State budget: The difference a year makes

What a difference a year makes.

In the waning days of June 2015, the Pennsylvania Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf, celebrating his first six months in office, were sparring over state budget proposals.

Among the obstacles to an agreement were the Legislature insisting on pension reform and Wolf insisting on more money for schools.

The governor’s proposal included tax increases in the sales tax and earned income tax, as well as taxing Marcellus shale natural gas extraction to gather the funding for an infusion of cash into public schools along with local property tax relief.

At the time, hopeful editorial writers at this newspaper and others encouraged legislators and the governor to come together over the common cause of property tax relief and craft compromise on the overall budget concerns.

What we didn’t know and couldn’t have guessed, was that the two sides were so far apart and so set in their positions that compromise was out of the question.

Nine months passed before a state budget was passed, and then it was not through compromise but resignation. A spending plan became reality without the Republicancontrolled Legislature and the Democratic governor ever sitting down together to work out a plan.

The impasse went down in history as the longest ever in Pennsylvania and the second-worst in the nation for the year, an embarrassment not to be repeated.

And so in 2016 as a new budget year begins, the atmosphere is quite different.

On Wednesday, as the Senate acted quickly to approve a House budget package, compromise and getting the budget delivered by the July 1 deadline were the talking points.

But just as making deadline was in stark contrast to last year, so were the issues important to citizens in southeast Pennsylvania — schools funding and property tax relief.

In fact, any mention of property tax seems to have been banned on both sides of the aisle. Instead, the revenue proposed in the 2016-17 budget plan comes from the same old shell games.

Once again, Pennsylvania is moving the chips around the table. Here you have cigarette taxes. There you have hopeful liquor sale increases.

Over here are collections from tax delinquents. And in the center is the ever-questionable gambling expansion.

In other words, the only taxes the state can agree on are the ones that target smoking, alcohol and gambling.

On the spending side, the Legislature’s plan took money from Wolf’s proposal to add to the Department of Human Services. That prompted social services providers, including counties and The Arc of Pennsylvania, to warn about further squeezing crucial programs, such as children and youth services and emergency services for intellectually disabled adults, the Associated Press reported.

And, the plan leaves in jeopardy the reimbursements to local schools of billions of dollars in borrowing for construction costs. The loss of PlanCON money has been a source of great concern to districts in this region.

Also of concern to schools has been the continuing unpredictability of funding. Replacing the property tax with a more equitable and stable funding source by increasing sales or income tax is just too difficult in an election year for legislators. We’ll just have to see how many people can be tempted to smoke more, drink more and play slots online to determine if our children gain more resources for learning.

The budget debacle last year won’t be repeated, and that’s a step forward.

But the falling off of property tax reform on both sides is a step backward.

Forgive us for expecting that our elected officials could both get it right and get it done on time. Maybe next year.

This year, property tax relief seems to have been banned on both sides of the aisle.