disorderlyvision
08-05-2009, 12:36 PM
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-budget-democrats-080509-cn,0,3985223.story
HARRISBURG -- - House Democrats arranged for themselves to be paid ahead of other state workers as they voted yesterday for a placeholder budget.
The House Comptroller's Office confirmed this morning that it cut checks for Democratic lawmakers yesterday. State workers will not be paid until next week at the earliest. Senate Democrats have not been paid, nor have Republican lawmakers in the Senate or the House.
Asked why Democratic leaders had undertaken the decision to pay lawmakers first, Brett Marcy, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne, said:
"We have always had the ability to pay our Members throughout this budget impasse, but our leadership team made the decision early on that we would not pay our Members until we passed a bill that would allow state workers to get paid. We passed that bridge bill yesterday, and the Governor just signed it today."
Marcy said it was "regrettable" that state employees were caught in the budgetary crossfire. "We believe they should be paid as quickly as possible, and that's why we passed the bridge budget yesterday. We have no control over the administrative process of getting those workers paid, but we understand the Governor has tried to accelerate that process as much as possible."
Still, the move outraged Republicans, who have been going without pay since last month.
"I hope you beat the … out of them," one GOP rank-and-filer told The Morning Call, which broke the news today on its Capitol Ideas blog.
Rep. Karen Beyer, R-Lehigh, was more measured, saying Democratic leaders should have waited to issue checks until after state employees had received theirs.
State workers have been going without pay or living on partial pay since July 1.
At a press conference yesterday, Gov. Ed said the state Treasury would start running the numbers to calculate the current and back pay due to 77,000 state employees. Those paychecks would start going out early next week, Rendell told Capitol scribes.
HARRISBURG -- - House Democrats arranged for themselves to be paid ahead of other state workers as they voted yesterday for a placeholder budget.
The House Comptroller's Office confirmed this morning that it cut checks for Democratic lawmakers yesterday. State workers will not be paid until next week at the earliest. Senate Democrats have not been paid, nor have Republican lawmakers in the Senate or the House.
Asked why Democratic leaders had undertaken the decision to pay lawmakers first, Brett Marcy, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Todd Eachus, D-Luzerne, said:
"We have always had the ability to pay our Members throughout this budget impasse, but our leadership team made the decision early on that we would not pay our Members until we passed a bill that would allow state workers to get paid. We passed that bridge bill yesterday, and the Governor just signed it today."
Marcy said it was "regrettable" that state employees were caught in the budgetary crossfire. "We believe they should be paid as quickly as possible, and that's why we passed the bridge budget yesterday. We have no control over the administrative process of getting those workers paid, but we understand the Governor has tried to accelerate that process as much as possible."
Still, the move outraged Republicans, who have been going without pay since last month.
"I hope you beat the … out of them," one GOP rank-and-filer told The Morning Call, which broke the news today on its Capitol Ideas blog.
Rep. Karen Beyer, R-Lehigh, was more measured, saying Democratic leaders should have waited to issue checks until after state employees had received theirs.
State workers have been going without pay or living on partial pay since July 1.
At a press conference yesterday, Gov. Ed said the state Treasury would start running the numbers to calculate the current and back pay due to 77,000 state employees. Those paychecks would start going out early next week, Rendell told Capitol scribes.