In most years by this time, the state General Assembly takes a short break, but with so many issues still unresolved in Harrisburg that is not the case in 2003.
“We are still in session and subject to recall,” Huntingdon Representative Larry Sather told The Daily News in a phone interview this week.
The state’s new fiscal year began Tuesday, July 1, but session days are scheduled for next week.
Sather reminded a budget has been passed, the first one proposed by Governor Edward Rendell. That one however, cuts funding for a number of services, and the governor wants another spending plan tied somewhat to gaming expansion.
“The General Assembly passed a bare-bones budget (proposed by the governor),” said Sather.
Sather said it was the governor who cut out programs on a line item basis rather than the method the representative who have preferred, that being a percentage of across the board cuts for all departments.
“Some programs have been cut 80 or 90 percent while others only five percent,” said the Huntingdon County representative.
Rendell’s budget, designed to close a $2.5 billion budget gap, proved especially tough on library and substance-abuse programs, halving those expenditures to $37.5 million a year for the state’s libraries and $100 million a year for treatment programs.
The latter cuts will affect 40,000 people, according to Deb Beck, director of Drug and Alcohol Service Providers of Pennsylvania.
Rendell hopes to use about $408 million of a $900 million federal windfall to restore at least some of the cuts.
It has been reported the governor feels it is “too early” to get involved in the unresolved funding issues facing the state that must pass through the General Assembly.
“There in lies some of the problem,” observed Sather. “Reasonable people should sit down at the negotiating table.”
Sather said agreements must be made on a number of “unresolved issues.”
Those issues on Sather’s list include property tax relief, “more on medical malpractice and a hole in the basic education” supplement from the commonwealth.
Gambling, or as it is called now, gaming, remains an unresolved issue. The Senate has passed a gaming bill that Sather says likely will see many changes in the House.
On that issue, Sather said he always votes the way people in his district demand.
He also said that recent polls show “the numbers are changing” on feelings of allowing “gaming expansion.”
“There will be a cost in human suffering if gaming is expanded,” warned Sather.
The local representative said he does not like gaming being attached to popular issues, such as more monies for volunteer fire and emergency services, one of Sather’s pet projects.
Sather has proposed $25 million in state revenue for local fire and emergency services., none of which would be tied to gambling, he said.
The representative would not venture a guess as to how long it will take to clear the unresolved issues during the unusual summertime session.
