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Thursday, March 06, 2003

By Dennis B. Roddy and Timothy McNulty, Post-Gazette Staff Writers

The campaign against the Rendell Administration's 2003 state budget began in earnest yesterday with a series of appearances by Gov. Ed Rendell, the document's author and -- by twist of political fate -- now its main opponent.

	Gov. Ed Rendell speaks at Hose Company No. 1 in Greensburg. (Lake Fong, Post-Gazette) Analysis: Did Rendell badly misplay strong hand on budget? Rendell rejects death penalty ban

In a visit to a Westmoreland County fire hall, Rendell said he had introduced only the first half of a two-pronged budget proposal.

The first half, a $21 billion balance spending plan given to the Legislature Tuesday, called for cuts in almost every facet of state government. Before he could introduce the second phase of proposals, which would have included property tax reform, increased educational spending and a likely state income tax increase, the Legislature's Republican leadership announced it would push through a vote without hearings, heading off Rendell's plan.

"Did I get outfoxed? Maybe. But I had to be honest with the people of Pennsylvania," Rendell told reporters after a speech to about 300 people at Hose Co. No. 1 in Greensburg. Rendell made the fire company the first stop on a statewide swing, in part to highlight his decision to include $25 million in equipment funds to volunteer fire departments, an item long sought by the departments but never funded before.

While the governor declined to lay out his strategy for dealing with the early vote, advisers and allies in the Legislature said he could veto the document, follow through with a supplemental budget or pencil out huge portions with a line-item veto that could force the Legislature to take up the budget again.

Rendell's visit attracted a group of about a dozen protesters angered at cuts in human services they said could eliminate drug treatment programs in the state's 67 counties.

Rendell pointed out the protesters as one reason the Legislature should hold hearings and hear his proposals on tax reform before acting.

"They have the absolute right to come to Harrisburg and be heard," he said, blasting the Republicans for "a level of gamesmanship we shouldn't engage in."

In earlier remarks to the crowd, Rendell cited his proposals for economic development as well as tax reform as an antidote to the bleak landscape of budgetary cuts he depicted in Tuesday's document.

"If our plan for Pennsylvania works, these cuts will be just a fleeting memory," he said.

For now, they stand as evidence of a state in fiscal misery.

Rendell closed his estimated $2.4 billion budget gap in the $21 billion spending plan by cutting $1.6 billion in expenses, increasing revenue estimates by $517 million, and entirely draining the $250 million left in the state's rainy day fund.

Spending was cut across the board, affecting scores of state programs. Targets of the spending cuts, such as the Drug & Alcohol Service Providers Organization of Pennsylvania, were quick to criticize the plan.

The entire $47.9 million behavioral services program (which provides drug and alcohol care to the uninsured) was eliminated, as well as some $25 million in related funding.

The organization's president, Deborah Beck, who was walking the halls of the state Capitol in Harrisburg yesterday, complained the cuts could leave some 17,000 patients without care, some of them at the Gateway Rehabilitation Treatment Center.

Allegheny County lost $5.5 million for law enforcement programs and the county Port Authority lost more than $4 million in operating expenses, a sign of what other counties are facing. The executive director of the County Commissioners Association, Douglas E. Hill, sent Rendell a letter yesterday calling the statewide cuts "unacceptable" and said they could not be absorbed.

The budget also includes a plan to raise $145 million through an assessment on nursing homes. No details have been issued, but the president of PANPHA, a group representing 350 nonprofit housing providers statewide, called the proposal a "nursing home resident tax" that will hurt seniors.

Usually the Legislature takes months to debate the spending plan before approving it in late night sessions at the end of June, but in a party line vote Tuesday just two hours after Rendell's budget address was finished, Republicans in the House Appropriations committee moved the budget bill, setting it up for a vote on the House floor today.

Republican Senate Leaders plan their vote for Tuesday or Wednesday.

Rendell takes his tour next to Norristown and the Lehigh Valley.