{"id":6795,"date":"2014-07-24T10:00:43","date_gmt":"2014-07-24T14:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=6795"},"modified":"2014-07-24T09:50:53","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T13:50:53","slug":"oped-an-irresponsible-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/?p=6795","title":{"rendered":"Op\/Ed: An irresponsible budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/b>By Kathi Cozzone<\/strong>, Chester County Commissioner<\/span><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Cozzone\"<\/a>

Chester County Commissioner Kathi Cozzone<\/p><\/div>\n

I worked in the private sector at large and small companies, in various financial management roles, for about two decades before becoming a Chester County Commissioner.\u00a0 During the Corbett administration, I have watched from afar as legislators and the Governor concocted one bad budget after another.\u00a0 Previous budgets funded education irresponsibly, forcing school districts to squeeze taxpayers to make up the difference.<\/p>\n

Previous budgets have underfunded the state\u2019s pension funds, a problem that goes back at least a decade, which has forced the state into a pension crisis of their own making.\u00a0 As a result, the amount of real dollars allocated to schools for use in the classroom is still below what it was in the 2008-2009 budget, a problem that looks even worse if numbers are adjusted for inflation.<\/p>\n

State spending must at least keep up with inflation to give school districts a prayer of passing budgets without property tax increases. \u00a0Of course, the Governor and his supporters in the legislature will spend the rest of this election year telling us that education spending is at an all-time high.\u00a0 But when you look at the fine print, they are counting payments to the pension system as \u201ceducation spending\u201d; which is basically short-changing our kids for the mistakes of past Legislators and Governors.<\/p>\n

Most disturbing of all, previous budgets have relied on one-time fixes, delayed payments, accounting gimmicks and raids of specific funds to get into balance.\u00a0 Lawmakers seem utterly unconcerned with the sustainability of the state budget; instead being mostly concerned with how voters will react to the short term impact.\u00a0 The gimmicks and one-time fixes would have put me in hot water at any of the private sector jobs I\u2019ve held where I was responsible for submitting a budget proposal.\u00a0 But this year saw financial game-playing reach new heights.<\/p>\n

The budget makes $567 Million in one-time transfers from various funds that are set up to collect revenue and fund a specific purpose, such as the Tobacco Settlement Fund.\u00a0 The budget counts on Federal dollars from the Governor\u2019s yet-to-be-approved Medicaid plan and a proposed casino that does not yet have a license.\u00a0\u00a0 But worst of all, the budget magically increases projected tax revenues by $100 Million over what the Independent Fiscal Office projected for next year.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, this is the same office that underestimated<\/i> this year\u2019s tax revenue to the tune of over $600 Million!\u00a0 That\u2019s right, the Senate amended the original house budget to include a phantom $100 Million increase over an estimate that is already, if history is any guide, an overestimation to begin with.\u00a0 As a Corporate Business manager in the private sector, I would have had to explain why my estimates were inflated.\u00a0 Without a good answer, this would have been a fire-able offense when the chickens came home to roost a year later.\u00a0 Shouldn\u2019t this also be a fire-able offense for legislators who supported such an irresponsible budget?<\/p>\n

Only days since becoming law, the cracks in the latest state budget are already starting to show.\u00a0 Thanks to the use of one-time revenue sources and the inevitable deficit created by phantom revenue projections, Moody\u2019s has downgraded our state\u2019s bond rating.\u00a0 This is the third year in a row that the state has seen a downgrade just after passing its budget from at least one ratings agency.\u00a0 The legislature has failed to enact sensible new revenue sources like a natural gas extraction tax and failed to take up any legislation that addresses the state\u2019s pension debt.\u00a0 There\u2019s no telling how far our state will sink unless we opt to change directions this fall.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Kathi Cozzone is a Chester County Commissioner and candidate for the State Senate in the 44th District.<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Kathi Cozzone, Chester County Commissioner I worked in the private sector at large and small companies, in various financial management roles, for about two decades before becoming a Chester County Commissioner.\u00a0 During the Corbett administration, I have watched from afar as legislators and the Governor concocted one bad budget after another.\u00a0 Previous budgets funded […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,7],"tags":[3147,1253,294,360,1085,4239],"class_list":["post-6795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-featured","tag-deficit","tag-finance","tag-gov-tom-corbett","tag-kathi-cozzone","tag-legislature","tag-state-bidget"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chescotimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}