Corbett shifts stance on cuts to school funds

Angela Couloumbis, INQUIRER HARRISBURG BUREAU

Posted: Tuesday, February 12, 2013, 9:04 PM

HARRISBURG - The budget ax might not land on public schools after all.

For weeks, Gov. Corbett and members of his administration have sent strong signals that they would likely look to education funding for budget cuts if the legislature did not act to rein in the state's skyrocketing public-employee pension costs.
But on Tuesday, the governor softened his stance. Surrounded by school administrators at a news conference in the Capitol, he said it was the legislature that would ultimately have to choose where to cut in order to recoup dollars for the state's two major pension funds.
"In years past, the legislature has taken what we've said, and come in, and we've negotiated," Corbett said. "So it's now over in their camp. . . . We've made our proposal, now they get to massage it."
He added: "I've said this before: What goes at the front end into the budget isn't what comes out at the back end."
As recently as last month, the administration was offering a somewhat different narrative.
The Republican governor told the Inquirer Editorial Board on Jan. 23 that he would not be cutting aid, as he had in previous years, for public schools or the state-related universities - Pennsylvania State, Temple, Pittsburgh, and Lincoln. But he said he would not rule out changing that scenario if legislators fought his proposal to stem pension costs.
His budget secretary, Charles Zogby, also told a room full of lobbyists, advocates, and reporters at a Jan. 28 press club luncheon that pension reform was "essential" to avoiding deep and immediate budget cuts. When asked where those cuts might occur, he noted that the bulk of the next fiscal year's pension costs arise from benefits paid to public school teachers.
"There will be some who will argue that because it's a public-school funding cost, that maybe it ought to be borne in other things in public education," Zogby said.
That stance angered top Republican legislators, who balked at what they perceived as a strategy to force them to act on the complicated - and controversial - issue of changing pension benefits by holding public school funding hostage.   

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A number of legislators have concerns that Corbett's pension overhaul plan, which, among other things, calls for changing the way benefits for current employees are calculated, would not pass muster in the courts.
But Corbett used Tuesday's news conference mostly to sell his new education agenda - this after suffering politically for deep cuts to public schools over the last two years.
The governor noted that his $28.4 billion budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins July 1 devotes an additional $90 million to education.
And once again, he trumpeted his plan to sell the state liquor stores and turn the projected $1 billion in proceeds into block grants for public schools over the next four years.
That will be a heavy lift. Several governors before him have tried to privatize the liquor system, running into opposition from both Democrats siding with unions and conservative Republicans who favor strict controls on alcohol sales.
Corbett said he was optimistic, noting that public opinion is on his side. The latest poll to bear him out was announced Tuesday by the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based libertarian think tank, which found 60 percent of Pennsylvania voters strongly supported ending the state monopoly on the sale of liquor and wine.
"Selling liquor is not a core function of government," Corbett said. "Education is."