HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania's Republican leadership engaged in a rare, public brouhaha this week as the state budget debate ended in recriminations that exposed fault lines over policies and personalities.
Now each side is licking wounds and weighing their next move.
Gov. Tom Corbett's veto Thursday of $72 million in legislative spending set off the intraparty feud. The sum represents a relatively small sum out of the new $29 billion state budget, yet it has assumed a larger symbolic importance.
Corbett and GOP legislative leaders in the House and Senate are battling on two fronts - one involving the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches and the other regarding whether the governor or GOP majorities in the House or Senate have been truer to the GOP mantra of tax cuts, reduced spending and privatization of government services.
The angry rhetoric boiled over at an inopportune time - just four months before voters go to the polls to choose between Corbett and his Democratic challenger, Tom Wolf, in the governor's race and decide many legislative contests as well. Corbett faces tough odds in his reelection bid, according to recent polls, while GOP lawmakers are better insulated by running in districts newly reapportioned in their favor.
Corbett portrayed the Legislature as being spendthrifts and influenced by public employee unions in the face of a $1.5 billion revenue deficit. He said lawmakers refused his request to contribute $75 million of their $150 million surplus to support the budget. Adding to the insult, in his view, was lawmakers going on summer recess without passing public pension reform legislation.
So Corbett vetoed legislative items equivalent to that rejected request - $65 million from the operating budget, $2 million for local projects and $5 million to cover increased legislative parking costs under a Harrisburg city fiscal recovery plan.
Senate Republican leaders called the governor's action punitive, harming good programs and threatening its role as a separate and independent branch of government. They said the governor took an unprecedented and likely unconstitutional step of vetoing sections of the fiscal code bill listing the local projects.
House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-28, Pittsburgh, focused more on ideological issues. He said the House has compiled a better track record than Corbett this year at keeping state spending in line and reducing the cost of its operations. He asked what the governor has done to get a House-approved liquor privatization bill through the Senate.
Each side has choices to make.
Corbett could call a special legislative session to deal with pension reform. While a governor can call a session, he can't force lawmakers to pass legislation. Former Gov. Ed Rendell experienced this when he called one in 2010 to address transportation funding.
Legislative leaders could mount an effort to override the gubernatorial veto, file a lawsuit to challenge the vetoes related to the fiscal code, continue to try to round up elusive votes for a pension bill or just ignore the governor. The House is scheduled in session Aug. 4 to 6 to at least consider a bill to let Philadelphia increases its cigarette tax to fund public schools.
A Northeast Pennsylvania lawmaker wrote about the pent-up frustration of being in the majority in an op-ed piece earlier this week.
A small number of liberal Republicans joined by Democratic lawmakers have blocked key issues in the Republican agenda, Rep. Jerry Knowles, R-124, said. He said union leaders are giving a bottomless pit of campaign money to this group.
"Honestly, when it comes to the issues important to us - property tax reform, liquor privatization, pension reform, paycheck protection, right to work and real prevailing wage reform - we have barely moved the ball forward," he added.
The pension bill backed by the governor is stalled because a number of lawmakers have concluded it won't bring much savings or reduce property taxes, David Broderic, spokesman for the teacher-oriented Pennsylvania State Education Association, said.
"The governor and others are trying to blame whomever they can," he said.