Pa.’s big bad Wolf starts to change tune

Gov. Tom Wolf seems to have learned his lesson from the last two brutal budget battles with the Legislature.

Welcome to the new Pennsylvania.

Forget all that talk about massive spending increases — and tax hikes to pay for it all.

Gov. Tom Wolf is still wearing the bumps and bruises of two brutal budget battles with the Legislature. He seems to have learned his lesson. Either that or the man who vowed to be a “different kind of governor” has come to grips with some grim fiscal and political reality.

In other words, the state is broke and talking about broadbase tax hikes, the kind that reach into the wallet of every citizen, is not a prescription for getting re-elected.

With a tough election fight starting to take shape off on the horizon, the governor this week rolled out his third budget blueprint — and the differences from the first two could not be more stark.

Gone is the massive boost in education funding, the centerpiece of his campaign for the governor’s mansion. Gone are the increases in both the state sales and income taxes to pay for it.

But Wolf, ever the reformer, is instead suggesting some other paths to getting the state out from under the fiscal morass of a $2 billion deficit. Wolf is now talking about cuts — in state jobs and services — along with consolidation of some of the state’s bureaucracy to tame the red ink that is threatening the drown the Commonwealth.

Wolf is not abandoning his push for more education funding. He wants $100 million more for basic education, along with $25 million more for special education, $75 million more for early childhood programs, and an additional $8.9 million for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. He’s also proposing $10 million more for wider use of the anti-overdose drug Naloxone to try to tame the state’s heroin epidemic.

Is it enough? Probably not. But with the fiscal peril the state is now facing, it likely will have to suffice.

At least some things don’t change. Wolf again is calling for a new tax on the state’s Marcellus Shale natural gas production. And he sounded like just about every other governor who has stood at that podium in the state Capitol and vowed to close corporate tax loopholes.

It may have taken two years, but it appears at least a little bit of grim reality seems to have arrived at the governor’s desk.

“Our commonwealth has been operating with a structural deficit for a long time,” Wolf said in his address. “That means Harrisburg has been living beyond its means. Households can’t do that, and neither can we.”

The guy sounded downright Republican.

The cuts? $143 million by shedding some state jobs; $81 million by shuttering one state prison; another $ 100 million by merging the Department of Corrections and state parole and probation boards into one entity; and merging several social service agencies into a single Department of Health and Human Services.

No doubt the GOP folks who dominate the Legislature were all snickering in their seats, while murmuring “what took you so long” to their brethren. Most at least acknowledged the governor’s new stance as a positive start to budget talks.

There will still be battles. Republicans, despite some notable exceptions here in the southeast Pennsylvania delegation, will continue to resist slapping a new levy on the state’s Marcellus Shale industry. They will chafe at the thought of an increase in the minimum wage.

It will be interesting to see how hard Wolf fights for those, given the overall tone of this budget, which amounts to raising the white flag on the grandiose proposals of his first two years.

A deficit that experts say will approach $3 billion will do that to you.

And that does not even count the ongoing saga of the state’s two deficit-ridden public employee pension plans, and steeply rising Medicaid and health care costs. Republicans, by the way, were only too eager to point that Wolf failed to address those persistent problems.

Wolf’s budget this time around should manage to steer clear of the kind of long, drawn-out standoffs with Republicans that were the hallmark of his first dances in the Harrisburg budget two-step.

It’s a new day in the state Capitol.

And likely the opening shot of the 2018 gubernatorial campaign.