Inquirer+Editorial+-+Won't+budge+on+budget

=//Published in the Philadelphia Inquirer//= =//6/26/11//= = = = = =Republican leaders in Harrisburg have crafted a state budget with deep cuts in funding for education and other critical programs while letting natural-gas drillers off the hook for paying their fair share toward meeting Pennsylvania's needs.= =What a cynical debut for freshman Gov. Corbett's fiscal stewardship.= =The Senate was scheduled to return Sunday to prepare to implement a budget deal that came together late last week without input from Democratic lawmakers. So, there's still time to chart a course that confronts fiscal reality while spreading the burden more fairly.= =But if lawmakers instead join Corbett in passing a budget tailored to fit his untenable pledge of allegiance to Grover Norquist's altar of no taxes, those decisions will play out in just the opposite way in local communities.= =Corbett's insistence on a 3 percent cut in the overall budget, and spending priorities that deliver deep education cuts, will mean teacher layoffs and property-tax hikes in many school districts. At state-supported universities, the likely result will be higher tuition.= =Philadelphia's school-funding crisis already has triggered a nearly 4 percent boost in the real estate levy, coming on top of repeated recent tax hikes that Mayor Nutter has to know hamper the city's ability to thrive.= =Pennsylvanians may find the whole notion of a no-tax pledge is just a case of smoke and mirrors. Rather than equip Corbett with the ability to guide the state, the pledge appears designed more to play to tea-party elements and shrill, antitax outsiders trying to impose policy on state capitals.= =On the question of whether drillers should pay a fee or tax for the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale formation - as they do in every other drilling state - there's no doubt the governor's policy straitjacket could put the well-being of the state at risk.= =First and foremost, local communities deserve aid from a drillers' tax to help them contend with the increased traffic, road repairs, and other stresses driven by the rush to dig for shale-derived gas.= =Drillers also should be contributing more substantially to government efforts to ward off the potential environmental hazards - particularly to drinking water - from the process of hydraulic fracturing, which pumps a witches' brew of chemicals deep into the earth.= =Despite strong public support for the broad-based drillers' tax that's needed, Corbett has given no indication he would support anything other than a limited impact fee. Even for that, he wants to await a task force report.= =It's wrong to prolong a tax holiday for an industry that's making millions - while local taxpayers keep picking up the tab.=

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