A state budget executive received their feedback at a budget forum today in Bethlehem.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed minor increase in state funding will do nothing to make up two years of severe cuts to education and human services, Lehigh Valley officials told a Corbett representative today in Bethlehem.
Allentown School District would receive a $1.4 million state funding increase under Corbett’s proposed billion 2013-14 budget, but that does little to stem the district’s $22 million budget gap that is likely to require laying off hundreds of teachers, said Susan Lozada, the district’s executive director of community and student services.
“It’s hard to appreciate a 2.4 percent increase … when we’re still not at 2008 levels,” Lozada told the crowd at a budget forum organized by the United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley. “We need more support.”
Corbett's budget calls for $28.4 billion in spending next fiscal year, up from $27.7 billion this fiscal year. The Pennsylvania legislature aims to finalize the state budget by the end of June.
New Bethany Ministries Executive Director Diane Elliott told the crowd her social services agency has almost had to kick out some residents of their apartments because of last year’s cuts to state general assistance funding. The agency’s rules require their residents to have some income to live in the apartments, but the state funding cuts left many of them without any, Elliott said.
The agency has worked out a deal with the Lehigh County Housing Authority to keep the residents in their apartments “but I don’t know how long that’s going to last,” Elliott said. “What do I tell my folks?”
Pennsylvania Executive Deputy Secretary of the Budget Peter Tartline said cutting the general assistance funding was one of the many difficult reductions the state has had to make in recent years.
“We had a huge budget hole to fill,” Tartline said. The general assistance cuts “were mostly to able-bodied individuals.”
Tartline’s answer drew the ire of Alan Jennings, executive director of the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley. Jennings said state officials are clueless of real people’s problems.
Jennings also was critical in his official remarks at the forum. He said the state has provided very little to help regular people but has bent over backwards to assist corporations and the rich. The state loses out on $3.2 billion in annual revenues because of corporate tax cuts and Corbett is working to create more, including a sales tax exemption on private jets, Jennings said.
“Can you imagine Gandhi … arguing for cutting sales taxes on private jets while ignoring the need for hunger relief?” Jennings said.
Tartline countered that Pennsylvania’s highest-in-the-nation corporate net income tax rate keeps many companies from ever considering a state location. Some business tax cuts are important for job growth, which will help boost state revenues down the road, he said.
Another forum panelist took aim at Corbett for not agreeing to accept a federal expansion of Medicaid. Peter Schweyer, Sacred Heart Hospital’s director of government and community relations, said such an expansion is crucial to the Allentown hospital, where only 12 percent of patients have private insurance.
Schweyer, also an Allentown councilman, said he was encouraged by recent news that Corbett was reconsidering accepting the Medicaid expansion provided in the federal Affordable Care Act. The federal government would pick up the entire cost of the expansion for the first three years and then the state would pay 10 percent in the following years, compared to the standard 45 percent, Schweyer said.
“Pennsylvania taxpayers are paying for it regardless of if Pennsylvania opts in or not,” Schweyer said. “We are not going to get a tax cut if we say 'no.'”
Corbett’s budget is now in the hands of state legislators, several of whom were at the United Way forum hosted at Northampton Community College’s South Side campus. Rep. Gary Day, R-Lehigh, said he’s hopeful 2012-13 revenues come in higher than projected, which would give the state more money to spend in 2013-14.