Pennsylvania will end August in the same position it started, with no finalized state budget in place.

After this week’s failed attempts to nudge budget negotiations along, prospects of breaking this budget impasse — which entered its 57th day Wednesday —  certainly aren’t looking brighter.

But some argue the impact of not having a budget in place has yet to be felt by many Pennsylvanians, which is playing a part in the lack of forward progress.

Just to recap, Gov. Tom Wolf met with legislative leaders on Tuesday and asked for another day to mull over what Republicans put on the table last week and saw as a potential budget-impasse-breaking offer.

That delay contributed to House Republican leaders’ decision to proceed that afternoon with holding override votes on 20 lines in the GOP-passed budget that Wolf vetoed in its entirety on June 30. This effort failed.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed Discusses What He Sees Are The Possible Choices The Governor Has Reed, R-Indiana, advises that Gov. Tom Wolf cancelled Wednesday’s budget talks when the GOP legislative leaders had hoped to get Wolf’s answer to the offer they put on the table last week. They saw their offer of $400 million more in basic education funding in exchange for pension reform as having the potential of bringing an end to the 57-day budget impasse if the governor accepted it.
GOP leaders went into Wednesday expecting to get an answer on their offer from Wolf. The governor cancelled the meeting and left it up in the air when they would meet again.

Republican leaders, in reacting to Wolf’s pulling the plug on the meeting, are thinking that answer probably means the governor is not on board. So now the idea of trying to pass a stopgap budget that had been on the back burner seems to be getting attention.

From where he sits, this budget imbroglio has longtime Capitol observer G. Terry Madonna wondering if Pennsylvania will see a repeat of a budget fight in the 1960s when it lived on 15 months of stopgap budgets until a deal was finalized.

“Tell me what sense of urgency exists?” Madonna said.

“Tell me what sense of urgency exists?” G. Terry Madonna
Sure, he said there might be a social service agency here and there encountering some difficulty. And school districts will be forced to go without receiving more than $1 billion in state subsidy payments they were due to receive Thursday.

But it’s not like 2009 when thousands of state workers were working without receiving a paycheck. A court ruling that grew out of that situation means workers are continuing to collect paychecks during this impasse.

“I’m not excusing the suffering some are having to go through or will go through but it’s not global and that’s what it is obviously going to have to take,” Madonna said. “There has to be an imminent pressure that makes them make this deal.”

Some say it’s when schools are in danger of not being able to open that’ll create that kind of pressure.

Jay Himes, executive director of the Pennsylvania School Business Officials Association, said he anticipates school districts will be able to get by for now. But if they miss their state subsidy payment in October, that will leave some in a significant financial bind.

In the meantime, advocates for the social services community are getting worried.

Hunger Free PA, a statewide association of food banks, says it is encountering senior centers and other agencies it serves that are now closed.

“People aren’t working and we have no one to give the food out,” said Sheila Christopher, the organization’s executive director. “That was kind of not anticipated at all that that would happen.”

Centers that assist domestic violence victims are operating on borrowed time, surviving on cash reserves and lines of credit.

After listening to Tuesday’s House debate on the budget veto overrides, Peg Dierckers, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, is convinced every single legislator knows the impact the impasse is having on the human service safety net.

She said she also knows Wolf is fully aware of it as well.

But what concerns her and others in the social services community is that the sides seem to be becoming more entrenched in their positions rather than working toward a middle ground.

What’s worse, they are surprised, if not saddened, how the plight of their agencies is being used by each side to embolden its own position.

Republicans make the case that something needs to be done now to prevent further damage to the social safety net. Democrats argue what’s needed is a comprehensive budget that will increase funding for human services after four years of GOP-backed budget cuts or stagnant funding.

“When you do try to tell your story, both sides grab on it and run in totally different directions,” Christopher said. “Then agencies feel guilty because they said something and now it’s almost used against them by one of the parties.”

Dierckers agrees that social services agencies have been put into an uncomfortable spot in this budget fight – and have been chastised when their advocacy is seen as favoring the other side’s position.

“We empathize with all sides and what negotiations require,” she said. “We also have a duty to serve all vulnerable people in our communities and we have to continue to try to communicate the impact of the impasse.”

So this week will end with no forward progress on reaching a budget deal. The next round of talks between the governor and legislative leaders remains unscheduled.

And meanwhile, Madonna maintains many Pennsylvanians remain unconcerned because they are feeling no direct repercussions of the absence of a state budget.

“They see no crisis. There’s no pressure,” he said. “They see it just drifting along.”

PennLive – August 27, 2015 – Read article online