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Pennsylvania has an approved 2026-27 budget; that's the good news.
The bad news is how much unfinished budget-related business the state General Assembly has before it, but was unable to accomplish, despite missing the June 30 statutory budget-completion deadline by nearly two weeks.
For starters, lawmakers were unable to come to agreement on a regulatory framework for skill games, including taxing those devices. While some state residents might regard that as unimportant, from a fiscal standpoint it is, because it is estimated that taxing those games could generate about $2 billion annually.
Then there's the sales tax break given to data centers of a certain size -- a tax break that increasingly has gained bipartisan opposition but a gift that lawmakers failed to muster the legislative gusto to halt prior to approving the budget.
Consistent with similar inaction in recent years, the legislature tossed the issue of a hike in the minimum wage in the "trash bin of another time."
Meanwhile, state entities or residents who hoped budget-related action would be forthcoming on issues such as new recurring funding for mass transit and legalization of recreational marijuana also walked away empty-handed.
There are other failures within the budget, especially regarding important policy questions. However, one same-old has persisted: The Keystone State will continue to spend more money than it brings in, and it will be able to get by only because of financial
maneuverings -- legal ones, but not good moves in the long run -- that will enable the commonwealth to avoid serious problems, going forward.
An Opinion Page cartoon with the message "Cooking the books" in Thursday's Mirror -- and giving "credit" for that to both Republicans and Democrats -- was and remains apropos, all considered. Sooner or later, "cooking the books" comes back to haunt those doing the "cooking," and lawmakers in Harrisburg representing both parties need to do some serious soul-searching before Pennsylvania finds itself amid a financial crisis.
Of course, if lawmakers become capable of going after all reasonable revenue sources -- like, for instance, that potential $2 billion of skill games revenue plus that money being lost to data centers -- perhaps their challenges won't be so daunting after-all.
By the way, since talk of a sales tax holiday was in the news earlier this month, a message from the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan and nonprofit policy group, is worth acknowledging: "Sales tax holidays are popular despite being economically inefficient and not being able to achieve their goals."
They also don't make sense when the books already are being cooked with funds-shifting that should not be necessary.
The article "Several factors in play for state's overdue budget" in the Mirror's
July 11-12 edition provided an informative recent history of what's become Pennsylvania's "annual frustration," the inability to finish budget work before or by the statutory deadline. However, the biggest cause of the many individual frustrations has not so much been the complexity of issues. Rather, the cause has been the down-to-the-wire politics-playing by members of both parties, rather than willingness to "go the extra mile" on behalf of compromise.
Beyond that, the General Assembly needs to streamline the departmental hearings process that consumes so much time when lawmakers should be turning full attention onto the actual numbers affecting the various state offices and departments.
If those and other efficiencies were implemented, Harrisburg wouldn't have to spend so much time "cooking."