Nov 7, 2017 3 min read

The least we should have been able to expect of our state “leaders” after a four-month delay in enacting a “balanced” budget was that it would be a blueprint of which we can be proud. It is nothing of the kind.

The members of the General Assembly were able to agree on what the commonwealth would spend in the current fiscal year by the June 30, constitutionally-mandated deadline for a spending and revenue plan to be enacted, but it initially delivered a new type of hoax – no means of paying for it. Gov. Tom Wolf signed the legislation, expressing the belief that the General Assembly would follow up with a revenue plan to fund it. His trust was misplaced. It is obvious that there was no rush to deliver a truly balanced budget as lengthy recesses were enjoyed before an agreement could be reached.

Wolf was elected for two primary reasons: to increase education funding; and to enact an extraction tax on Marcellus Shale drillers which is consistent with that which is imposed in other states that host the industry. He has had modest success in the former initiative, and none in the latter, as the Republican-controlled Legislature refuses to bite the hand that feeds it with campaign contributions, exerting enormous influence over state policy. No increase in education spending has served to diminish or slow the burden on state homeowners inflicted through burgeoning local property taxes.

The oil and gas industry has devoted extensive lobbying efforts to avoid being subjected to an equitable level of taxation. Unspoken is its preference that the operation of state government be funded overwhelmingly by ordinary Pennsylvania residents.

The final plan relies on delivering many new gambling venues, which is acceptable to me notwithstanding the fact that it is not a bottomless pot of gold. There is only so much new money that Pennsylvanians are in a position to throw down the drain. The outrage is that $1.5 billion to shore up the budget will be secured not through raising revenue or cutting expenditures, but from borrowing from the state’s tobacco settlement fund, robbing Peter to pay Paul, another one-time fix. An additional one-time remedy is a transfer of $500 million from state accounts with balances into the general fund.

Never under serious consideration is property tax relief/reform, privatizing of the Prohibition-era state store system, the likes of which exist only here and in Utah, or reducing the size and expense of the General Assembly, whose members will not vote themselves out of the jobs for which they are highly compensated even as they refuse to fulfill their duties.

Wolf blasted Republican legislators, but went along with most of the budget fix fraud because he knows that to have vetoed it all would have brought additional months of paralysis in a General Assembly that has amply demonstrated that it does not care about serving the public. It sees its function as to serve special interests. It is particularly uninterested in enacting a budget which provides any bragging rights to the governor, as the GOP gears up to vigorously oppose him in next year’s elections.

In a technical sense, Pennsylvania can boast of a balanced budget. One does not have to do much digging beneath the surface to determine that the final product is a disgrace.