Pennsylvania Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman sent an email recently to Senate Republicans telling the caucus that they would return “no sooner than Thursday” to “consider options to address the potential of a protracted impasse” as negotiations “painstakingly continue,” Spotlight PA Capitol reporter Stephen Caruso reported.

Last week, Caruso reported the warning of state Secretary of the Budget Uri Monson that the commonwealth will be unable to make at least $2.5 billion in payments to schools, counties and key service providers because of the ongoing budget impasse.

How are state lawmakers spending their summer?

We know most of them aren’t in Harrisburg, despite the fact that the June 30 budget deadline has come and gone.

We hope they’re enjoying their time away from the state Capitol, as school districts, social service agencies and Pennsylvania counties face financial instability because of delayed state funding.

We’ve repeatedly expressed our frustrations with Pennsylvania’s supposedly full-time and expensive Legislature — even rank-and-file members earn about $110,000 this year — and its failure to deliver consistently for commonwealth residents.

One major indicator of its futility: This is the fourth straight year legislators have failed to meet the state budget deadline.

Politicians often campaign on their private-sector experience and then, when they get into office, that experience flies out the window. Budget deadlines are blithely disregarded; choices often are made with an eye to the next election.

Complicated problems don’t get solved in Harrisburg, because real solutions might be politically unpopular; instead, those thorny problems just get kicked down the road, to reemerge during budget season, when they become obstacles — year after year — to the passage of the annual state budget.

Exhibit A: The historic and unconstitutional underfunding of the commonwealth’s poorest schools.

Exhibit B: Funding for public transit, including SEPTA, which serves Philadelphia and its suburbs. Rural lawmakers don’t tend to want to spend money on urban transit, even though Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania are major parts of the state’s economy.

Gov. Josh Shapiro wants to draw on some of the commonwealth’s cash reserves — which total approximately $11 billion — to fund his priorities, neatly summarized by Spotlight PA: “increasing funding for K-12 education, bailing out struggling public transit agencies, and maintaining health coverage for low-income people.”

The Democratic-controlled state House is on board, mostly, but the Republican-controlled Senate, worried about how soon those reserves could be depleted, is not.

We feel as if we write the same budget editorials year after year — because the same issues are debated, and then go unresolved, year after year. And while they’re being debated, organizations that actually follow mandated budget deadlines are forced to wait for the state Legislature to hash out its squabbles.

Large organizations, such as school districts, need complete information to make complex spending decisions. The delayed state budget inserts a black hole in that decision-making.

Last week, state-funded agencies in several Pennsylvania counties so far have not been affected by the budget impasse. In Lancaster County, Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder said the county has not yet had to make a decision about whether to keep programs afloat with county taxpayer dollars. “It’s too soon to tell right now,” she said.

But as this newspaper noted, “those decisions might not be far off. The governor’s office has informed county agencies that upcoming payments for county social services will be delayed at least through August.”

John Buffone, spokesperson for the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, told Spotlight PA that the commonwealth’s 67 counties are “bracing for missed payments that fund essential programs such as mental and behavioral health services, child protective services, intellectual disability supports, drug and alcohol treatment, and assistance for individuals experiencing homelessness.”

School districts already are dealing with uncertainty about future federal funding. The state budget impasse increases the uncertainty. And school districts in Pennsylvania were legally required to approve their budgets by June 30, meaning those budgets were written without officials knowing how much state money they can expect to receive in the new budget year.

During a July 1 Pennsylvania School Boards Association virtual meeting, association leaders said a budget impasse could create cash flow issues for school districts, particularly smaller and rural ones. But not only those districts.

As this newspaper reported, “The School District of Lancaster, which relies more heavily on state funds and less on its tax base, can afford its July operating expenses by pulling from its $6.4 million fund balance and regular tax revenue, said district Director of Finance Kim Reynolds. Covering its operating expenses into August might be more challenging, she said.”

That was reported in early July. It’s August now.

Spotlight PA reported July 18 — nearly three weeks ago — that key budget negotiators in the state Capitol were striking a sunny note, despite indications that Democrats and Republicans remained a world apart on spending.

“I feel good about where the conversations are going,” said Republican state Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Scott Martin, of Martic Township.

“We’re going to get there soon,” Shapiro said.

“Soon” is not soon enough. Ticktock, state leaders.

— LNP, Lancaster via TNS