spending plan will get out of Harrisburg unless pension reform is included.

“I’ll be darned if that money doesn’t go into the classroom,” Bartolotta said of a potential $460 million increase to education funding in a preliminary spending plan approved last week by the state Senate. “It’s not going to our kids if we do not get real pension reform.”

A dozen people attended the hastily called “town hall” meeting Monday afternoon at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post, announced just hours earlier on Bartolotta’s social media accounts, that gave the freshman Republican senator an opportunity to discuss where the nearly six-month budget impasse stands.

Bartolotta and her chief of staff, Katrina Anderson, also discussed the budget situation Sunday night at a meeting with the Republican Party of Washington County at its headquarters in Washington.

The state Senate’s bipartisan spending plan for this fiscal year that Bartolotta agreed to last week includes a $350 million increase to basic education, $50 million more for special education and an additional $60 million for early childhood, along with a 5 percent bump for higher education funding. That plan also includes state employee pension reform and updates to the state liquor store system.

Republicans in the state House have been hesitant to back that plan, however, and are pushing a budget with no education funding increase.

That’s a nonstarter for Gov. Tom Wolf who wants more money for education, along with Senate Republicans who want pension reform.

“An historic increase in education funding has been the governor’s priority from Day One,” Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan said Monday afternoon. “This is truly a compromise budget, so (Wolf) won’t get everything he wanted, but this will be a balanced budget.”

Even if there was an immediate agreement on spending, there still is no revenue plan put forward to pay for the budget. The current budget negotiations also do not include any reductions in school property taxes for local homeowners.

Bartolotta said she would not support any tax increase to pay for increased education funding and hopes the state House can find savings. It was not known what would happen if House Republicans put forward a budget that removes the increase to education funding.

“There’s hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars hidden in every drawer in the Capitol,” Bartolotta said. “It’s time to go through them and find it.”

Pension reform would bring some immediate, albeit modest savings, she said, although the changes would eventually decrease long-term retirement costs. The pension changes would require new state employees to make contributions to their retirement fund and offer a defined benefits package. It would not affect retirees or employees currently in the plan.

“We need to stop feeding the pension monster,” Bartolotta said.

Meanwhile, the updates to the state liquor store system would, among other things, remove restrictions on operating hours, allow flexible pricing for each store, add loyalty and coupon programs and permit grocery stores that already sell beer to also offer wine. Bartolotta said she would prefer to privatize the state liquor store system, but modernizing it during this session is a chance to “move the discussion forward.”

After months of negotiations that have reduced Wolf’s original budget by $1.1 billion and taken a Marcellus shale severance tax off the table, it appears that Republicans are winning the budget fight.

“(Wolf’s) priorities were so far away from ours that it seemed insurmountable,” Bartolotta said. “We’ve got so many concessions I never thought we’d get.”

The budget showdown has adversely affected school districts across the state and many county human service departments. Burgettstown Area School District announced last week it will temporarily shut down in January if a budget deal is not reached and state education funding is withheld. In Greene County, Carmichaels Area school officials have already taken out a $2 million tax-anticipation loan, while Jefferson-Morgan and Southeastern Greene are considering doing the same.