HARRISBURG — State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, and his House GOP colleagues are behind a new initiative called PennSAVE that will investigate state government spending and find ways to save taxpayer dollars.
The initiative stands for savings, accountability, value and efficiency. It comes amid a more than seven-month budget stalemate in Harrisburg and Gov. Tom Wolf’s recent budget address of the upcoming fiscal year that received widespread GOP backlash.
On Feb. 9 Wolf proposed a $33.3 billion budget with increased spending — a 10 percent bump from the proposed GOP budget this year. His plan requires $3.6 billion in broad-based tax increases to fix school funding disparities, meet the increasing costs of mandated services and confront the looming deficit.
Wolf said the alternative is to face a $1.9 billion structural deficit, which has implications on tax rates, future interest rates, services offered to residents and debt loads.
“Before taxpayers are asked to take a pay cut in order to send more money to Harrisburg, state government first needs to be accountable to taxpayers by ensuring it has explored every practical option for reducing costs,” Benninghoff said in a statement. “In a $30.3 billion budget, there are plenty of opportunities to find efficiencies and improve how government works.”
Without more revenue, Wolf said that the state will face cuts in education and social services along with higher local taxes. And if the state were unable to make payments to human services, local municipalities and county governments would have to pick up the slack to fund these mandates services.
Nonetheless, Benninghoff and 17 state representatives on the policy committee that he is chairman of will spend the next several weeks researching potential cost-saving measures including possible state agency and program consolidation, unaddressed audit finding, government procurement policies, “corporate welfare,” wage fraud and system abuse.
“The state budget process should begin, not with conversations about higher taxes, but by first looking for ways to reduce government waste and cut unnecessary costs,” he said in a press release. “It is easy to argue higher taxes are the best solution for budget shortfalls and much more difficult to find real savings, but that is our job as lawmakers.”
A House Majority Policy subcommittee, which launched PennSAVE, will mostly focus the research on the largest areas of state government spending, which includes human services, education, corrections and state government in general. But Benninghoff added, “No idea is off limits.”
The House Majority Policy Committee is encouraging the public to participate in the initiative by submitting ideas at www.pagoppolicy.com.
“We have to look forward toward looking in a bipartisan manner to get good ideas accomplished for the commonwealth,” Benninghoff said in his Feb. 22 press conference where he announced the initiative.
Benninghoff made it clear that it was neither a Democrat nor a Republican issue. He said he discussed his plan with Wolf and also hopes to work with other House and Senate committees, executive agencies and Democrat Eugene DePasquale, the state auditor general.
PennSAVE is similar to other efforts aimed at identifying areas where state government could save money including Wolf’s GO-TIME and a website that Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, launched.
“PennSAVE is another opportunity for the public to submit ideas on how to make government work better,” said state Rep. Mike Hanna, D-Lock Haven, via email. “We have seen similar efforts in years past. Most recently, we have seen how successful Governor Wolf’s GO-TIME initiative has been since its inception over one year ago. Finding government savings and efficiencies is a bipartisan effort that I am happy to support.”
