Wolf’s welcome tone

Harrisburg has a chance to show how it’s done

Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf took office four years ago as a hardheaded businessman willing to do battle with a GOP-controlled Legislature. That resulted in a couple of late budgets, the first of which pushed some school districts and social service agencies to the bring of insolvency.

Maybe those days are over. Mr. Wolf, now in his second and final term and facing a Legislature with smaller GOP majorities, might have been expected to double down on the income and sales tax hikes that eluded him in prior years. Yet he repeatedly struck a conciliatory tone in his Feb. 5 budget address, at one point saying, “We’ve proven that despite our differences, we remain capable of doing what Washington just cannot seem able to do: Tackle big challenges, put aside petty partisanship and serve the public interest.”

It’s true that the Legislature and Mr. Wolf agreed on a pension reform plan for public school teachers and state employees in 2017. The parties also enacted a 2018-2019 budget on time last year — one without broadbased tax increases — but that was widely viewed as an election-year necessity for all involved.

But if Mr. Wolf wants a broader, sustained collaboration with the Legislature — how welcome that would be — and the GOP legislative leaders should embrace the opportunity. If he steps up, they should too, and really show Washington how it’s done.

This year, Mr. Wolf isn’t calling for the sales- and income-tax increases that are habitual non-starters with the GOP. He still wants a severance tax on gas drilling, but he’s tweaked it in a way — tying it to infrastructure improvements and blight removal — that’s more politically palatable.

Is Mr. Wolf tired of banging his head against a wall? Maybe. Is he getting better at his job? Could be.

Or has the state’s financial picture brightened enough that he feels free to give up his call for broadbased taxes? That’s a possibility, too. Revenue is projected to be up 2.6 percent for the next fiscal year, and in his budget address, Mr. Wolf cited financial gains that have resulted from cutting positions, closing unneeded facilities and operating more efficiently.

Whatever the impetus, his bipartisan sentiments — he spoke against the “sterile politics of anger and insult” — could be the opening that’s needed to get important work done. Besides infrastructure development, his agenda includes better-performing schools and workforce development initiatives that will prepare the state for its economic future. Mr. Wolf has made a good start to the next four years.