While everyone else is home having pork and sauerkraut at their New Year’s Day dinner, members of the Senate and House will be in Harrisburg January 1 at noon to formally inaugurate the new two-year legislative session by swearing in new members, formally electing leadership and otherwise getting organized.

The next day they will all go home and not return to Harrisburg again until January 22.

Senate Republicans and Democrats and House Republicans and Democrats have already informally elected their Leadership teams for the new session.  The Senate Republicans and Democrats and the House have named Committee Chairs, but not the other members of each standing committee.

In addition, two members of the House Democratic Caucus will depart the House for other jobs--  Rep. Matt Smith (D-Allegheny) won election to the Senate, and Rep. Eugene DePasquale (D-York) will become Pennsylvania’s auditor general in January.  Both seats will be filled by special elections to be scheduled by the Speaker.

Familiar Issues

Senate and House Leadership and the Governor remain the same, as well as the issues they will face in the coming year.

Gov. Corbett has already laid out his immediate 2013 legislative priorities: a no-tax increase budget, proposing a transportation improvement funding plan, dealing with the Commonwealth’s unfunded pension obligations and privatizing liquor sales.

Out of the three, the Senate and House are likely to agree on the need to adopt a transportation funding plan, since they can take at least some of the fruits of their labors back to their constituents.

School and state worker pension issues will be a tough sell, the issue has to be dealt with at some point, but real decisions need to be made on whether to cut benefits or increase payments to pension funds and by how much.

And on liquor privatization, the House Republicans have always made it more of a priority than the Senate.

Here’s more on these and other issues leftover from 2012--

-- General Fund Budget: Gov. Corbett said he would again propose a General Fund budget in February with no tax increases.  Later Budget Secretary Charles Zogby said agencies were instructed to submit FY 2013-14 budget proposals which held General Fund appropriations flat, although increasing personnel and other costs will actually mean agency budgets will be cut by another 7 to 8 percent.

            Budget cuts in each of the last 10 years have already left General Fund appropriations for the departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources below 1994 levels, a $1.5 billion cut in all.  DEP in particular has lost more than 20 percent of its full-time positions since 2003.

-- Transportation Funding: The Governor's Transportation Commission issued a report in August 2011 detailing a list of recommendations for closing the more than $2 billion funding gap for highways, bridges and transit in the state.

Although the Senate and House Transportation Committees have had a series of joint hearings on the report, the Corbett Administration has yet to say what it supports in the recommendations.  Everyone had listed transportation funding on their priority list for last Fall, but of course it did not get done.

Sen. Jake Corman (R-Centre), Majority Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, put together his own transportation funding package and floated it out for comments in late October of 2011.

At the beginning of December, Gov. Corbett said in interviews he would be proposing a transportation funding plan which may include a possible increase in the wholesale tax on motor fuels.

-- Paying For Flood Damages: Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee roared through Pennsylvania causing hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and at least seven deaths in September 2011.  It  also caused yet another budget problem for the Commonwealth because the state is responsible for paying 25 percent of at least the public infrastructure cost of Federal Disaster Assistance in the 27 counties declared a disaster area.

-- Stormwater Management: Senate Bill 1261 (Erickson-R- Delaware) further providing for stormwater management by municipal authorities got to the House Floor and died.  A summary and Senate Fiscal Note are available.

-- Prevailing Wage. Perhaps the biggest single tool to reduce public spending is to eliminate or reduce the scope of prevailing wage laws applied to publicly funded projects saving from 30 to 75 percent on labor costs for many projects.  The annual price tag for prevailing wage in Pennsylvania is estimated to be $1 billion.  Bills to deal with this issue were left on the House Calendar.

12/31/2012