Corbett not revealing blueprint
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Tom Corbett leaned hard on his promise of changing government in the election campaign that culminated in his inauguration as Pennsylvania’s 46th governor last week. “I’m ready to go to work. Day One, I’m handing Harrisburg my reform plan,” he declared in one TV ad just before the election.
As Week Two loomed, however, no blueprint had materialized and legislative leaders were preparing to press ahead with bills of their own as early as this week.
Corbett’s agenda is hardly a secret. The Republican outlined a dozen proposals on his campaign website and in debates. But now he has to fill in specifics and deal with the reality that many proposals require legislative approval, including some that may not attract majority support even with the GOP in control of both houses.
In an interview Wednesday, his first full day in office, Corbett brushed aside questions about the timing of his proposals and suggested that, in the interim, he might endorse some ideas already percolating in the Legislature.
He cited proposals to require state House employees to contribute 1 percent of their salary toward their health insurance, as Senate employees do, and tighten control over per-diem payments of as much as $160 a day to representatives who live more than 50 miles from the capital.
A bipartisan panel comprising the five top House leaders has reached tentative agreement on those changes and has the authority to implement them, spokesmen for both parties said.
During the campaign, Corbett proposed replacing per-diems throughout state government with reimbursement for expenses backed up by receipts. He also said elected state officials should have to pay a portion of their health care costs.
“Depending on what I see written,” Corbett said, “we may able to say ‘OK, we endorse that.'”
Meantime, legislators from both parties are resurrecting numerous measures that died in the last legislative session. They include proposals to abolish the legislative branch’s running surplus, which totaled $189 million at the end of June, and the creation of an online database that citizens can use to get information about state spending, revenue and contracts.
Corbett advocated limiting the surplus to a percentage of the Legislature’s operating budget and proposed a similar database.
House leaders have scheduled consideration this week of the first half-dozen GOP bills, which focus on strengthening public trust in government.
“These are the first bills moving through the House this session,” said House GOP spokesman Steve Miskin. “It’s what we said we should do when we were in the minority. We’re not changing our tune now that we’re in the majority.”
House Democratic spokesman Brett Marcy said members of the minority party will likely offer amendments to some of the GOP bills, as well as bills of their own, but that he anticipated bipartisan agreement on many proposals.
“It’s not new,” Marcy said.
Corbett, who as governor cannot submit legislation, is lining up sponsors for a proposed constitutional amendment to put the state budget on a two-year cycle, said spokesman Kevin Harley.
Discussions about what is likely the most explosive of Corbett’s proposals – the elimination of “walking-around money,” the nickname for a secretive process controlled by legislative leaders that funnels tens of millions of dollars a year in state grants to legislators’ pet programs in their home districts – would occur later this year in budget negotiations, Harley said.
Jim Burn, the state Democratic Party chairman, chided Corbett for not presenting the promised plan.
Harley said this about Corbett’s vow to hand in a plan: “He has.”
“It was called the election and he won,” he said.
Peter Jackson is the Capitol correspondent for The Associated Press in Harrisburg. He can be reached at pjackson@ap.org.