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Flaws, yes, but state budget process offers good lesson
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share thisIt's difficult to identify a lot of good having come from the state's disastrous budget process this past summer and fall. Not only was passage of the budget 101 days late, the final plan included myriad cuts that, among other things, led to pink slips for hundreds of state employees.
Painful, for sure.
One positive, however, is that the budget included no broad-based tax increase. With that, we're hopeful the pain is more short term for those who lost jobs or services than long term for Pennsylvania taxpayers.
State Sen. John Gordner, R-27, speaking to the Brush Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce earlier this week, put the drawn-out budget approval process into context by noting that, the last time Pennsylvania was faced with a overbearing deficit such as this year's $3.2 billion, was in 1991. That year, the Legislature and governor made up a billion-dollar deficit and balanced the budget by raising business-related taxes to the highest rates in the nation.
We're still paying for that.
We reiterate these points about the state budget in light of Northumberland County's ongoing budget process, which also has been considerably painful. The recession has forced layoffs and other cuts in county government, with more to come.
With an eye toward avoiding long-term pain for taxpayers, however, the commissioners remain on the right track in finding every excess and eliminating it.
Back to Gordner's speech, he noted how the final state budget, late as it was, and propped up by federal stimulus dollars, should be sustainable into the 2010-11 fiscal year; it wasn't built just to get through 2009-10. This same approach should be encouraged for Northumberland County.
Indeed, avoiding long-term pain by acting now to cut government expenses is a positive lesson to take from the state budget impasse.
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