Pa. House members leave Saturday session without a budget vote

HARRISBURG - State representatives gathered in Harrisburg for a few hours Saturday and left without taking any votes, as Republican leadership punted responsibility for balancing the budget to the state Senate and the governor.

It was a blow to House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny), who last week took a more prominent role in negotiations as legislators try to find $2.2 billion to balance the budget.

"We've done our job," Turzai said, noting that the House passed one proposal in April. "They need to provide their proposals," he said of the Senate and Gov. Wolf. Turzai is widely expected to run for governor.

The abrupt departure of the House - which had initially been scheduled to work Sunday - came at the end of a week that one leader described as a "detour" on the path to finalizing a revenue plan.

Legislators passed a nearly $32 billion spending plan June 30, and Wolf allowed it to lapse into law without his signature. In recent weeks, proposed plans for revenue have involved, among other things, talks of liquor privatization, gambling expansion, and borrowing against a tobacco settlement.

On Saturday, Turzai said House Republicans talked privately about borrowing against the tobacco settlement - which members of his caucus rejected "in a significant fashion" - and transferring money from special funds that help pay for things like recycling and highway beautification.

Turzai said the Senate had previously mentioned the idea of special fund transfers, though Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R., Centre) said those transfers "never really reached critical mass . . . to the point where we were landing on any one transfer or anything else."

The proposal Republicans discussed Saturday didn't leave the caucus room, let alone go to a committee or a floor vote.

House Democrats never received a draft of bills or written plans from Republican leadership, said Minority Leader Frank Dermody (D., Allegheny).

Dermody said House Democrats, who insist on having recurring revenue in any package, are "ready, willing, and able to negotiate a revenue plan that pays for the budget we overwhelmingly voted for in a bipartisan way." House Republicans, he said, "need to come back. They need to negotiate in good faith to come up with a plan that moves Pennsylvania forward."

J.J. Abbott, a spokesman for Wolf, said the governor "is eager to resume bipartisan negotiations to responsibly balance the budget."

The Senate is expected to come back this week, though an exact time had not been set as of Saturday night.

"We did take a detour," Corman said. "This is something the speaker wanted to run with. We allowed him."

Drew Crompton, counsel for the Senate Republicans, said members would prefer to find an agreement with all of the caucuses - including House Republicans - "but if all parties are not going to play in that game, then we'll do it with anybody else that would like to participate in being responsible to fund the budget."