SUNBURY — Following Governor Tom Wolf’s budget address on Tuesday, State Representative Lynda Schlegel Culver (R-108th, Sunbury) was pleased with what she heard. She said, “I think the tone this year was drastically different from what it was last year. You know, proposing that we work together to make progress, because we have a lot of decisions that we are going to be faced with through this budget cycle.”
Schlegel Culver continued, “I think his overall pitch was we need to come up with responsible solutions without creating a deficit challenge and doing the approach much differently in new ways of thinking.”
Schlegel Culver hasn’t read the entire budget yet, but feels he had some good ideas, “I think it’s a great place for us to start. One of the things he wants to do is he wants to take a good look at state government and do some consolidation, centralizing services, maybe selling unused properties, merging departments and maybe some early retirement proposals on his part.”
She said a big topic this year is property taxes, “You may be eliminating the property tax, however it’s more of a shift in taxes. It’s not like the tax disappears. We still need to fund schools. It’s just how do we proceed with doing that. There’s still a lot of proposals on the table. There is nothing final yet and I’m constantly talking to people in the district about their thoughts on it. Some people prefer the property tax. Many more do not and would like to see us do something with it.”
When it comes to the pension crisis, she says they are also still working on the issue and hope to achieve something in this session. (Ali Stevens)
