DN Editorial: A different Pennsylvania

NO ONE can call this week's election a mandate for "same old, same old," at least not in Pennsylvania, where Tom Wolf made history by breaking the two-term governor charm that's been in effect for nearly 70 years.

The problem, of course, is that he will preside over a Legislature that doesn't exactly embrace the new - one that provided obstacle after obstacle to a governor who shared its majority political party.

How it will react to Wolf, who is a Democrat with an ambitious agenda, much of which runs counter to their agenda, is of course the question of the hour.

But it's worth reminding the General Assembly that more than just the governor has changed. In fact, a lot has changed in the four years since Tom Corbett took office.

When Corbett was elected, we were a little more than two years into the Great Recession. Federal stimulus money was expiring, and rather than sizing up the magnitude of the issues facing Pennsylvania, Corbett signed a "no tax" pledge and proceeded to slash education and social services. Under his watch, the state slid to nearly the bottom of the country in job creation.

His loss Tuesday suggests not just where he failed, but how much has changed.

Corbett bungled his first year in office by imposing deep cuts on education - his first budget cut higher ed in half. Some of that was restored, but the cuts made to overall education were damaging. People across the state, not just in Philadelphia, where the funding is in continual crisis, said "enough is enough." By 2014, education rose to the top of many voter's list as a priority.

What's also different: Four years later, it's clear that Marcellus Shale drilling, while creating some new jobs, has primarily benefited the companies who own the drills. Drillers pay fees to the state, but no extraction taxes, and state regulation is hardly robust.

Public support for a tax has been strong, although there's less support for a tax if it goes to pensions. Wolf wants a tax to benefit the schools. When you consider the public support for education and the public support for extraction tax, it would be hard to imagine how the Legislature continues its resistance to a tax.

But there is something Wolf can do that could have positive economic impact for the state - that lawmakers don't have to lift a finger to effect.

That's the federal Medicaid expansion that Wolf supports. Corbett was one of the governors who refused the expansion of the program, the lion's share of which would be bankrolled by the feds, and instead concocted an alternate scenario that would not have reached as many people as the federal plan. By accepting expansion, the state could see a big difference in both job creation and economic activity. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study on the economic impact of Medicaid expansion estimates that Pennsylvania would gain as many as 40,000 new jobs and see $180 million in new spending. Wolf doesn't need the Legislature to do this. If it's not one of the first things he tackles, we'd be surprised.

The legislative and executive branches are always going to tussle, and that's expected. But we hope the General Assembly understands that the sands have been shifting under all of us for a while now, and Pennsylvania is not the state it used to be. The challenge for the next four years is to make sure that difference turns out to be a good thing.