Behind the state's budgetary chaos

Due to a production error, part of this story was not published in some editions yesterday. It is being reprinted with day and date references unchanged.

HARRISBURG - With cameras rolling, Gov. Rendell and legislative leaders stood side by side on the night of Sept. 18 and announced that, after months of trying, they finally had come to terms and a budget deal was in hand.

Thirteen days later, Pennsylvania still has no budget, and some legislators are saying they don't think they can make the $28 billion agreement work.

America's longest-running state budget crisis continues, with schools still not getting money for the new term and some social-service agencies having to cut services or lay off staff.

Why?

The reasons for the impasse are big and small. Some are missteps and complexities that have arisen in recent weeks. Others result from trends toward partisanship and paralysis that have been building in Harrisburg for years. Pennsylvania hasn't had an on-time budget in any of the last seven years, but this may be the worst-case scenario.

Political scientist Chris Borick of Muhlenberg College, who has closely followed the stalemate, said the state's lagging economy, its ever-sharp political divides, and its always-slow political process have combined to write a recipe for what he called a "budgetary disaster."

"It's almost perfect for creating the kind of gridlock we've seen," Borick said.

The reeling economy, of course, is reason No. 1 for the budget impasse. A $3.2 billion drop in state revenue caused by the hardest times in generations meant, from the start, that Rendell and lawmakers would have to cut spending or raise taxes or both.

In many ways, the Keystone State is hard to govern in the best of times.

Considering the size and diversity of the legislature, it's amazing anything gets done. With 253 members - 50 in the Senate, 203 in the House - Pennsylvania has the largest full-time governing body in the nation. Each member has a constituency to keep happy.

Culturally and economically, the regions of the state could hardly differ more. Democratic consultant James Carville once famously observed that Pennsylvania consisted of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and "Alabama in between." Carville was too glib, but he had a point. Pennsylvanians don't see eye to eye on much.

And in an echo of recent Washington politics, ideology has sometimes trumped accommodation.

Former State Rep. John Barley, who helped craft six state budgets as chairman of the House Appropriations Committee from 1996 to 2002, recalled the good old days of the roaring '90s, when the state enjoyed budget surpluses.

"You had an economy that was robust," he said. "You were determining which taxes to decrease. . . . You were putting money into the Rainy Day Fund."

But more than a recession is at work here, Barley said.

For better or worse, he said, past legislative leaders were less ideological and more willing to compromise.

He recalled how late House speaker Republican Matthew J. Ryan would draw people aside and say, "We've got to get something done here."

Barley took pains not to criticize current legislative leaders. But Ryan, he said, was "an accommodator." Today's leaders - most of them relatively new to their posts - are less willing to bend on core principles such as not raising taxes. Republicans and Democrats "are more committed to fiscal responsibility" than in the past, Barley said.

Rendell, from May on, was at odds with the GOP-controlled Senate. But he also wasn't quite on the same page as his fellow Democrats who rule the House.

The governor, who had first proposed a hike in the state income tax, was adamant about protecting an increase in spending for public schools that he believed resulted in higher standardized test scores across the state.

Rendell, who leaves office in Janaury 2011, was trying to protect his legacy.

But legislators of both parties said voters have grown wary of higher spending and taxes. They didn't want to seek reelection next year with a tax hike on their records.

Former Senate President Robert C. Jubelirer, a Republican, said a problem for Rendell is that not even Democratic leaders in the House appear to be making an all-out push for their lame-duck governor's budget ideas.

"There's nobody carrying the governor's water right now in any of the four caucuses," Jubelirer said.

In recent days, House Democratic leaders who once trumpeted the plan as bipartisan have distanced themselves from its more controversial aspects, labeling them "Republican concepts."

"There are too many components to this budget that are bad, and in its entirety is not a budget that I can vote for," said Rep. Josh Shapiro (D., Montgomery).

Time and information issues played a part. Budget details leaked out in dribs and drabs, giving constituent groups ammo to aim at their local lawmakers.

"It was way too premature for the leaders to shake hands on a deal before they came to members to find out where they stood," said one rank-and-file House Democrat who asked not to be identified by name for fear of upsetting colleagues.

Much like President Obama's health-care initiatives in Washington, delays and lack of detail from Harrisburg allowed opposition to jell. Environmentalists complained that the deal wrongly opened more land to natural gas drilling in the upstate Marcellus Shale reserve without imposing new taxes on this potentially lucrative drilling.

The culture community across the state, too, was enraged - about the deal's proposed ticket tax on plays, concerts, museums, and zoos.

Then came e-mails to legislators from volunteer fire companies and VFW halls, decrying the proposed tax on raffles and other small games of chance that fund many such groups.

Some of the griping has made a dent, even threatening to unravel what had been a loose-knit agreement in the first place.

Lest that happen, legislative leaders are considering limiting the raffle tax to groups that "opt in" and raise the limit on revenue they can take from the games.

And House Democratic leaders are promising a vote on a proposed "wellhead tax" on natural gas extraction. But that vote, many believe, is mostly to appease critics and likely will die in the Senate.

G. Terry Madonna, a pollster and professor of politics professor at Franklin and Marshall College, traces the stalemate to the fact that legislative leaders now shun the time-tested "carrot and the stick" approach to winning over on-the-fence legislators.

The carrot - an offer of campaign help, a grant for the home district, perhaps a vote on a favorite bill. The stick - the threat of losing all of the above.

"It's the new way of doing business in Harrisburg," Madonna said. "It's good because the old method of browbeating and legally bribing lawmakers into votes looks like it is now a thing of the past.

"But it's bad because they haven't worked out a mechanism to replace it."

In the meantime, yet another page is pulled from the calender that shows Pennsylvania today will reach the 93d day without a budget.

For schools and social agencies, the pain goes on.

At least 5,000 Philadelphia-area children in state-funded early-childhood education programs are not receiving services they otherwise would get. More than 1,300 staffers have been laid off.

"The longer this goes on," said Sheila Simmons, education director of Public Citizens for Children and Youth, "the more harm there is to our most vulnerable citizens."