Budget & Finance

Pennsylvania Enters Round 2 Of Budget Battle

By Catherine Gewertz — April 02, 2003 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Edward G. Rendell rode into the Pennsylvania governor’s office this year on a key promise: The state would boost its share of school funding. Now, in a peculiar standoff with the Republican-controlled legislature, the Democrat has cut from his budget proposal the entire state subsidy for basic education.

Gov. Rendell blue-lined $4 billion from the fiscal 2004 education budget on March 20, capping a two-week period in which politics in Harrisburg, the state capital, devolved from unusual to downright weird. Cornered by swift Republican maneuvering, the governor chose to wield his only leverage: shredding a budget he himself had presented.

“It was the most unusual circumstance I’ve observed in 30 years of watching Pennsylvania politics,” said G. Terry Madonna, a political analyst and the director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Millersville University, near Lancaster, Pa.

The fiscal 2004 budget process began March 4, when Gov. Rendell presented a budget that met the legal requirement of being balanced, but included enough painful cuts that he said he hated it “with every fiber of my body.”

He took the unorthodox step of splitting his $21 billion budget plan into two parts.

He offered lawmakers the basic budget, which level-funds K-12 education, by the mandated deadline of March 4, urging them to delay action on it until he returned March 25 with details of how he would pay for more school spending and also slash local property taxes, which have become an increasing burden for many residents.

But the strategy backfired. As the governor, a former mayor of Philadelphia, embarked on a tour of the state to promote his “Plan for a New Pennsylvania,” Republican legislators, lured by a spending plan with no new taxes, orchestrated passage of the budget by both houses in record time: eight days.

They used Mr. Rendell’s own exhortation—that Pennsylvania needs to live within its means—to portray the vote as the right step.

Falling mostly along party lines, the vote drew loud objections from Democrats. One representative grumbled to reporters after the House vote that it “makes Iraq look like a democracy.” Another called it a “runaway train.”

Mr. Rendell then found himself in the uncomfortable position of having to veto his own budget, sign a spending plan he abhorred, or use his line-item veto. He chose the third option, with a symbolic twist: he eliminated the basic-education subsidy, which represents all precollegiate state money in Pennsylvania.

The governor’s move was widely seen as a bid to regain negotiating clout that he would have lost had he signed the budget as passed.

The timing of his move also forces an extension of the debate about school funding, and the role property taxes should play in it.

On March 25, five days after he excised the school aid, Mr. Rendell presented his long-promised plan to hike school spending and cut property taxes. He proposed a property-tax reduction of 30 percent on average, and said he would restore the basic-education subsidy, and raise it 2.5 percent.

To finance his ideas, he would hike the personal income tax by nearly 1 percent, expand gambling, and impose taxes or fees on beer, moving-vehicle violations, and cellphone companies.

The governor’s presentation lobs the ball back into the legislature’s court, where it could make for politically delicate decisions, since the proposal links the property-tax cut and income-tax hike with education spending.

“The Republicans have the votes to vote down a tax increase, but if they do, they will take the blame for insufficient school funding,” said Susan B. Hansen, a political science professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “All the polls show [education] was the number-one issue for voters, so that would represent a big risk.”

Related Tags:

Events

Student Well-Being Webinar After-School Learning Top Priority: Academics or Fun?
Join our expert panel to discuss how after-school programs and schools can work together to help students recover from pandemic-related learning loss.
Budget & Finance Webinar Leverage New Funding Sources with Data-Informed Practices
Address the whole child using data-informed practices, gain valuable insights, and learn strategies that can benefit your district.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Classroom Technology Webinar
ChatGPT & Education: 8 Ways AI Improves Student Outcomes
Revolutionize student success! Don't miss our expert-led webinar demonstrating practical ways AI tools will elevate learning experiences.
Content provided by Inzata

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Budget & Finance Opinion Could the Nation's Largest District Afford to Double Teacher Pay and Triple Counseling?
Seeing what’s conceivable in N.Y.C. schools might give us the confidence to stop settling for what’s customary everywhere.
3 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Budget & Finance If You Gave Elementary School Students $2K, How Would They Spend It?
Some Arizona elementary students opted to add healthy snacks to campus, sports equipment, and a game room.
6 min read
Second grade students on the steering committee at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School take a break from assisting with polling on April 14, 2023.
Second grade students at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School take a break from assisting with polling how $2,000 in school improvement money should be spent, on April 14, 2023. The Phoenix school allows young students to lead plans for beautification or enrichment.
Courtesy of Aimee Marques
Budget & Finance Special Education Is Getting More Expensive, Forcing Schools to Make Cuts Elsewhere
States and districts share the disproportionate cost burden of supporting a complex, growing, and vulnerable population.
8 min read
Special education teacher Savannah Tucker works with Bode Jasper at the Early Childhood Education Center in Tupelo, Miss., on May 14, 2019. As the special education population has grown, so has mainstreaming - bringing these students into regular classrooms for at least part of their school days.
Special education teacher Savannah Tucker works with Bode Jasper at the Early Childhood Education Center in Tupelo, Miss., on May 14, 2019. Special education costs are rising, particularly as student needs have grown more complex since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP
Budget & Finance From Our Research Center Inflated Costs, Growing Needs: Why Educators Are Pessimistic About School Budgets
More than half of educators believe increasingly complex needs of students are driving up per-pupil expenses, new data show.
5 min read
Illustration of a female standing, and her shadow forms a dollar sign symbol.
uzenzen/iStock/Getty