Editorial: As Pittsburgh faces 2021 budget crisis, speak up now

A government budget is not settled quickly.

You can see this when Congress wars within its chambers over spending plans that push partisan politics to its limits. You see it in Harrisburg when the governor — not just Gov. Tom Wolf, but years of guys with the top job from both parties — lock horns with the Legislature over taxes versus expenses.

Municipalities can spend months going over budgets line by line by line. School districts administrators can haggle with their boards over teachers, equipment and capital expenditures for next year practically from the day the last budget was passed.

It’s a complicated balancing act pitting needs and wants against what the taxpayers can afford. It’s possibly the most important and trickiest job every government undertakes each year.

But that’s in a year where deciding to fund a new parks initiative or offer an AP chemistry class is the decision. How does a government body make those decisions in a year when everything has been turned upside down by a pandemic?

Pittsburgh could face a $100 million revenue shortfall this year, according to Treasurer Douglas Anderson, with just $85 million in reserves expected to be exhausted by the end of the year. The city has not just dealt with the unexpected expenses of covid-19 but the costs of quarantine, protests and rioting. Now it — like every other level of government — has to plan for the unplannable.

And so the city wants people to share their priorities for budgeting as they try to decide. While the city’s home rule charter specifies a preliminary budget be nailed down by Sept. 30, special circumstances have pushed that back to November.

The state’s May truce kicked its own budget can to October, but it seems unlikely that the elected officials who have had stalemates so often over less contentious issues will end theirs in the coming weeks, especially given the highly charged political climate.

So how can municipalities plan for their spending when they don’t know what the state is going to do? They are also in the dark about federal funding as President Trump has placed those dollars in doubt, if cities such as Pittsburgh — where protests have become common in recent months — don’t follow his lead.

“My administration will not allow federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” Trump wrote in a memo, according to The New York Times.

Such a carrot-and-stick approach is not surprising, but is it helpful? In a financial tug-of-war between Democratic Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Republican Trump, the loser will be the residents left without funding, regardless of their party affiliation.

But that is why it is so important for people to participate in their government, rather than wait to hear what the government is planning to do. In this case, Pittsburgh is asking for people to bring their ideas to a virtual budget forum at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

Budgets are always a negotiation, but there may never be a year as important to come to the table for the discussion.