�The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Gov. Ed Rendell (D) misused his line-item veto authority in 2005 to remove miscarriage counseling language from a budget bill, the AP/Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The consentaneous decision, which overturned a lower court ruling, aforementioned that "language-only" vetoes ar not permitted, meaning Rendell is non allowed to strike speech in a budget card without canceling the associated funding in the measure (Scolforo, AP/Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/20).
The language, which was approved in 2005 by the state Legislature, would experience subjected whatever federal class planning support to the same restrictions as state family provision funds -- a necessity under a 1996 state law that says such money "shall not be used to promote, perform or look up for abortions, or engage in abortion counseling." Rendell at the time said restricting the use of federal Medicaid funds likely violates the state constitution and federal law (Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 8/14/06).
Former state House Speaker John Perzel (R) and Robert Jubelirer, the state Senate's ranking Republican at the time, filed the separation-of-powers lawsuit. Senate Republican attorney Steve MacNett said that the financial year 2005-2006 money is presumably all spent just that the ruling testament influence future budget negotiations. Rendell representative Chuck Ardo said that the case is "complex," adding that the governing wanted to review the ruling before making extra comments. According to the opinion by Chief Justice Ronald Castille, the Rendell administration told the court that preventing line-item vetoes of nomenclature will cause the General Assembly to "once once again 'load up' large appropriations with obnoxious conditions and put the governor (to) a Hobbesian choice" (AP/Philadelphia Inquirer, 8/20).
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