Senator Scott Hutchinson issued the following statement after Governor Wolf line-item vetoed, then signed, House Bill 1460, which currently represents a $23.4 billion state budget for Fiscal Year 2015-16, including six months of funding for schools and funding at Fiscal Year 2014-15 levels for many other programs and services.
“While I would have preferred a full-year allotment for education and all other services and programs, it is gratifying to see that the Governor has finally decided to stop using funding for schools and human services as leverage for his proposed tax increases and spending policies. Those should be decided on their own merits and not as preconditions to distributing state and federal money to basic community services. By providing this ‘emergency funding,’ as he called it, the Governor is finally recognizing the basic responsibility of state government to the people it serves. That is something that Senate Republicans recognized with the budget we passed in June, the ‘emergency funding’ budget we passed in September, our attempts to override the Governor’s veto of the budget, and finally passage of House Bill 1460.”
Contact: Justin Leventry (717) 787-9684 jleventry@pasen.gov