Legislative hearings on Gov. Tom Wolf's budget plan are underway.
The House Appropriations Committee opened a monthlong series of hearings Monday with testimony from the head of the Independent Fiscal Office.
Matthew Knittel, the office's director, outlined a generally positive economic outlook for the fiscal year starting July 1. Knittel says his agency projects employment growth of nearly 49,000 jobs, up from fewer than 42,000 this year, and wage growth of 3.6 percent compared with 3.2 percent last year.
Not counting the billions of dollars in new taxes Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf has proposed, Knittel projects only 1.5 percent revenue growth next year, largely because of the gradual elimination of a major business tax and hundreds of millions of dollars being counted in this year instead of next year.
