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Wolf prepares for next session

Governor touts strides in education, jobs

Associated Press file photo / Gov. Tom Wolf shakes hands with President Barack Obama after Obama arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport on Oct. 13, 2016. Wolf, a Democrat, has worked with a Republican-controlled Legislature to pass historic investments in education, the legalization of medical marijuana and a package of bills intended to mitigate the opioid crisis.

Associated Press file photo / Gov. Tom Wolf shakes hands with President Barack Obama after Obama arrived at Pittsburgh International Airport on Oct. 13, 2016. Wolf, a Democrat, has worked with a Republican-controlled Legislature to pass historic investments in education, the legalization of medical marijuana and a package of bills intended to mitigate the opioid crisis.

HARRISBURG — Two years ago, a York County businessman took office as the 47th governor of Pennsylvania after beating out his one-term Republican predecessor by more than 340,000 votes.

Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, has wrapped up his first legislative session in that post, having worked with a Republican-controlled Legislature to pass historic investments in education, the legalization of medical marijuana and a package of bills intended to mitigate the opioid crisis sweeping the commonwealth.

Wolf also had his fair share of hiccups. He was faulted for his role in a nine-month budget impasse in fiscal year 2015-16 and watched his party’s numbers in the General Assembly drop when he was elected and further dwindle in the 2016 election.

And as the state’s top executive, he is facing a projected $600 million revenue shortfall this fiscal year and at least a $1.7 billion deficit — which is more than he faced during the negotiations of his first state budget — in the coming year.

But better days are ahead — he hopes.

“It’s important to go back to what the governor inherited,” said Jeff Sheridan, Wolf’s spokesman. “When he took office, Pennsylvania was reeling from being in a really deep hole in many different aspects. For a very long time, the status quo and politics as usual really held Pennsylvania back.”

That includes trying to resolve the disparity between Pennsylvania’s rich and poor schools, funding treatment centers for those addicted to heroin and opioids and creating new jobs for middle-class workers, Sheridan said.

“After years of Harrisburg making decisions to cut education to the bone, the governor has worked with the Legislature to make the largest investment in education over a two-year period in history,” Sheridan said.

Those investments total more than $640 million for pre-K through college programs.

The fair funding formula, or Basic Education Funding Formula, which was signed by Wolf in June and first applied to 2016-17 education dollars, will address the state’s ranking as “probably the worst in the nation when it came to the disparity between rich and poor districts,” Sheridan said.

The new formula — which Wolf fought against implementing as part of his first state budget, but ultimately didn’t prevent — accounts for certain features of a school district when the money is distributed, such as the wealth of the district and the district’s ability to raise revenue, and student-based factors, such as the number of children in the district who live in poverty, are enrolled in charter schools and are English language learners.

Cracker plant coming

Nearly 220,000 Pennsyl­vania jobs were created or protected, too, thanks to efforts by Wolf, Sheridan said.

A new Shell ethane cracker plant will soon come to western Pennsylvania, with that effort started by former Gov. Tom Corbett, as well as a steel plant in Johnstown. The Port of Philadelphia will also be expanded to “double its capacity and spur a lot of private investments,” said Sheridan of the administration’s recent announcement that it will invest $300 million to update the port’s infrastructure.

In 2015, Wolf also oversaw the expansion of Medicaid services to more than 700,000 Pennsylvanians, as well as changes to the Children’s Health Insurance Program that has provided coverage for more than 20,000 kids, Sheridan said.

In order to do so, Wolf dismantled former Gov. Tom Corbett’s version of Medicaid expansion — Healthy PA — and installed his own, which, at the time, was expected to save the state $626 million. Savings would come from the federal government picking up the cost of the expansion enrollees who had been receiving health care services paid by the state.

The transition from Corbett’s program to Wolf’s was completed in September 2015.

However, beginning this year, the federal government will begin to reduce its support for expansion enrollees through 2020 when it will reduce its support to 90 percent, leaving the state to pick up the rest of the tab. A 2015 analysis of Medicaid expansion by the Independent Fiscal Office shows declining state savings through 2019. By 2020, the state budget will begin to experience overall costs, the analysis projects.

Additionally, it’s unclear how President-elect Donald Trump will address Medicaid expansion, since he has been critical of the Affordable Care Act, of which Medicaid expansion is a cornerstone. A little more than a week ago, Wolf sent a letter to U.S. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., offering his arguments for keeping the Medicaid expansion and the Affordable Care Act.

Stronger drug monitoring

In 2016, Wolf and the Legislature passed laws to strengthen the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, limit opioid prescriptions to minors and emergency room patients and to provide prescriptions for an overdose-reversal drug to police forces and school districts.

Other successes of the session included more than $156 million in taxpayer savings from Wolf’s new GO-TIME initiatives, the legalization of medical marijuana for patients suffering from diseases like epilepsy and cancer and the implementation of online voter registration.

Beer and wine also became easier to purchase, the state launched its first statewide campaign against sexual assault, the Department of Military and Veterans’ Affairs found homes for nearly 2,500 homeless vets, the state finished the phase-out of the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax and new regulations for gas drillers were passed, among other measures. And though his list of achievements is long, not everything was peachy for Wolf in the first half of his term.

In his first year, a nine-month budget impasse stalled the state and its agencies, causing major strains on human service programs and schools.

The impasse, which was caused by disputes between Wolf, who pushed for broad-based tax increases to boost education funding and chip away at the state’s deficit, and top Republicans, who resisted Wolf’s revenue proposal and pressed for changes to the state’s pension systems and liquor laws, ultimately came to an end in late March when Wolf let a $30 billion budget that he believed was not balanced to become law without his signature.

In comparison, Wolf’s second budget for fiscal year 2016-17 went smoother, with more investments in education and human service programs and revenues coming from “sin taxes” and yet-to-be-passed gaming legislation.

Neither budget signed

However, Wolf didn’t sign either budget and according to the IFO and the state’s budget secretary, the commonwealth’s revenues are projected to be at least

$600 million short of paying for the current fiscal year’s spending.

Many are speculating Wolf will have similar challenges to the 2015-16 budget year in the upcoming fiscal year, though he says he will not propose broad-based tax increases like before, a detail of his working proposal that Republicans will likely appreciate.

“He is going to present a balanced budget that streamlines government, cuts waste and maximizes efficiencies, while also making sure that we’re protecting investments in education, continuing to fight the heroin crisis and continuing to find ways to create good, middle-class jobs,” Sheridan said.

Wolf will present his proposal Feb. 7.

During Wolf’s tenure, his party also shrank in the General Assembly.

Following key losses in the 2014 gubernatorial election, state Democrats have lost four additional seats in the 203-seat House and four others in the 50-seat Senate to bring their margins to 123-80 and 34-16, respectively.

And at times, his relationships with Republican members of the General Assembly were rocky.

“Unfortunately, he made the mistake of hiring two people who wanted to be governor (Katie McGinty and John Hanger), and I don’t think either of them served him very well. They were more interested in the political fight than they were in getting accomplishments for Gov. Wolf,” said Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre, calling Wolf’s tenure a “tale of two years.”

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