This is typical: pass the costs down the line so you can say you held the line and let the less powerful fend for themselves...

From PennLive

[Emphasis added - Ed.]

Palmyra struggles with negative budget impact from Senate bill

by BARBARA MILLER, Of the Patriot-News

Thursday May 07, 2009, 10:00 PM

PALMYRA-Palmyra Area School Board plans to pass a preliminary budget May 14 with a 6.8 percent increase in taxes next week - rather than the maximum 4.2 percent increase it expected to adopt - due to the state Senate's cut of $1 billion from the governor's budget.

Board members said they want to make further cuts in the $36 million budget, but may need more than a week to decide where the money will come from.

Superintendent Larry Schmidt estimated at least $439,000 has disappeared from Palmyra's budget - the equivalent of nearly two mills of real estate tax - out of the $1.4 million in stimulus funds the district was expecting.

Schmidt said the Senate budget returns basic education funding to 2008-09 levels and uses federal stimulus funds to supplant education funds and help balance the state budget.

"It circumvents the whole intent of the stimulus act," Schmidt said.

"It's ethically wrong, it's probably legally wrong, it's just wrong,"
said board member Brad White.

"It's a stonewalling technique by the Senate to make a statement," said board member Christine Horn. "This'll never pass the House."

Schmidt said a lengthy battle over the budget is expected, but school districts must have their budgets adopted in mid-June to get tax bills in the mail in July.

The preliminary budget will be voted on at the 6:30 p.m. May 14 board meeting.

A 6.8 percent, or six-mill tax increase, would add $141 to the real estate tax bill of the owner of a home assessed at the district average of $23,500. The tax rate would become 94.25 mills.

Expect more of this, especially when the state and contract mandated employee health insurance premiums get jacked up again. State single-payer, anyone?

Actually, it recently crossed my mind that the Commonwealth could at least be self-insured and quit padding the profits of insurance companies.

PA Senate: Playing politics with our children's future.

Had enough yet?