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The anticipation grows and grows.
Finally, in a chaotic scene, all gets revealed – resulting in lots of surprises and, more times than we care to remember, an aching disappointment.
We’re not talking about Christmas morning. We’re describing what too often passes for the budget making process in Harrisburg.
Ditto for Washington, D.C.
Lawmakers, or at least factions of them, manufacture a financial crisis, all in an apparent effort to get momentary leverage or perhaps score political points for another day. In Pennsylvania’s case this year, a compromise on a state budget eluded the Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf for 176 days.
A final deal was supposedly in the works as this editorial was written Wednesday morning; details of the nearly $31 billion spending plan … well, who needs to know the pesky details? It’s Christmas and elected officials are anxious to get home to celebrate a long, long holiday break, once, of course, they wrap up the compulsory back-patting on a job well done.
Even with Gov. Tom Wolf’s signature on the document before Dec. 25, it probably will be weeks, maybe longer, before the money authorized by this budget gets to its intended recipients: public school districts, county governments and nonprofit service providers such as rape crisis centers.
The stoppage in those payments has inflicted real hardships on people. Witness, for instance, the uproar created in Luzerne County when it seemed the government might be compelled to close before year’s end; it took days of wrangling, a council re-vote and a judge’s authorization for the county to maintain operations by securing a $20 million bridge loan.
Meanwhile, the Philadelphia School District indicated, if the impasse continued, it would shut down in January. Similarly, Northwest Area School District, the smallest district in Luzerne County, borrowed $2.4 million to get through the dry spell, and its directors announced that without renewed access to state funds they would close the doors on Feb. 2.
Also due to the cash crunch, the Luzerne County Library System earlier this month ceased the delivery of books, audios, videos and research materials between its member libraries. Other cutbacks appeared likely. “Unless a state budget is passed soon and funds rushed through the bureaucracy,” a Dec. 15 news release stated, “there may be a crisis point for some members of the library system.”
The budget process allows state-funded programs and the taxpayers who rely on them to be used as pawns, merely collateral damage in a fight over which they have little control.
Oddly, it’s all considered perfectly acceptable. You might even say it’s tradition.