Rendell House of Cards is Collapsing

It's been a bad April so far for Gov. Ed Rendell.

Earlier this month, the Obama Administration rejected Rendell's plan to toll Interstate 80, sending state transportation funding into a tailspin.

When Rendell signed Act 44 into law in 2007, he was counting on revenue from I-80 tolls to fund a good portion of the state's transportation needs. Without the tolls, the state comes up at least $472 million short in its transportation budget, which means hundreds of needed road and bridge projects won't get done.

Funding for mass transit will also come up short without the toll revenues.

This is what happens when Rendell plays a shell game with state funding.

"For the past three years, the Commonwealth has put all its eggs in the tolling basket and disregarded other options for funding highways and transit," Congressman Glenn Thompson, R-PA-5, told The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. "Thanks to Act 44, the Turnpike Commission is up to its eyeballs in debt because of the borrowing done based on the premise that I-80 would be tolled."

Now comes word that another Rendell fiscal scheme is unraveling.

Rendell's 2009-10 budget, which was approved 101 days late by the Legislature, was "balanced" partly by raiding a special account used to defray physicians' cost of malpractice insurance.

Rendell "borrowed" $800 million from the so-called M-Care fund to "balance" his General Fund budget, which was passed primarily along party votes with Democrats rubber-stamping Rendell's phony numbers.

But a Commonwealth Court panel ruled 4-1 Thursday that Rendell was wrong to take the money from the M-Care fund and has to put it back.

Rendell's budget is already $700 million in the red with three months left in the fiscal year. Senate Appropriations Chairman Jake Corman, a Republican, says the state will end up with at least a $1 billion deficit by June 30 if the current tax tax collection trends continue.

The 2008-09 General Fund budget ended up $3.25 billion in the red so Rendell will be leaving office having run up more than $4 billion deficit spending. Heckuva job, Ed.