Senate Approves New Limits on Governor's Budget Powers

HARRISBURG – The Senate yesterday approved House Bill 1614 to reform the current state budget process, according to State Senator David G. Argall (R-29).

The legislation includes a provision introduced by Sen. Pat Browne that establishes a legislative fiscal budget office that would provide neutral revenue estimates starting in the 2011-2012 budget year, as well as analyze the requests, expenditures and practices of the state's various departments and agencies on a nonpartisan basis. Historically, these powers have been controlled only by the Governor and have been the subject of considerable political maneuvering.

In 2004, Argall introduced House Bill 2593, similar legislation that would require the General Assembly to be involved in the certification of the state's final revenue estimate. "I've been haunted by the fact that, if the General Assembly had agreed to my bill in 2004, much of this long and bloody budget debate over the past few months could have been eliminated," Argall noted.

"We've learned since we were all young that the true genius of our founding fathers in the 1780's was their concept of real checks and balances on the Legislative, the Executive and the Judicial branches," Argall said. "By creating this independent, nonpartisan fiscal office to give this House and Senate unquestioned data in the future, I believe we can greatly improve our budget process and avoid budget stalemates such as those we have suffered for the past 100 days," Argall said yesterday.

"While there is plenty of blame to go around in Harrisburg for this failed budget process, we all should agree that we need to make real changes to our law to avoid similar budget delays from ever happening again," Argall added.