The Daily Item: Attorney General Tom Corbett idea: A 2-year budget

SHAMOKIN DAM — Four days after announcing his candidacy for governor, state Attorney General Tom Corbett was in Snyder and Northumberland counties Thursday, proposing the enactment of a two-year budget process that he said would prevent the kind of political wrangling voters have seen in Harrisburg this year.

Two-year budgets, the Republican said, would allow county governments, school districts and non-profit and other state agencies to better manage their own resources by knowing further in advance how much funding would be received from the state.

Corbett also hopes the process, which would require an amendment to the state Constitution and would have legislators casting budget votes once in two years instead of twice, would prevent political positioning.

“Right now in Pennsylvania, we go through this dance called a budget process every year,” Corbett said. “It might be a little easier for (legislators) to make those votes once. That’s where we get into politics, ‘I can’t make those tough votes. It’s my election year.’”
Corbett said he plans to bring leadership back to Harrisburg in the form of budget negotiations that begin as early as February, not weeks before the budget is due on June 30, as happened this year.

“That’s not leadership,” Corbett said of outgoing Democratic Gov. Edward G. Rendell. “That’s bullying, to try to get through the package he wants without negotiating with the General Assembly. And here we sit 79 days later and we’re the only state in the Union without a budget.”
Corbett also proposes an end to what he calls out-of-control spending that contributed to a 40 percent growth in the state budget, to $27 billion this year, while the cost of living has increased just 20 percent.

“When the money’s not there, something has to go,” Corbett said to his audience of Republican leaders and contributors Thursday morning.

He proposes tossing out Rendell’s $201 million contract with a Minnesota firm to develop a high school graduation exam.

“Any of you have a barn door?” Corbett said, implying the test would be aimed at students on their way out of the state’s public education system.

“You want to spend $200 in education, put it in K through 6, go to the foundation,” said Corbett, a former public school teacher in the Pine Grove Area School District. “When I was teaching ninth grade, I knew right then those children that were going to succeed and those children that were going to have a difficult time because I could see whether they had the foundation.”

Corbett, 60, of Glenshaw, joins U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, of Chester County, as the only Republicans so far in the race to succeed Rendell, whose second term expires at the end of 2010.
Gerlach has called on Corbett to resign his position as state attorney general, claiming a conflict of interest in Corbett’s ongoing investigation into the use of taxpayer money for campaign expenses that has led to charges against 12 current and former House legislators — all Democrats.

Corbett said Thursday the investigation is ongoing and coming to a critical juncture, and pointed out he has not solicited or received any donations from members of the Legislature.
“When we make our next announcement, as I said to The Associated Press, people are going to eat their words,” Corbett said.

After a tour of Sunbury Textile Mills, Corbett told a group of employees that Pennsylvania is not a state open to doing business, something he aims to change if elected by reducing the state’s capital stock and franchise tax and corporate net income tax, now the second-highest in the country at 9.9 percent.

“We’re not doing our best to keep businesses like yours in Pennsylvania, to encourage it to grow in Pennsylvania,” he said. “Business is good for Pennsylvania and I think Harrisburg has forgotten that.”