Corbett may get most budget items on his wish list

HARRISBURG - Gov. Corbett played a game of give and take throughout this year's budget negotiations and appears to be walking away, for now, with most of the big-ticket items on his wish list: no new taxes, sharply reined-in spending, and no drama.

The $27.15 billion budget deal struck late last week with the legislature is on the fast track to be approved before the deadline Thursday, a feat not accomplished for the last eight years.

The compromise plan is about 3 percent less than this year's budget and would do what few elected officials and interest groups thought was politically prudent or possible: It would not raise a single tax or even impose a levy on the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, which was championed by a growing number of legislators, not to mention the majority of Pennsylvania voters.

Though he had a lot of help from Republicans who control both legislative chambers, it is not a bad start for a governor in his first six months in office - particularly one with little experience in the hard-core policy and politics arena.

"Sure, he had to make some concessions, but if this sticks, I'd say he's had a pretty successful spring," said political analyst and pollster G. Terry Madonna. "It sends a message that he can get it done."

To be sure, the budget agreement comes at a cost. No new revenue from higher taxes or fees has translated into steep cuts in most areas of state government.

And Corbett has had to compromise on that end.

In the budget he proposed in March, the governor advocated axing hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools and state-related universities, including Temple and Lincoln.

Republicans who control the legislature restored some of those cuts. For instance, Corbett had proposed slicing money for the state-related universities more than 50 percent. Now those schools would get a 19 percent cut.

Corbett also had called for chopping more than $1 billion, or 10 percent, for public schools. The budget deal would restore about $265 million of that, although the exact number was kept tightly under wraps late last week.

"That is still a moving target," Rep. Bill Adolph Jr. (R., Delaware), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said Friday afternoon. "We are trying to help out the poorer school districts at this point in time with whatever available funds we have."