Pennsylvania's broken budgeting process needs fixing, and fast

Three months after the start of the fiscal year, Pennsylvania lawmakers are still trying to find a way to pay for the $32 billion budget passed by the Legislature in July. There is currently a $2.2 billion gap in the proposed budget. Late last week, Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, announced that Pennsylvania will delay more than $1.7 billion in payments due mostly to Medicaid insurers and school districts because of the budget shortfall.

Republicans from southeastern Pennsylvania want a tax on Marcellus Shale natural gas production. Republicans from the north and west don't want it. Wolf and the Democrats do want it.

House Republicans proposed a plan to generate $2.4 billion by tapping into the off-budget accounts of several state agencies such as the Keystone Recreation, Park and Conservation Fund and the Environmental Stewardship Fund, among others. Republicans in the southeast hate the idea.

Do we really have to wonder why this is taking so long?

"It's a real mess and I've never seen anything like it in my 17 years," Sen. Don White, a Republican from Indiana County, told The Associated Press."

Considering the dysfunction White has seen in 17 years in the state Senate, that's saying something.

As our inert General Assembly sets new standards for legislative gridlock, the rest of us wait it out with our arms folded.

Keep in mind that the delayed payments to insurers and school districts mark the first time Pennsylvania state government has missed a payment as a result of not having enough money, AP reported.

If you ran your household budget like this, your car would be repossessed before you were able to close the garage door.

We've called for Republicans and Democrats to work together. Perhaps we should have been calling for Republicans and Republicans to compromise.

This sort of inactivity isn't new but it's still intensely frustrating.

In a Sept. 14 op-ed for LNP, state Rep. Keith Greiner, a Republican from Upper Leacock Township, wrote that there are "deep-rooted, systemic problems in our budgeting process."

Greiner has some ideas on how to deal with long-standing flaws that go even deeper than finding a way to pay for a budget that has already been passed.

"To put the commonwealth on stronger financial footing," Greiner wrote, "we must enact reforms that increase oversight on spending and provide greater predictability and stability, including greater lead time to prepare a responsible budget."

Greiner, a CPA, suggests, among other things, performance-based budgeting, which would force departments to "justify increases in their budgets by demonstrating the success of their programs using measurable metrics."

He also supports expanding the authority of the auditor general — the state's financial watchdog — so that office can perform forensic audits of agencies and departments as a way of strengthening the level of accountability.

Greiner's ideas warrant serious consideration and make more sense than most of what we've heard coming from the state Capitol in recent memory.

Our budgeting process is broken. If it's ever going to be fixed, lawmakers will have to look to one another for the answer.