Lumps of coal for state lawmakers
On the very last day of the regular baseball season in 2003, the Detroit Tigers triumphed over the Minnesota Twins by a score of 9-4 and, after the final out was achieved, the Tigers took to the field in joyous celebration.
Had they just secured a last-minute playoff berth? No. Quite the opposite, in fact. Had they lost that game, the 2003 Detroit Tigers would have matched the notoriously horrific 1962 New York Mets for the most losses in one season. The Mets managed 120. The hapless and utterly dreadful Tigers walked away from their stumbling season losing only 119 games. The players could trot back to their lockers holding their heads high, knowing they were really, really bad, but not legendarily bad.
There were a few points in the last week when it was looking like our lawmakers in Harrisburg were going to be like the 2003 Tigers: they would just manage to get a state budget approved before Christmas, at least tying the Legislature of – coincidence! – 2003, which got a budget to Gov. Ed Rendell’s desk hours before Santa Claus started making his rounds. Barring a miracle on a par with Ebenezer Scrooge seeing the error of his mean-spirited, tight-fisted ways, though, that’s not going to happen this year. A budget plan Gov. Tom Wolf and members of the state Senate apparently agreed to came a cropper in the House of Representatives over the weekend, when proposed pension changes were voted down by all of the House’s Democrats and more than half of the Republicans.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the scuttlebutt was House Republicans would push forward a stopgap spending measure so social service agencies and schools that are starved for funds could receive some, but Wolf has promised to veto it. He has previously noted, correctly, that a stopgap budget just puts off the tough decisions of an actual budget for another day – or, in our case, perhaps another epoch. On Tuesday, his office also said that a stopgap budget would lead to 8,000 state workers being furloughed, including 4,000 who guard prisoners, 1,300 state police employees and 1,000 workers for various human services departments.
The budget standoff has reached the juncture where some school districts around Pennsylvania might not reopen their doors after the holiday break because they have received no money from the state and have exhausted their reserves. Burgettstown School District just managed to avoid that fate Monday by agreeing to take out a $4 million loan that will cover its payroll and other expenses.
So the brawl drags on and on. Right now, Pennsylvania’s only peer in budgetary dysfunction is Illinois, where a newly elected Republican governor has been crossing swords with a legislative body dominated by Democrats over whether taxes should be increased and the bargaining power of labor unions weakened.
Just think: When June 30 comes around, presuming legislators approve a budget by then, they’ll be staring at a deadline for a 2016-17 budget.
If Santa is reading this, take note: These guys and gals all need lumps of coal in their stockings.