Thursday, July 31, 2003

They have failed Pennsylvania. The governor, the leaders of the House and the powers in the Senate have failed the commonwealth by plunging us all into legislative gridlock.

Homeowners seeking property tax relief will get none now that a slots-at-the-racetrack bill is on ice. Schools trying to budget for the new year don't know how much they will receive from the state or when. Mass transit systems, human services agencies, libraries and other programs hit hard by budget cuts won't see a nickel from a $900 million federal infusion because lawmakers haven't acted.

And the city of Pittsburgh, whose leaders took an irresponsible gamble in December and passed a budget predicated on state help for closing a $60 million deficit, are now left wishing, hoping, praying for a solution.

It's a mess of the first order, and Democrat Ed Rendell and Republicans John Perzel and Robert Jubelirer all share in the blame.

Gov. Rendell, in his second month in office, made the mistake of proposing new programs, paid for with higher taxes, while faced with a $2 billion shortfall, to a Legislature controlled by the opposition party. Although the Post-Gazette has supported his effort to shift the school-financing burden off property taxes and engineer some funding equity for students in poor communities, his more ambitious agenda was ill-timed.

House Speaker John Perzel, like the governor a Philadelphian, refused to leave well enough alone on the slot-machine bill that came from the Senate. That plan would have legalized such parlors at eight horse-racing tracks around the state and provided the revenue stream for both the shift off property taxes and the state taking over a greater share of school spending from local taxpayers. But Mr. Perzel would not stop until he had a slots bill that added a ninth track, plus two stand-alone parlors in Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh region -- a package stiffed by the Senate.

Senate President Pro Tempore Jubelirer and Majority Leader David Brightbill assumed that Ed Rendell would bow to Republican control of the Legislature, even though the GOP doesn't have the numbers in the House to override a veto. So they stuck to their guns and ignored the governor's tax-reform offer, and they backed the school funding status quo that keeps the financial leverage (and burden) with local taxpayers and shortchanges children in poverty-stricken districts.

But forget Democrats and Republicans disagreeing on tax reform and school equity; the Republican House and Republican Senate couldn't come to terms on the linchpin of it all: slots at the track. How's that for party unity?

Although their actions do not have statewide consequences, let's turn now to Mayor Tom Murphy, City Council and the county legislative delegation. City leaders lacked the courage and resolve last year to balance their budget. Now Pittsburgh is in a desperate position, facing deep layoffs or municipal bankruptcy or both. Allegheny County lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, failed to help the city get a state rescue package -- an act of division and apathy that would never occur among their counterparts in Philadelphia.

Yet the representatives and senators from outside Pittsburgh -- and even Sen. Jack Wagner from inside -- somehow see themselves untouched and unaffected by a core city whose service cuts will make it less welcoming, less attractive and less livable.

It is bad news all around. The failure of the Harrisburg power centers to act decisively will soon be felt in small, individual, human ways all across Pennsylvania. If the governor and Legislature continue their impasse into September, it will hurt not only taxpayers, students, bus riders and addicts who need counseling but also the image of Pennsylvania as a state that can take care of itself and its own.

And that, dear leaders, may be the cruelest cut of all.

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