"If there was any confusion that maybe the severance tax, some of that money, would be sort of merged in an invisible way into the general fund — what I'm trying to say here is that this is for specific capital projects," he explained.
Last year, the School District of Philadelphia used $16 million state grants and local funds to launch a program to clear lead paint and asbestos from its aging school buildings.
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Superintendent William Hite is all for the governor's plan.
"Even after we use all of the grant money and the funds that the district operations budget has provided, there's still significant amounts of work to be done," he noted. "That's why we are all advocating for a reliable source of funding."
And one-time funds won't address long-term issues.
"We're not going to address $4.5 billion of deferred maintenance needs with a collection of one-time funds," Hite said. "We actually need a recurring source so that we can have a long-term plan to address these things and to ensure that the buildings we address don't fall back into disrepair."
Wolf said Pennsylvania is the only natural gas-producing state without a severance tax.
"If we had one, here's money we need right now to help address the issues in classes and school buildings like this, all across Pennsylvania," he added.