A failure to govern in Harrisburg

There is some good news emanating from Harrisburg these days.

Unless you happen to be a schoolkid hoping for an extended holiday break. Try not to laugh. We’d snicker, too, if it didn’t hurt too much.

Gov. Tom Wolf, who has been engaged in a monthslong hissing match with Republican leaders in the Legislature over taxes and a new spending plan, finally relented and freed up emergency funds for state schools and social services. It’s a six-month reprieve.

So those schools in western Pennsylvania that had been threatening to keep their doors closed after the holiday break will open as expected in January. Sorry, kids.

Actually, what we’re really sorry about is what passes for governing these days in Harrisburg.

While he was gritting his teeth and relenting on the emergency funding, Wolf continued to bare his fangs on the Republicans who control both the House and Senate.

He called the budget that was so unceremoniously plopped on his desk last week “garbage.” The $30.3 billion fiscal plan not only does not contain any of the increased revenue that was the hallmark of his campaign against Tom Corbett, it actually includes a funding cut.

Wolf promptly took out his pen and made quick work of the Republicans’ fiscal folly. He ve- toed all parts of his except the emergency funds for schools, social services an county governments who have been footing the bill for this version of the Harrisburg follies since the summer.

Then the Democrat took direct aim at Republicans in the Legislature.

“In doing this, I’m expressing the outrage that all of us should feel about the garbage the Republican legislative leaders have tried to dump on us,” a clearly agitated Wolf said. “This budget is wrong for Pennsylvania. And our legislators – the folks we elected to serve us – need to own up to this. They need to do their jobs.”

That’s actually part of the problem. While voters who tired of four years of austere – albeit on time and without a tax hike – budgets could not wait to show former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett the door, they also were actually increasing the GOP’s dominance in both the House and Senate.

Both sides believed they were given a mandate – Wolf to increase education funding and putting the state’s books back on an even keel, Republicans to keep a close eye on the checkbook and avoid tax hikes.

Wolf’s plans for a new tax to be levied on Marcellus Shale proved to be a pipe dream. An increase in the personal income tax was abandoned. Republican leaders actu- ally agreed to a hike in the sales tax, only to see the rank-and-file turn their back on the plan. A new plan to expand what could fall under the sales tax went nowhere. Attempts to address privatization of liquor sales in the state, something much of the public wants, stalled. Efforts to reform one of the most pressing problems in the state, the two badly underfunded state public employee pension plans, also is adrift.

It’s been going on now for six months. And still there is no end in sight.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

Rubbing salt into the wound, Republican leaders opted not to even bother to go to work this week. Neither the House nor Senate is in session. House Speaker Mike Turzai, R-Allegheny, said no sessions would be held through the weekend. Representatives will be on a six-hour call starting on Monday.

On Wednesday, Wolf sent a letter to both Turzai and Senate Republican leader Joe Scarnati asking them to bring both houses back to the Capitol and continue working on a spending plan.

We’re hoping the governor is not holding his breath. If there is one thing that has become apparent in this six-week standoff, as one compromise deal after another fell through, is that leadership is not exactly a hot commodity in Harrisburg.

In the spirit of the season, perhaps those voters who decided on change in the governor’s mansion last year should consider doing the same in the Legislature.

And making a New Year’s resolution to seek change and a bipartisan sense of compromise in Harrisburg. It’s called governing. It’s long past time that Harrisburg embraced it.