Over the course of the eight-week state budget impasse, lawmakers have succeeded only in converting a political failure into a moral failure. The crisis is not just financial in nature. It is a colossal failure of governance. It is apparent that Pennsylvania suffers not just a budget deficit, but an even more damaging leadership deficit.
Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable citizens have begun to pay the price for their government’s inability to carry out its most fundamental task.
And, for all of state politicians’ mewling about their fidelity to taxpayers, their failure to adopt a state budget already has begun to adversely affect those taxpayers at the local level. Several Pennsylvania school districts already have arranged for loans to cover the state government’s failure to provide the first two state subsidy payments of the new fiscal year. The cost of that borrowing will be added to local school budgets. So far, school districts statewide have been denied about $1.2 billion in anticipated state subsidies.
Social service agencies, the safety net that ensures quality of life and, in some cases, life itself for the poor, the very young and the very old, have begun to suspend services. Thousands of vulnerable citizens have nowhere else to turn.
Lawmakers continue to collect their pay, however, with a few notable exceptions. Rep. Kevin Murphy of Lackawanna County, for example, has declined to accept his pay until a budget is adopted.
Pennsylvania’s government faces the same economic crisis as every other state government. But 48 of those other state governments have managed to pass a budget, despite a wide array of related problems. Even California, with one of the worst state budget deficits in American history, has a budget. So does New York, even as the legislature in Albany wrangles with a crippling in-house political crisis. Only Connecticut and Pennsylvania are without budgets.
Many proposals are available to shape a budget compromise. It’s long past time not only for a budget but for leadership. The governor’s budget proposals are clear, as are the Senate’s, along with those of both caucuses in the House. There is, alas, no apparent authority for the Legislature to be forced to remain in continuous session until it emerges with a budget. But that does not preclude lawmakers from sequestering themselves – or at least sequestering the legislative caucus leaders – basically locking the Capitol door until they emerge with a balanced budget. They should do so as public penance for their moral failure, but more important, to end the suffering that they have imposed on their fellow citizens through fruitless political posturing.
This editorial appears on Aug. 30 in Times-Shamrock newspapers: The Sunday Voice in Wilkes-Barre, The Standard-Speaker in Hazleton, The Republican-Herald in Pottsville, The News-Item in Shamokin and The Sunday Review in Towanda.
