Brad Bumstead of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review writes:

As the House prepares to roll out a bill next week to require a user-friendly, online database for taxpayers, Senate officials today said it is a priority for senators and Senate leaders.

(…)

Lawmakers failed last session to get a version on the governor’s desk.

It’s a priorty for Republican Gov. Tim Corbett, who talked about it during his campaign.

Another Corbett campaign pledge — eliminating or reducing the Legislature’s $188 million surplus — got a boost today from an unlikely source: a Democratic House member.

State Rep. Josh Shapiro, D-Montgomery, said he intends to introduce legislation to eliminate the legislative surplus by law, and circulated a memo to his colleagues asking for support.

Shapiro chaired a legislative audit committee that found, based on an independent audit, the Legislature ended the 2010 fiscal year with a $188.5 million legislative surplus.

“Most states have policies in place to either prohibit legislative surpluses or to limit them,” said Shapiro. “I believe we should eliminate the legislative surplus in Pennsylvania and, given the challenging fiscal climate we face as we prepare for the upcoming budget, we ought to use the current surplus to address the needs of Pennsylvanians.”

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The account, which critics call a “slush fund,” has fallen lately, to one lawmaker’s approval.

Tom Barnes of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes:

The General Assembly’s reserve account, dubbed a “slush fund” by some legislative critics, has been reduced but remains robust.According to an audit of legislative finances released Tuesday, the reserve fund ended fiscal 2010 on June 30 with a $188 million surplus, down $13 million, or 6 percent, from a year earlier, said State Rep. Josh Shapiro (D., Montgomery).

He chairs the bipartisan Legislative Audit Advisory Commission, which hires accountants to do the annual audit. Shapiro noted, approvingly, that the size of the reserve fund has been gradually dropping, from $230 million two years ago to $201 million last year, and now to $188 million.

The reserve fund has been defended by legislative leaders as necessary for keeping themselves and their staff on the payroll if a state budget isn’t ready by the annual deadline of July 1. That happened in 2009, when the new state budget was more than 100 days late.

But some General Assembly critics think a kitty of $200 million or so is too large, especially when legislators will need to find ways to cut state spending. A deficit of at least $3 billion is being forecast for the fiscal year that starts July 1, and many agencies are facing budget cuts.

“We are in extraordinary fiscal times in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said. “We need to find every dollar in state government to save.”

A year ago, he noted, the audit commission had recommended drastically reducing or even eliminating the reserve fund, but that has not happened. Without some amount of reserve, legislative leaders fear that whoever is governor would have an edge in budget deliberations, because legislators won’t have their own independent budget expertise.

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