With the adjournment of the House this week until November 12, the General Assembly left lots of important issues on the table-- liquor reform, pension reform, prevailing wage reform-- each representing multiple billions of dollars worth of decisions to state government and next year’s budget.

The General Assembly missed the opportunity to send these good bills to the Governor’s desk--

-- Drinking Water Well Standards: House Bill 343 (Miller-R-York) setting standards for drinking water wells is still in the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

-- Green State Buildings: House Bill 34 (Harper-R-Montgomery) setting green building standards for state owned or leased buildings.  A similar bill-- Senate Bill 1061 (Rafferty-R-Montgomery)-- was amended to include the provisions of House Bill 34 and then referred to the Senate Appropriations Committee where it remained.

-- Sewer/Water P2 Partnerships: House Bill 2239 (Evankovich-R-Armstrong) authorizing public-private partnerships for sewer, water, school district projects remains Tabled in the House.

-- Backup Generators: House Bill 1699 (Ross-R-Chester) setting air quality standards for backup generators is in the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.

Liquor privatization bogged down in the Senate where no meaningful action has been taken on the issue since July 2013.  The House passed its privatization bill in March 2013.

The Senate passed a very limited form of pension reform covering public officials this past July, but the House did not take up the bill or even have a vote on reform this session, in spite of efforts by Gov. Corbett to stir up public interest on the issue by crisscrossing the state over the last five months.

Bills addressing prevailing wage reform, which could save the state billions on environmental and other projects, have been stuck on the House Calendar since June 2013.

Other issues that loomed large at the beginning of the year-- Medicaid expansion and lottery privatization, for example, were put on the back burner when the feds approved Gov. Corbett’s Medicaid expansion plan (although challenger Tom Wolf has promised to undo the plan) and he discontinued the effort to privatize the lottery.

Even concerns over whether the price of gasoline would jump significantly as a result of the new gasoline taxes imposed to fund the transportation improvement plan enacted last year faded as the average price of gasoline fell from $3.49 in January to $3.15 and lower in October in many areas of Pennsylvania.

Gov. Corbett has been busily traveling around the state this week doing what you might expect at this point in the campaign--

-- $16.4M Awarded For Conservation, Environmental Protection Projects Thru Drilling Fees;

-- Corbett Announces $65.6M Investment In Water Infrastructure Projects In 16 Counties;

-- Corbett Releases Over $3.6 Million For Reuse Of 3 Brownfields Sites Around The State;

-- $12.5 Million In Energy Development Authority Funding Announced By Corbett; and

-- Corbett Announces $19 Million In Alternative, Clean Energy Investments.

For now the necessary focus of Senate and House members is on getting re-elected or elected, as the case may be.  Until the results of the November 4 election are known, the political future in Pennsylvania will remain fuzzy, regardless of what the opinion polls say.

Only 8 days remain before the election.

10/27/2014