Pennsylvania staring at 'miles' of debt
Trying to explain his proposed budget cuts, Gov. Tom Corbett on Thursday put the state's projected $4.2 billion deficit in linear terms.
A stack of $1 bills large enough to cover the deficit would reach 285 miles high, one mile shy of the International Space Station's apogee. With Corbett's no-tax pledge, lawmakers must cut all of that, including $1 billion -- or about 68 miles -- from K-12 education.
"We didn't have any painless choices," Corbett said. "A lot of people don't understand how bad it is."
Before taking in the Pittsburgh Pirates' dismal home opener as a guest of the team, the Shaler Republican toured the Clairton manufacturing plant of Kurt J. Lesker Co., a 57-year-old manufacturer of vacuum equipment for high-tech and research use. The company, headquartered in Clairton, has offices and manufacturing plants in North America, Europe and Asia.
Standing between two charts showing education and overall state spending, Corbett told about 20 company workers and executives that tax increases would drive businesses like Lesker out of Pennsylvania, so deep cuts are the only option.
"It's almost not a choice. It's a reality," Corbett said. Coping with that reality means school districts might have to merge. "Frankly, I think school districts around the state are going to have to start looking at, can they continue to exist?"
Consolidating districts is a tough sell, politically, and doesn't necessarily cut costs, said David Devar, research director at the Pennsylvania School Boards Association. There's little incentive for a well-off district to absorb a crumbling district such as Duquesne.
"We will support districts' choice to merge. What we oppose is Harrisburg saying you've got to go from 500 districts to some fewer number and mandating the merger," Devar said.
But raising taxes to forestall education cuts would stifle economic recovery, Corbett said. That includes taxing natural gas extracted from the Marcellus shale. Pennsylvania is the only gas-producing state without such a tax, and a Franklin & Marshall College poll last month found 62 percent of voters support levying such a tax.
Corbett said gas companies likely would have received a tax break if the industry came to Pennsylvania during better economic times, but "because we have a hole in the budget, (people say) we need to tax them."
"Would you come here if you saw something like that?" Corbett said. The state's tax rates are among the highest in the country while 40-year job growth is among the lowest, he said. "When you issue taxes it sends the wrong message. ... The more you tax, the less jobs you're going to create."
State Democratic Party Chairman Jim Burn called that a "cop out" and "diversion" from the effect of the proposed cuts, which include cutting state aid to higher education by half.
Corbett asked school employees to take a one-year pay freeze and some state workers to take 4 percent pay cuts. He demurred when asked whether he, lawmakers and their staffs should cut their pay.
"I'm not going to answer that question" because budget negotiations are supposed to be private, Corbett said. "I promised the unions we will negotiate in good faith. We will negotiate in good faith."
