HARRISBURG -- Christopher Hahn, general director of the Pittsburgh Opera, is still reeling from the shock he got Friday night, when Gov. Ed Rendell and state legislative leaders announced they plan to extend the sales tax to tickets for live arts performances, zoos and museums.

"This is a big deal and I'm very concerned," Mr. Hahn said yesterday. "It's another barrier in our marketing attempts" because it will increase the price of tickets.

"Like many nonprofit arts groups, we are struggling. Opera and ballet companies are having trouble in this economic climate, and some are closing. We're all in a crisis mode, trying to stay alive and keep our artistic standards high while we beg and plead for support."

But Mr. Rendell and bipartisan legislative leaders have problems of their own, as they desperately seek revenue for a consensus budget that is nearly three months late.

With Mr. Rendell insisting that the $27.9 billion budget proposal have more "recurring revenues," leaders of three of the four General Assembly caucuses decided to eliminate the sales tax exemption for symphonies, ballets, operas and other performing arts, as well as for museums, historical sites, parks and zoos. The sales tax exemption will remain for tickets to sporting events and movies.

Legislators have endured rising public criticism for their long delay in completing work on the budget for fiscal 2009-10, which began on July 1. Many human and social service providers, mental health agencies, drug and alcohol treatment groups, as well as counties, which rely on state funds, are in danger of scaling back their services or closing altogether due to the lack of a budget.

But Mr. Hahn and Harris Ferris, executive director of the Pittsburgh ballet, are unhappy with the decision to tax arts tickets, even though the money will go into a separate arts-related fund that is segregated from the state's general fund. The amount of money that will go to arts groups and the percentage that the state will keep haven't been set yet.

"It's a bad idea to tax the nonprofit arts sector," said Mr. Ferris. "Many of us have adjusted our ticket prices and packaged them to be accessible to the greater community. We want people to be able to come to the performing arts, which is a $2 billion annual sector of the economy."

Mr. Rendell and legislators readily admit the budget proposal isn't perfect, but they say reaching perfection is just about impossible in this recession. They want to reduce the budget's bottom line below that of fiscal 2008-09 while not raising broad-based taxes such as income and sales tax rates.

Mr. Rendell has been pushing to lift some of the sales tax exemptions, saying the state needs reliable revenue. The decision to lift the arts groups' exemption was a late addition to the proposal on Friday and is expected to generate $100 million annually.

Legislative leaders haven't released many details of the budget proposal, saying they want to brief their members on it first. But some details had previously been released, such as opening up thousands of additional acres of state forest land to natural gas drilling and reducing spending on smoking cessation programs.

The natural gas drilling expansion angered Penn Future President Jan Jarrett and two legislators, Reps. David Levdansky, D-Forward, and Greg Vitali, D-Delaware.

"The governor said there were no winners or losers in this budget, but that's not true," said Ms. Jarrett. "The biggest winners are multi-national energy corporations, like Exxon Mobil and Chesapeake Energy, that want to get hold of the natural gas under our state lands. These big guys spent $1 million lobbying state officials in the first six months of the year to open up the additional land and to kill a proposed severance tax on natural gas."

Mr. Levdansky contends that opening more state land for drilling "would devastate the Pennsylvania forest system" and would be "an unprecedented intrusion on the [state's] mission to conserve forest lands." He said it's being done "simply to gain a one-time grab of leasing revenue for the general fund."

Also unhappy is Dr. Stephanie Land of the University of Pittsburgh's Reduce Smoking and Exposure to Tobacco Center. The proposed budget "drastically reduces funding for tobacco prevention and cessation programs," she said, at a time when demand for such programs is growing. It cuts the funding in half, by $16 million, she said.

"Studies have shown potential health care savings of $3 for every dollar spent" on such stop-smoking programs, she added. She also criticized legislators for failing to enact an excise tax on the sale of cigars and smokeless tobacco.

The proposed budget does call for increasing the cigarette tax by 25 cents a pack, to $1.60.

One GOP official said the initial $27.9 billion budget deal didn't remove any sales-tax exemptions, but Mr. Rendell had insisted on lifting some as a way to generate more revenue, so the arts groups were chosen.

"We absolutely need new, sustainable revenues this year," said House Democratic spokesman Brett Marcy. The arts tax "would not have been our first choice ... but Senate Republicans refused to consider most other options, such as a tax on cigars and smokeless tobacco, choosing [instead] to tax patrons of the arts."