A week into the state’s new fiscal year and Pennsylvania still didn’t have a state budget. Once again, lawmakers blew off the deadline, even though it’s imposed by the state constitution.

{span}Call it an embarrassment or a dereliction of duty. Either way, the inability of legislators to meet a deadline will leave some state employees unpaid and some state services unavailable.{/span}

{span}In a fair world, legislators’ salaries — amounting to at least $95,432 a year — would be the first to be suspended for their failure to deliver a timely budget.{/span}

{span}It’s hard to know what the real hang-up is this time. Legislators and the governor’s office are typically tight-lipped about the budget’s sticking points. Generally, this government process still happens in proverbial smoke-filled rooms.{/span}

{span}The appropriation for the University of Pittsburgh, however, was very public. We repeat our rejection of Republican legislators holding in-state students hostage over fetal tissue research, which isn’t even funded by state money. Withholding the subsidy won’t affect the research, but it punishes students counting on lower in-state tuition.{/span}

{span}At least in the first years of the Wolf administration, when one impasse busted the deadline by nine months, negotiators could point to a looming budget deficit that made budget decisions even thornier. But this year, thanks largely to federal American Rescue Plan funds, the state has more money than it needs. This should have greased the process. Still, the deadline looms with several issues unresolved.{/span}

{span}To be sure, apportioning more than $40 billion among hundreds of state departments, offices and agencies that serve 13 million people is no easy task. It requires knowledgeable and conscientious staff members to understand the issues, as well as effective and wise leaders to negotiate the compromises essential to governing — especially with a Democratic governor and a Legislature controlled by Republicans.{/span}

{span}But it’s their jobs — the ones they applied for by running for office. Most American workers can’t blow off deadlines, especially ones imposed by law.{/span}

{span}If they can’t do the people’s business, legislators ought to have their own wages garnished. It’s only fair.{/span}

{span}Such a change would also likely make the constitutional deadline real. It would force legislators and the governor’s office, instead of peacocking for the base, to make the kind of imperfect compromises everyone could live with.{/span}

{span}That’s real leadership — the kind the people pay for and deserve.{/span}

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP

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