HARRISBURG -- The game is called "Kick the can down the road," and critics say state legislators have gotten really good at it.

While lawmakers are still patting themselves on the backs for enacting a complete state budget on time for the first time in eight years, observers from all sides of the political spectrum contend that the July 1 deadline was met mainly because many critical and controversial issues weren't addressed.

The $28 billion spending plan for fiscal 2010-11 "is another budget where you put off until tomorrow what you are not politically willing to do today," said Sen. Jim Ferlo, a liberal Democrat from Highland Park.

Rep. Scott Perry, a conservative Republican from York, agreed that the new budget "is a shell game rather than a real solution" to the state's problems with declining revenues and rising costs.

For example, legislators took no action to increase transportation funding, postponed until fall dealing with a proposed tax on Marcellus Shale extractions and ignored looming problems with state pensions and the expiration of federal stimulus funds.

Technically the budget is balanced, critics said, but that balance depends on two shaky sources of revenue. It includes $850 million in federal Medicaid funds that Congress hasn't approved yet and doesn't seem inclined to embrace. And it counts on a 3.2 percent increase in state tax revenues over the next 12 months, even though those revenues have been below expectations for the last two years due to the ongoing recession. Legislators say they have faith that things are turning around.

But Rep. Sam Rohrer, a conservative Republican from Reading, said that "no one with any fiscal sanity is believing that the state or national economy is going to grow by 3 percent" over the next year.

Gov. Ed Rendell is expected to sign the much-criticized spending plan Tuesday. It will be his last budget because he leaves office in January.

"This was a difficult process," he said last week. "There were hard choices, causing a lot of pain. There is something in this budget that everyone will dislike, including me."

These are some of the areas where the Legislature took no action or just pushed things off into the future:

• Tobacco tax. Legislators failed to generate about $100 million in additional revenue by raising the cigarette tax by 10 cents per pack and ending Pennsylvania's dubious distinction of being almost the only state that doesn't tax sales of cigars and smokeless tobacco.

• Marcellus Shale tax. Members expressed their "intent" to create, by Oct. 1, a new severance tax on the large amounts of natural gas that will be pumped from underground areas of Marcellus Shale in the state. But observers say it seems unlikely that risk-averse legislators will create a new tax just a month before they seek re-election in November.

• State pensions. The Senate left town for the summer without acting on a House-passed measure that would somewhat ease the upcoming financial crisis caused by underfunded pensions for retired state employees and public school employees, which could cost the state an added $5 billion in mid-2012.

• Transportation. Legislators did nothing in a so-called "special session" intended to raise at least $472 million a year for fixing pothole-filled roads, structurally deficient bridges and deficit-plagued mass transit systems. Mr. Rendell wants them to return in July or August to approve transportation funds, but so far that seems unlikely.

• Stimulus money. Billions in federal stimulus money, much of it used to cover costs in continuing programs, will expire as early as next year and legislators did nothing to ease the impending funding shortfall, as Mr. Rendell has requested.

On a major nonfiscal issue, legislators delayed, at least until the fall, action on a bill that would close the "Florida loophole," whereby some Pennsylvania gun owners have been going to Florida (and some other states) to get a concealed carry gun permit after a county sheriff in Pennsylvania has denied them such a permit.

Legislators also haven't acted on several bills intended to lessen prison overcrowding and reduce ever-growing prison costs.

"We are headed for the perfect storm by failing to make the hard choices that need to be made," said Rep. Gordon Denlinger, R-Lancaster. "We are just kicking the can down the road."

Rep. Chelsa Wagner, D-Brookline, said she decided to vote 'no' on the budget because it "made inequitable cuts to important programs," such as zoos, libraries, public television, literacy programs and cancer institutes.

Legislative leaders did congratulate themselves for (just barely) passing a state budget before the new fiscal year began last week. They thus avoided the uncertainty and delays regarding state allotments that many social service agencies and state employees faced last summer, when the new state budget wasn't approved until early October.

Legislative leaders also were proud of the fact that the 2010-11 budget doesn't contain new taxes or tax increases, but the main reason for that was simply the fact that difficult financial decisions were left for a future day.

The spending package won approval in both chambers -- 117 to 84 in the House and 37 to 13 in the Senate -- yet there was considerable unhappiness on both sides of the aisle. Conservative Republicans said that in light of a $1.1 billion deficit for the fiscal year that ended June 30, spending for 2010-11 should have been reduced by even more than the $1 billion that was trimmed from Mr. Rendell's original $29 billion spending plan.

Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, decried the cuts in spending for libraries, environmental protection, state parks, museums and other items that already had been reduced a year ago.

"The good news of an on-time budget is tempered with disappointment at the omission of closing the loopholes that keep Pennsylvania nearly alone in still exempting smokeless tobacco and cigars from taxes," said Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, who voted for the budget. "That [additional] revenue could have averted cuts in things like libraries, breast and cervical cancer screening, the arts, state parks and environmental protection."

Mr. Ferlo said that including in the budget the not-yet-approved $850 million from the federal government simply repeats the mistake the Legislature made in 2007, when it counted on getting money from new tolls on Interstate 80, which the federal government eventually denied. That denial is the reason Mr. Rendell wants lawmakers to come up with new ways to fund transportation.

Mr. Rendell said that if the additional federal money isn't approved by the end of this month, he, in consultation with legislative leaders, will put $850 million into "budgetary reserve," meaning it wouldn't be spent until Congress provides the money.

Placing money in reserve would almost certainly exacerbate layoffs of state employees. The new $28 billion budget counts on laying off about 1,000 state employees, who will be identified in the next few weeks.

But without the additional federal funds, Mr. Rendell warned there could be 20,000 more layoffs across the state -- not just state workers but public school teachers, county and municipal emergency services workers and others.

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