Sep 20, 2015 4 min read

Imagine for a moment if your school board or municipal government waited until the last minute to draft its annual budget, only for a few members to walk away from the table because they refused to compromise over a few disagreements.

What if that stalemate dragged on for months on end to the point that, just to stay afloat financially, teachers would need to be furloughed and plow trucks sat idle in their garages as snow piled up on the streets?

Actually, that could never happen because those local entities are bound by laws to pass their budgets before their fiscal or calendar-year deadlines.

So why is it so easily accepted by the public that the Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf cannot agree to even negotiate in good faith a budget that surely will have concessions from both sides? By law, the annual state budget was due June 30, but there still is no resolution in sight.

There is one word to describe the dysfunction happening right now in Harrisburg: politics.

Wolf is trying to flex his political muscles after easily ousting the unpopular Tom Corbett from office, while the Republican leaders who control both the state Senate and House are trying to sling a little mud on his new-car shine.

The disagreements seem to be clear-cut at this point. Wolf is fighting for a severance tax on Marcellus Shale development and an increase to the income and sales taxes in exchange for increased school funding and a reduction in the crippling property taxes that plague many homeowners.

The Republicans rolled out their own plan (without the Marcellus Shale tax, of course) that would be net neutral and funnel all new revenue back into property tax relief rather than helping to fund the state’s allotment for school aid.

They should be having a serious discussion on a smaller severance tax on Marcellus Shale that keeps the impact fees many communities in Washington and Greene counties heavily rely on. Wolf originally proposed a 5 percent tax on natural gas output, although now he’s saying he is willing to compromise. There’s that dirty word again, by the way.

Are the natural gas industry’s lobbyists so entrenched in Harrisburg even a small tax can’t be levied? Maybe we don’t want to hear the answer to that question, but there should at least be a serious discussion on the issue.

If a smaller tax is put on the table, surely that would open up a serious debate about much-needed pension reform and modernizing the archaic way the state allows beer, wine and liquor to be sold. There has to be common ground somewhere in the middle that both the Democratic governor and Republican leaders can bring back to their constituents to show they’re at least working to benefit the people of Pennsylvania.

Instead, the sniping continued Friday as Wolf took to Twitter to argue with Republican leaders in the Senate over their stopgap budget proposal that has no chance of surviving the governor’s veto pen.

What once felt to the average person like typical political gamesmanship in Harrisburg is now affecting local communities.

Commissioners in Greene County announced last week they will be holding public budget meetings later this month to review each department line item to ensure there are no unneeded expenses in next year’s spending plan.

The stalemate is also impacting the human-services departments in Washington and Greene counties that rely heavily on state aid. They are watching every penny now and have cut unnecessary travel and expenditures. There could be larger issues ahead if the budget impasse continues for months longer.

The time for talk is over, although the talking really never began since budget negotiations have gone nowhere.

If our elected state representatives were really interested in a solution, they would have been negotiating the nitty-gritty details of a very difficult budget eight months ago rather than offering up political gimmicks.

Instead, it’s politics as usual in Pennsylvania, where compromise is a dirty word.