Have you ever heard the story of the Kentucky Fried Chicken secret recipe? The urban legend is that the recipe is written in pencil on a sheet of notebook paper by Colonel Sanders himself, and that notebook paper, faint and yellowing, is in a company vault in KFC’s Louisville headquarters guarded by motion detectors and security cameras. Only two KFC executives can access the vault.
This level of secrecy can only be matched by the office of Governor Tom Corbett. The scarcity of budget specifics is unprecedented. Many of Harrisburg’s best insiders have been reduced to guessing. But despite the Governor’s close-to-the-vest style, we can expect a few predictions to come true for tomorrow.
- It’s going to hurt. The Governor’s budget secretary, Charles Zogby, referred to it as “a day of reckoning” at his press club luncheon last week. (Incidentally, this Press Club luncheon has been well covered and printed among PA’s newspapers, not because it was hosted by the Press Club, but because it’s one of the only times a member of the Governor’s administration has spoken publicly about the budget.) The Governor’s budget has to fill a reported $4 billion hole, all while fulfilling his campaign promises of no tax increases and no fees on shale drilling. No amount of creative accounting can cover that shortcoming. Cuts will be made.
- There’s no shortage of blame to go around. And from Zogby’s presentation, most of the blame for this $4 billion deficit was laid at the feet of Governor Rendell. One of the early sacrifices to the overspending gods was AdultBasic, a health insurance program for low-income working adults, which the Corbett administration did not refund last week. This signaled the Governor’s resolve to forgo programs rather than raise tax or fee revenue.
- Is there a silver lining? If there is any good news with Secretary Zogby’s presentation, it is that he seemed to recognize human services as a core function of government. “I think there’s also a desire to want to address the needs of the most needy and most vulnerable in our commonwealth. I think that’s been certainly the priorities of Governor Corbett as he’s gone ahead and put together this budget.”
- Cuts will not be constant across-the-board. Part of the doom-and-gloom rhetoric is that every government program, regardless of function, will be slashed by a fixed percentage regardless of function. But advocacy groups have gotten assurance that every government program will be evaluated separately.
While specifics are light, there are some near-constants that we can count on. The remainder will be filled in with the Governor’s budget address at 11:30 tomorrow. Please keep an eye on PCPA’s web site, www.paproviders.org, for PCPA’s budget summary, which will be sent to members tomorrow evening.
