THESE ARE tough times in the city and out in Harrisburg, where legislation to help balance our budget has been buffeted around on the political winds that roar through the Capitol.

Here in Philadelphia, city workers had been sweating for weeks over whether Mayor Nutter would send out 3,000 layoff notices, a move narrowly avoided yesterday.

The city's lobbyists, on the other hand, were simply handed three more months of job security.

Nutter is granting S.R. Wojdak & Associates a second three-month extension for lobbying work in Harrisburg. The firm's $120,000-per-year contract for lobbying in Harrisburg had expired on June 30, just as the city was pleading with the General Assembly for approval of legislation that would balance the budget and avoid massive cuts.

Nutter extended the contract to Sept. 30, paying the firm an additional $25,000.

His staff said a new contract would be competitively bid by the end of this month. But Nutter is giving Wojdak another $25,000 to work through the end of the year, citing "extenuating circumstances."

And what were those? That would be the lack of passage of the legislation, which Wojdak has been lobbying for in the Capitol.

It was finally approved yesterday afternoon, 79 days after the city's budget was due to start and one day before the layoff notices were to go out.

Rendell wants to be green?

A rumor flew around this week in Harrisburg that President Obama had offered Gov. Rendell a job as "green jobs" czar on the White House Council on Environmental Quality in the wake of the resignation of former czar Van Jones.

Jones quit earlier this month after reports that he (a) signed a petition in 2004 calling for hearings into the possibility the Bush administration deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks in order to go to war with Iraq, and (b) said in speech earlier this year that Republicans are "a--holes."

When questioned, Rendell press secretary Gary Tuma told PhillyClout that there was no truth to the rumor but quoted the Guv - who's caught up in the state budget crisis and feeling betrayed by fellow Democrats in the Legislature - as saying, "If the president had offered him the job as White House messenger, given what has gone on here the last few days, he might have taken it."

Santorum: He's ba-aack!

Political junkies went haywire this week when former Sen. Rick Santorum mentioned during a conference call with reporters that he'd consider running for president in 2012.

The conservative Santorum lost his U.S. Senate seat to Bob Casey in 2006.

One day after Santorum floated his presidential ponderings, we received a news release about a speaking event he plans to do next month in Iowa, site of the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses. Convenient timing? We certainly thought so.

But when we asked Santorum's longtime adviser, John Brabender, if the Iowa appearance was a soft opener for a presidential bid, he said that was going a little too far.

"I think that's too strong actually. He got asked to do this speech quite a while ago," Brabender said.

Still, Brabender added: "But you go to Iowa because what you say is heard on the national level. Right now is a time when he has some things he wants to say."

So perhaps PhillyClout wasn't so off in our 1996 prediction that Santorum could be the first Pennsylvania president since James Buchanan was sworn in in 1857.