Bills crowd into closing Pa. legislative window

Pennsylvania lawmakers are in a sprint to finalize numerous pieces of legislation since the waning summer legislative session may offer the last, best chance to strike a deal before a new General Assembly is seated next year.

Numerous measures, such as one to give state regulators the power to reject a proposed merger between Pennsylvania's two largest health insurers, have waited since the two-year legislative session began last year.

An overhaul of Pennsylvania's 1961 mine safety law has taken six years to accomplish, but appears ready to cross the finish line after Gov. Ed Rendell worked for several hours on Thursday to try to resolve the last disagreements between coal mine owners and the mine workers union.

Frenzied work on dozens of others bills is happening simultaneously with negotiations on a roughly $28 billion budget for the 2008-09 fiscal year that begins Tuesday. After reaching agreement on a budget, lawmakers will head home for their traditional two-month break from Harrisburg.

Several weeks of voting sessions are scheduled in September and October. But many legislators will be distracted by their re-election campaigns, and the Senate has said it will not hold a voting session after the Nov. 4 general election. In January, a new General Assembly will begin meeting.

"For controversial legislation, there probably is a much smaller window in the fall than normal," House GOP spokesman Stephen Miskin said.

The two days of negotiations on the mine safety bill were supposed to resolve differences in bills passed earlier this year by the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic-led House.

Sitting with Rendell on Thursday were top aides, legislators, national union negotiators and executives from coal companies, including Pittsburgh-based Consol Energy Inc. Final details were hammered out Friday.

"They sat through it, taking each issue one by one," said Sen. Richard A. Kasunic, D-Fayette, who sponsored the original bill.

After the 2002 accident at Quecreek Mine, the legislation took three years to develop because it encompassed recommendations made by federal and state commissions and a grand jury panel. After that, three more years elapsed, largely because of disagreements between the Rendell administration, labor union and coal companies.

The bill was expected to come up for a vote Monday in the Senate before going to the House.

Numerous other bills are in various stages of discussion or movement in the Legislature.

One bill would give the state insurance commissioner the power to stop the proposed merger between Independence Blue Cross and Highmark Inc., the state's two largest health insurers. For-profit insurance companies and consumer activists have both criticized the merger _ but Rendell and the Senate GOP have been at odds for more than a year over a plan to assert state regulatory oversight.

Doctors want the resumption of a state program that helped many of them pay their medical malpractice insurance premiums. The five-year, $1 billion subsidy _ paid for mostly by a 25 cent per-pack tax on cigarettes _ lapsed earlier this year when the Senate GOP opposed a Democratic plan to tap a surplus from the malpractice subsidy to expand health care insurance for uninsured adults.

Rendell has refused to renew the doctors' subsidy without approval of the health care plan.

In the Senate, negotiators have met with utility officials in an effort to devise a plan to blunt the spikes expected in the electric bills of 4 million customers in 2010 and 2011, when most of the rate caps that state regulators imposed a decade ago will expire.

However, the sides are far apart _ Senate Democrats want the utilities to give ratepayers a break of billions of dollars _ and few expect to resolve a disagreement that big before budget negotiations wrap up.

"It's just too much money to try to attach that particular bill to the budget," said Sen. Robert J. Mellow, the Democratic leader from Lackawanna County.