HARRISBURG (AP) A party-line vote in the Pennsylvania Senate on Tuesday advanced a proposed constitutional amendment closer to a statewide vote and a potentially acrimonious campaign leading up to the November election between the interests of nonprofit institutions and financially struggling cities.

The vote, 30-19, in the Republican-controlled Senate gave the chamber's final approval to a resolution to change the Pennsylvania Constitution to let lawmakers, not courts, decide which organizations qualify as charities and can escape paying certain taxes.Approval from the Republican-controlled House in the coming months is necessary to put the proposal on November's statewide ballot. The vote could carry significant financial implications for the nonprofit institutions universities, hospitals and health systems, religious institutions and others and the cities and towns where many of them are based.Nonprofits have urged lawmakers to advance the proposal, while municipal officials and public-sector unions have opposed it.The Senate's approval bypassed objections by Democrats, who said cash-strapped cities will be hurt and huge, cash-rich institutions will benefit.The debate comes on the heels of a 2012 state Supreme Court ruling that limited lawmakers' power to broaden the definition of a "purely public charity" and gave municipalities more ability to pursue payments from nonprofit institutions.A constitutional amendment could re-activate a 1997 state law that Democrats say is tilted against the ability of governments to recoup some sort of payment from nonprofit institutions that use municipal services and own considerable amounts of property."There is a reason why just about every single statewide organizing representing local governments and a variety of other folks are opposed to this legislation," Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, said during floor comments. "It is because we're tying their hands behind their backs."Republicans said it is important that lawmakers, not courts, decide how to define a charity and say lawmakers can separately address the worries of municipal governments by rewriting the 1997 state law."We have this erratic patchwork of court decisions across the commonwealth that is not proper and not appropriate tax policy that we are charged to correct," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman John Eichelberger, R-Blair. "And ... the separation of powers situation we are in is a very important issue for the Legislature to address."Complicating the issue are state laws that force most Pennsylvania cities to rely heavily on revenue from property taxes at a time when property values have stagnated, and the disappearance of many manufacturing plants has devastated the state's urban tax bases. In some cities, more than half of the property on tax rolls is tax-exempt, lawmakers say.