HARRISBURG - The new $27.65 billion state budget produced clear winners and losers.
Some 70,000 individuals, mostly adults with disabilities - who lose monthly stipends of about $200 as of Aug. 1 with the end of the General Assistance cash grant program - rank among the biggest losers under the spending plan for fiscal 2012-13 signed Saturday night by Gov. Tom Corbett after a marathon weekend legislative session. Democratic lawmakers couldn't save the assistance program, but they won a 30-day extension before the program ends and a commitment from the Corbett administration to see if recipients are eligible for other services, said Senate Democratic Appropriations Chairman Vincent Hughes, D-7, Philadelphia, Monday.
As of January, there were 887 GA recipients in Lackawanna County; 1,183 in Luzerne County; 469 in Schuylkill County; 219 in Northumberland County; 118 in Susquehanna County; 105 in Bradford County; 109 in Pike County; 60 in Wyoming County; and 16 in Sullivan County, according to an analysis by the House Democratic Appropriations Committee.
The state's business community clearly falls in the winners category, gaining approval for a variety of state tax credits. These include a long-term tax credit to Shell Oil Co. and spinoff firms for a planned $4 billion ethane cracker plant in Beaver County starting in 2017. The tax credit becomes effective once Shell meets certain investment and job-creation thresholds.
A budget provision long sought by businesses bases a company's liability for Corporate Net Income taxes on sales only rather than sales, property and payroll.
"This improvement gives Pennsylvania another leg up in the competitiveness race," said Gene Barr, president of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry.
Corbett touted state taxpayers as winners in a no tax-hike budget, while Democratic lawmakers said cuts in state aid will make local taxpayers pay more.
For a number of other interests and advocacy groups with a stake in the state budget, the assessment of how they fared was tempered by the realization the final budget is more palatable than the initial proposal made by Corbett in February.
This is due to an improvement above projections in state tax revenue collections of roughly $600 million during the past four months.
Pennsylvania closed the fiscal 2011-12 year with a revenue shortfall of $163 million, or 0.6 percent, below estimate, the state Revenue Department said Monday. Corbett's proposal was based on a $719 million shortfall. Revenue collections in June alone were $170 million above projections.
The Pennsylvania Health Care Association reflected the quandary, saying the governor and lawmakers had kept their promise to the elderly by restoring Medicaid funding to nursing homes. Corbett had proposed a 4 percent cut in Medical Assistance rates.
"But even with level funding, nursing homes will be paid by Medicaid about $20 per resident per day less than the real cost of providing that care," said PHCA president Dr. Stuart Shapiro, M.D.
A similar refrain was heard from PennEnvironment, which praised the restoration of $38 million for the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund. The Keystone Fund would have lost all funding under the governor's proposal.
That victory was offset by a $12 million cut in the budget for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said PennEnvironment Director David Masur.
The group was sharply critical of an 11th-hour move to put a six-year moratorium on natural gas drilling in a geologic formation known as the South Newark Basin in Bucks and Montgomery counties in the fiscal code bill. The group drew a comparison with provisions for state review of local zoning ordinances in the Marcellus Shale drilling impact fee law.
"To treat the vast majority of the state's residents as second-class citizens by removing their right to control gas drilling in their backyards - while giving other residents the ability to have a complete moratorium on gas drilling - is illogical and violates everything we know about the Golden Rule," Masur said.
School-choice advocates are winners with an expansion of state tax credits offered to businesses that contribute scholarships to students to attend the school of their choice. A new tax credit program is targeted to students in the low-achieving public schools.
Victims of the severe flooding last fall in Northeast Pennsylvania are losers with the lack of agreement between the Republican-controlled House and Senate on a state flood-relief package.