Pa.+lawmakers+try+to+wrap+up,+tie+ribbons+on+bills

= = = By MARC LEVY and PETER JACKSON = =// Published by the Associated Press //= = //12/14/11// = = = =HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. [|Tom Corbett] and his fellow Republicans who control the state Legislature scrambled at the state Capitol on Wednesday to wrap up several major bills and put the best face on their first year of sharing power in Harrisburg.= =The day was scheduled to be the last in session this year for state senators before their traditional holiday break from Harrisburg, and they waded through a torrent of votes. However, after months of trying, an agreement was eluding Republican leaders of the House and Senate on Wednesday on two major priorities of Corbett's, lawmakers said.= =Those priorities include a bill that would create taxpayer-paid vouchers to subsidize private school tuition for children of lower-income families in struggling public schools, and another that would impose an "impact fee" on Pennsylvania's booming natural gas drilling and update the state's regulations over the industry.= =Democrats largely oppose the Republican-sponsored bills on the subjects, calling vouchers a taxpayer-paid gift to Catholic schools that do nothing to improve public schools and saying the Marcellus Shale gas drilling legislation lacks strong environmental protections or a meaningful tax that many other states impose on the lucrative and powerful industry.= =House Republican leaders spent much of the day behind closed doors trying to drum up support for a proposal to test vouchers in a five-year pilot project that would be much smaller in scope than envisioned in legislation the Senate passed in October. But Republicans said by afternoon it lacked enough votes to pass and would not surface.= ="We took a shot. The fact is, right now, the votes aren't there on either side of the aisle," [|Steve Miskin], spokesman for [|House GOP] leader [|Mike Turzai], said Wednesday night.= =Without an agreement with the House on gas drilling legislation, Senate Republican leaders took a procedural step Wednesday to move toward a six-person House-Senate conference committee that is designed to negotiate a compromise bill that gets an up-or-down vote in each chamber, with no amendments allowed.= =That step involved voting through a bill identical to a measure approved by the chamber in November, but it took almost three hours to plow through debate and defeat [|Democrats]' amendments.= =At one point, a vote on an amendment by Sen. [|John Yudichak], D-Luzerne, to increase the amount of a state-imposed fee on each Marcellus Shale well came to a 25-25 tie, prompting Sen. [|John Wozniak], the only Democrat who voted "no," to try to change his vote to "yes." However, four of the six Republicans who defied their caucus leaders to support the higher fee then opposed Democrats' motion for a new vote, sending the amendment down to defeat.= =Also on tap Wednesday in the Senate were bills that would toughen regulations for clinics that perform abortions and create new boundaries for Pennsylvania's shrinking number of [|U.S. House] districts.= =Senators voted 32-18 to approve the more stringent abortion regulations, over the objections of abortion-rights supporters, and various associations of medical professionals, including obstetricians, gynecologists and social workers. The House approved the bill a day earlier, and Corbett was expected to sign it.= =The Senate earlier this year had approved a bill to apply the tougher regulations to clinics that performed abortions after the ninth week of pregnancy before the House changed that provision to cover all clinics that perform surgical abortions.= =Supporters say the legislation, supported by anti-abortion groups, will help prevent a repeat of the horrific case of a former Philadelphia abortion clinic where authorities found filthy and unsafe conditions and charged the operator with eight counts of murder for the deaths of a patient and seven late-term babies.= =But abortion-rights supporters say the cost to comply with the new regulations could force some clinics to stop performing abortions and that a simple requirement for regular state inspections would have prevented the conditions at the West Philadelphia clinic.= =The congressional map emerged from the [|Senate State Government Committee] on Wednesday, in a 6-5 vote. It was unveiled Tuesday after being drawn in private by top Republican state lawmakers, and would still require passage in the House, expected next week, before Corbett could sign it into law.= = Read more: [|http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Pa-lawmakers-try-to-wrap-up-tie-ribbons-on-bills-2402409.php#ixzz1gZBWGoew] =

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