July 14th, 2009

The Philadelphia Inquirer explains how the budget battle is now being played out on YouTube.

Yesterday morning, Gov. Rendell began airing ads about Pennsylvania’s budget crisis on the Web sites of 10 newspapers, from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. The YouTube video features a somber-looking Rendell explaining why his proposal to raise the state’s personal income tax is necessary – and why an alternative budget plan being pushed by Republicans in the Senate contains, in his view, catastrophic spending cuts.

The cost to run the spots every day for the next week: $15,000, which the governor is charging to his campaign account, Rendell for Governor, flush with almost $1.9 million as of late last year.

“The governor believes that educating the public is in everyone’s interest and he is willing to bear some of the cost of doing so,” Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said yesterday when asked why the governor was turning to the Internet to get his message out.

Rendell is not the only one.

In the public relations war that passage of a state budget has become this year, both sides are moving beyond conventional tactics to air their points of view and win public support as the impasse drags on.

And the situation is bad and getting worse: the state is two weeks past the July 1 deadline to enact a spending plan for 2009-10. And just yesterday, House Democrats tossed another wrench into the standoff by proposing to yank funding for higher education from the general fund in order free up $1.2 billion. (The Democrats did not say how they would make up for that higher education funding.)

Given the stakes, the spin volume in Harrisburg is being turned up to full blast.

House Republicans, for instance, recently produced two YouTube spots featuring a character named “Joe the Taxpayer” who mocks Rendell’s insistence on raising taxes on hard-working Pennsylvanians.

Steve Miskin, spokesman for House Minority Leader Sam Smith (R., Jefferson), said the caucus did not pay to run the clips on any Web sites. Instead, links for the videos were sent to reporters and were posted on a number of blogs.