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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
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Rep. Ken Smith welcomes news of tentative budget agreement
Legislator was pushing plan to get rank and file involved in negotiations
HARRISBURG, Sept. 11 – State Rep. Ken Smith today welcomed news that legislative leaders have reached a tentative agreement on a 2009-10 budget for Pennsylvania.
As the agreement was being announced by legislative leaders today, Smith was pushing a resolution that would have convened the entire House of Representatives as a Committee of the Whole to help craft a final budget plan.
On Thursday, Smith joined a bipartisan group of House legislators to announce the introduction of a resolution to convene the Committee of the Whole. The committee would have acted like any other House Committee, debating and making suggestions in open session on aspects of the General Fund budget.
"While I and other members of the General Assembly have been in close contact with our legislative leaders throughout the negotiating process, many of us were frustrated that the process was taking so long," Smith said. "I believed it was time to take a much more aggressive approach to getting a deal done, and that is why I was part of the movement to create the Committee of the Whole."
"I am hopeful that the agreement announced today can be finalized soon, passed by the House and Senate and signed by the governor so that the critical funding that schools, local governments and community agencies need can begin to flow again."
Smith said a Committee of the Whole was last convened in the House in 2006 to debate crime and anti-violence proposals.
Smith said the tentative budget agreement announced today calls for a $27.945 billion spending plan that includes no broad-based tax increases and uses a combination of one-time revenues and recurring revenues to produce a balanced budget for the fiscal year. While it includes necessary and strategic cuts in state spending across the board, the plan provides adequate funding for core government services for children, the elderly, veterans and people with disabilities, and key investments in basic education, something House Democrats fought for over the past several months.
The joint House Senate Conference Committee will reconvene on Monday to begin preparing details of the budget legislation, Smith said, with the hope of a House and Senate vote on the plan as soon as possible.
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