Education+pension+increases+outpace+state+funding+cuts+in+Corbett+budgets

=By Peter L. DeCoursey= =Published by Capitolwire= =3/6/12= = = = = =HARRISBURG (March 6) – State Rep. Glenn Grell, R-Cumberland, told his colleagues on the House Appropriations Committee yesterday that Gov. Tom Corbett simply reversed a pattern former Gov. Ed Rendell set when it comes to education spending.= = = =Rendell cut pension payments to pay for more state funding for education programs. Corbett has done the opposite.= = = =Democratic lawmakers and educators say the real problem is not various accounting arguments, but that the overall state funding for education has been stagnant when it should be rising.= = = =Under Rendell, when something had to be cut, it was pension contributions, Grell said. When state law insisted that instead he had to ramp up pension contributions, Rendell changed the law, to put those higher contributions off until his successor took office. Instead of paying pension costs everyone knew were rising, Rendell put that money into his top priority: maintaining state funding for public schools, and funding specific programs: tutoring, $250 million in block grants and charter school reimbursement.= = = =How much did he do that? Well, having acknowledged the looming pension problem and the need for a state increase in payments as early as 2006, Rendell put $451 million into the pension payments in the 2007-2008 budget; $360 million in 2008-2009, $334 million in 2009-2010, and $287 million in 2010-11.= = = =In other words, the bigger and closer the problem got, the less Rendell put into it, essentially lateraling the problem to his successor, Corbett.= = = =But Rendell did sign a bill into law, proposed by state Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, committing his successors to major swift increases in the teacher and state employee pension funds. This was a Rendell-Evans effort, and had the support of the teachers unions.= = = =What those Democrats and educators didn’t know was that Corbett would decline to pay for those and further hike education spending. Instead, Rendell’s two priorities – his new funding streams and his higher overall subsidies – would be cut to pay for the pension budget hikes he dumped on his successor.= = = =Rendell said the economy would be better by then and the state could better afford the hikes. Evans said it was time to start ramping up the payments, and also hoped state revenues would improve faster than they actually have.= = = =Then Corbett took office, having run, both generally and in education policy specifically, on the platform that the state spent too much and he would rein that in.= = = =That has led to two years where Corbett reduced overall education spending, first by not replacing about half of federal stimulus funding Rendell used to keep education funding where he wanted it to be.= = = =In the current budget, Corbett also took $429 million in funds that had been used for block grants, tutoring and charter school reimbursement and used it to replace some of that federal stimulus funding.= = = =Using that funding to get state funding of basic education back up to 2008-2009 levels, said Education Secretary Ron Tomalis, “was important. Gov. Corbett wanted to get the basic education formula back up to pre-stimulus levels,” because “… that money is driven out” so that poorer districts get a bigger share.= = = =Since that happened, House and Senate Democrats and the school boards and teachers associations have said Corbett cut state funding for K-12 education, while he and Tomalis have ducked the question through verbal gymnastics, until Corbett admitted the cuts last month.= = = =Then his staff came up with the idea of counting this year’s $316 million state pension increased payment as part of their “classroom public education” funding. That idea apparently did not occur to the governor or education department last year, when that same line item- state payments for educators’ pensions- went up $312 million.= = = =So essentially, in the current state budget year the state cut $429 million from state-funded education budget lines for K-12 public school districts, but put $312 million into higher pensions.= = = =Even counting the pension money, it is a cut of $117 million in the current year in the state budget for K-12 public education classroom spending.= = = =But this year the cut is mostly $100 million the school districts could spend on early childhood education, full-day Kindergarten and other programs. So if you subtract the $316 million increase from the $100 million cut, this year funding went up by $216 million, if you count the pensions.= = = =Democrats and teachers and school board groups don’t. Rep. Matt Bradford, D-Montgomery, contested this issue, e-mailing: “To cynically claim for the first time that increasing the funding for legacy costs is an increase in education funding for today’s students is like a father telling his kids, ‘I made the credit card payment, so going forward, I can’t afford to pay your tuition.’”= = = =And he wrote: “The funding is no longer going toward educating kids in the classroom.”= = = =But Tomalis has a strong response to that: “Why would you say that you can count paying teacher salaries as part of the cost of putting that teacher in a classroom, but not teacher benefits? That doesn’t make any sense. It is part of the cost of having a teacher,” which certainly seems to make it a classroom expenditure.= = = =Bradford and Tomalis tussled Monday in a House Appropriations Committee hearing because Bradford wanted Tomalis to admit that counting the $529 million, the state spent $5.8 billion on “classroom instruction” in 2008-2009 and $5.3 billion on the same things in the current budget.= = = =Tomalis would not, citing this year’s pension payment. But if you add the $560 million more the state paid for pensions this year, compared to 2008-2009, then there was no cut, but instead a spending increase of about $30 million.= = = =Tomalis says $130 million since he doesn’t count the $100 the current budget spends, but shoehorned into the previous budget after that school year was over.= = = =Even House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, regards that as a “spending cut” from this year’s budget.= = = =Bradford responded: “While I am not interested in participating in the governor’s budget shell game, the point is that the amount of funding for educating our children is NOT increasing under Gov. Corbett’s budget proposal. In fact, state funding for education is lower than it was five years ago.= = = =“Finally, pension under-funding has been a generational problem in the commonwealth and pension holidays were all too common during the Ridge years.”= = = =This is accurate, but when Ridge did it, it was actuarially sound to do so. When Rendell did it, it was whistling past the pension graveyard. And House Democrats passed the bill in 2010 to make Corbett do this.= = = =Bradford wrote: “So, while there are numerous politicians to blame, today’s students should not suffer. However, to act as though complying with legally mandated pension catch-up costs will ever educate one Pennsylvania child is simply false. We need to invest in our children and our future and this budget does not do that.”= = = =True enough: this budget and the last one did not increase K-12 public education spending. But that is an argument that the budget should be increased, not that state funds were cut.= = = =Adolph sides with Tomalis, said spokesman Mike Stoll: “Rep. Grell's point is absolutely correct. The bad financial decisions related to pensions by the prior administration are forcing us to make higher pension payments now.= = = =“Democrats are either advocating for huge tax increases or that we use the same failed pension policies of the Rendell administration and not pay our required contributions. The Democrats’ approach would only hurt school districts more in the future, compromise the stability of the benefit for teachers, and jeopardize bond ratings costing the state and districts even more in the future.= = = =“At the end of the day, pension benefit funds do help school districts attract high-quality teachers and the shared funding of pension obligations helps school districts with that expense.”= = = = = = = = = = = = = =News= =home=