HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Pennsylvania is entering its sixth week without a state budget and neither side is willing to set an absolute deadline for settling the dispute.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and Republican Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati offered no evidence of progress in sporadic budget talks Wednesday in back-to-back interviews on Harrisburg radio station WITF’s “Smart Talk” show.
Wolf defends his plan to increase state taxes by billions a year to reduce local property taxes, increase school subsidies and erase an ongoing budget deficit. He says the no-new-taxes GOP budget that he vetoed is inadequate and built largely on “smoke and mirrors.”
Scarnati says the governor’s plan to impose a new tax on natural-gas drilling would hurt job growth. He says Wolf needs to shift from campaign mode into governing mode.