Karen Heller: In Pennsylvania, a doomsday budget tour-de-farce

For those of you forced to do the staycation this year, cheer up. Things could be so much worse. You could be spending your August in Harrisburg, bickering about the budget in the annual summer thriller, Drama on the Susquehanna.

Mayor Nutter has said that if the state Senate doesn't pass the 1 percent increase in city sales tax and a two-year delay in payments to the pension fund by Saturday, he'll default to Plan C, affectionately known as "the doomsday budget."

Fortunately, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi said yesterday he believed the Senate would vote on Philadelphia's budget concerns "very soon." The Delaware County Republican said, "I hate to predict timelines, but I think it will take at least two to three weeks to work through these issues if there is a sense of cooperation and consensus."

If this doesn't happen, the mayor argues, he will be forced to make $700 million in spending cuts, eliminating 3,000 jobs, nearly a third from the Police Department. Health centers would close. The city would literally stink, with trash pickup reduced to twice a month. Meanwhile, the city would lose $10 million a month in sales-tax revenue.

On the upside: To approve a new five-year budget plan, City Council might actually work this month.

Pileggi said his priority was the state budget, though that deadline's already been blown for the seventh year in a row - ever since Ed Rendell has been governor. State Democrats argued yesterday that the GOP leadership was using Philadelphia as leverage to achieve its goals in the state budget.

"I don't know why we would pick Philadelphia out as a special case," Delco Dom protested last week, "other than the fact that the governor is from Philadelphia and has a special interest in Philadelphia's welfare."

At this point, the governor may regret the $10 million DRPA head-butt to bring a Major League Soccer stadium/boondoggle to Pileggi's hometown of Chester.

Pileggi's pique may be due to Rendell's assertion that Senate Republicans resisted raising taxes because they "lived in a fantasy land."

Has the governor been to Delaware County?

Pileggi ally President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati accused Rendell of hyping "the level of fear to nuclear doomsday," which sounds like a Will Smith blockbuster, and compared him to a snake-oil salesman.

Which is so not fair.

Rendell is a casino-slots salesman.

Pileggi may realize it's hard to play the city-vs.-state, Dems-vs.-GOP game, even with a lame-duck governor, when your county abuts that city, is almost half Democratic, and contains residents who work in the very city that would literally stink and have nearly 1,000 fewer police should nuclear doomsday occur.

Here I'm forced to admit that I miss Vince.

Vincent J. Fumo, formerly of the Senate Appropriations Committee and soon of a minimum-security federal prison, would know which arms to twist in this ramped-up edition of Harrisburg's Summer Statehouse Theater, which is like a Feydeau bedroom farce but, you know, without the fun.

How did the city find itself in this mess, begging Harrisburg not for a handout but a tax hike? How did it become hostage to Republican legislators who historically don't favor Philadelphia, where four out of five voters are Democrats?

We are now nine months into the battle of the city budget. During this time, as 23,000 employees have been paid out of the general fund and 5,000 others from enterprise funds, the city has laid off precisely five people.

That's akin to eliminating a shift at Dunkin' Donuts.

Services have been cut and vacant positions have been eliminated, but in this economy, there has to be a middle ground between laying off five and a nuclear doomsday of 3,000. How is it that every business is learning how to cut and manage differently except the government? It's not as if the economy is suddenly going to rebound next year.

Pileggi hopes a settlement on Philadelphia's sales tax and pension-payment deferrals can be reached quickly, with the caveat that "if it becomes divisive and partisan, it will probably extend that time," proof that, if nothing else, the man knows Harrisburg.