Corbett+administration+has+fabricated+'revenue+shortfall'+to+pursue+needlessly+painful+cuts+next+year.

= House and Senate Democratic leaders claim the Corbett administration has fabricated "revenue shortfall" to pursue "needlessly painful cuts next year." = = = =By Chris Comisac= =//Published by Capitolwire//= =//12/20/11//=

=HARRISBURG (Dec. 20) - The state has to prepare not only for expected revenue shortfalls of at least $500 million this fiscal year, but also $800 million in mandatory state spending increases for the coming fiscal year, Pennsylvania’s budget secretary told reporters Tuesday.= = = =“My belief is with a shortfall of this magnitude, and here we know it half way through the fiscal year, we cannot help but act, and by acting, that helps not only with the current year but it helps with the coming year as well in terms of alleviating some of that pressure,” said state Budget Secretary Charles Zogby during his mid-year budget briefing.= = = =And that means that Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration isn’t planning to spend any more money in the coming fiscal year, beyond what it deems to be mandatory spending.= = = =Zogby said following the briefing that “in all likelihood” the state budget would be flat in spending, other than the $800 million the administration has identified in mandatory spending on things like Medicaid, state employee pensions and debt service.= = = =“It’s very hard to predict – that’s not to say that there might not be increases in any area of the budget, but again, to give a dollar here means that a dollar has to come from someplace else, and so it’s that balancing that we have to do along with these mandated costs is really the heart of our challenge,” he said.= = = =Even with a flat-spending budget, the Corbett administration expects the state will start the 2012-13 fiscal year $746 million short of a balanced budget, if no budgetary alterations are made.= = = =And those alterations won’t include new taxes, said Zogby.= = = =“[The governor is] committed to balancing this budget without going back to individual taxpayers and asking them to send more to Harrisburg,” he said. “So we’re going to have to find it … through efficiencies and cuts, through other things that will bring this into balance. That’s what we’re committed to do, and ultimately the commonwealth and our fiscal state will be stronger for it.”= = = =“It will have to come from spending reductions … I am not working under the assumption that I have additional revenue options – so right now I’m looking at the expenditures side, no tax increases,” Zogby later explained.= = = =But House and Senate Democrats said the Corbett administration is creating a crisis where one does not exist.= = = =“The governor is using scare tactics to make his case for cutting another three-quarters of a billion dollars in needlessly painful cuts next year,” said House Democratic Appropriations Chairman Joe Markosek, D-Allegheny. “Remember, the governor’s own official financial statement for 2011-12 shows $560 million in taxpayer money that was left on the table in June. Leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unaccounted for on a financial statement is unprecedented and irresponsible” considering the cuts made.= = = =Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, added that the numbers are “manipulated …to create an appearance of a revenue shortfall.”= = = =Zogby pointedly denied those accusations during his briefing.= = = =Said Zogby: “If you just think about the logic of it all, that somehow we’re setting this up to have these revenues come in below estimate – to me, as if there’s some perverse … joy that we get from shortfalls and cuts – these are very difficult and painful things.= = = =“I wish I could stand up here and say we have a robust economy, lots of growing revenues, we’re going to be able to, as the governor would like, invest in areas like education or cutting taxes, but we’re not in that position, so we have to deal with the reality of the world that we’re in, not maybe what we would like to see.”= = = =He said this year’s estimates “had to be mindful” of the revenue performance from last fiscal year, as well as legislative changes that have been made to revenues over time.= = = =Compared to those estimates, the state, as of November, is currently $345.3 million behind in its revenue collections. Zogby said it was an “optimistic scenario” for the state to have a $500 million shortfall at the end of the fiscal year, and that they “are expecting and planning for a much bigger shortfall,” although there’s not enough data, at this point, to “exactly put a number on it.”= = = =To address those shortfalls, as well as expected mandatory spending increases, Zogby said the Corbett administration is currently reviewing and evaluating “budgetary reserve” options.= = = =“I expect that we will have options for the governor, and that the governor will act on those options by the end of the calendar year, so we expect to have those in a couple of weeks,” said Zogby, who later said the selected options would be made available in a future press release.= = = =While short on details of the potential mid-year budget cuts, Zogby did say that every agency was asked to submit options for reducing their budgets by 5 percent, “no exemptions.”= = = =However, he noted that “no decisions have been made in this area, so it’s premature to speculate what might happen, at any level cut, and exactly what that might be.”= = = =He also said there would be no across the board budget cuts, as there have been in the past.= = = =The plan also assumes $100 million in additional budgetary lapses – described by Zogby as “unspent state funds” – as well as not depositing an expected $100 million in state reserves into the state’s Rainy Day Fund.= = = =News= =home=