Skip to content
News
Link copied to clipboard

Failed budget talks, successful fundraisers

Baer Growls ON ONE HAND, Gov. Wolf got slammed by the state House on Wednesday when lawmakers, including some members of his own party, handily rejected his proposal to raise taxes in order to get more for state spending.

Baer Growls

ON ONE HAND, Gov. Wolf got slammed by the state House on Wednesday when lawmakers, including some members of his own party, handily rejected his proposal to raise taxes in order to get more for state spending.

The vote was 127-73 against the guv.

On the other hand, Wolf got himself more money at a campaign fundraiser Wednesday evening where ticket prices ranged from $1,000 to $10,000 each.

And, bizarrely, after sustaining a policy loss in what Wolf on Monday called a "once-in-a-generation" vote, the guv said at a post-vote news conference, "I think we made real progress today."

I don't know. Maybe somebody had just shown him projections of the take from the fundraiser and perhaps he got the two totals confused.

A Wolf campaign aide confirmed that the fundraiser was held at Cafe 1500, a restaurant on the first floor of an upscale high-rise condo building in midtown Harrisburg.

The aide claimed not to know how many invitees attended, but noted that the event was scheduled weeks before the House scheduled the vote on Wolf's tax package offered to balance the now 100-day-late state budget.

Budget issues fundamentally remain where they were in March when Wolf first proposed big, new revenue to fix state finances and generate more funding for public schools.

The House on Wednesday voted down an increase in the personal-income tax and a new tax on the extraction of natural gas.

Republican leaders, who control both chambers of the Legislature, suggested that the vote means budget talks now can move forward with big, new taxes off the table. But Wolf, at his news conference, said, "I'm not taking anything off the table."

So it's back to failed budget negotiations. And, evidently, onward with successful campaign fundraising.

A tad ironic, no?

Speaking of irony: On an elevator en route to the Wolf post-vote news conference, I ran into former GOP House Speaker John Perzel (who was released from prison in February 2014 after serving close to two years on a corruption charge).

Perzel wasn't headed to the news conference, but I couldn't help but ask if he was in the building to help Republicans hold all their votes against new taxes (they did, by the way).

He said, "No," but didn't seem interested in chatting further, so it's unclear what brought him back to the Capitol in which he once wielded significant power.

- John Baer