Editorial: Enough finger-pointing. Pass a budget

The Pennsylvania Senate on Monday passed a bill to let winners of large lottery prizes remain anonymous. The bill now moves to the House for consideration.

It’s a good idea. The Pennsylvania Lottery awards a number of big-ticket prizes every year, from Powerball jackpots to the Millionaire Raffles to scratch-offs. Nineteen states allow some degree of anonymity for lottery winners.

But is it a pressing issue? On the day of the Senate vote, the lottery put out a news release about a Northampton County player who won about $158,000 in an online game. The player was not identified.

On Tuesday, the Senate did something else. It passed Senate Bill 160, an amended budget. It passed along party lines, as most things do these days. It is now in the hands of the state House, which is likely to reject it along its party lines.

This is a pressing issue. Every day it presses a little more as the budget impasse drags further away from the June 30 date when a spending plan was required to be completed by law. We are spitting distance from the budget being four months overdue.

The worst part of all this isn’t wringing another penny out of a multibillion-dollar ledger. It isn’t even the political arm wrestling of prioritizing one party’s goals over the other’s. It certainly isn’t the fine art of negotiating, which doesn’t seem to be happening much.

No, it’s the childish practice of finger-pointing.

The Republican-held Senate points at the Democratic governor and the narrow Democratic majority in the House. The Democrats point back. And the impasse continues.

On Tuesday, Westmoreland County moved forward with an application for a $14.1 million state treasury loan to provide for essential human services like care of special-needs individuals, children and seniors.

The county should get that money back from the state at some future date when a budget is passed by both chambers and signed by the governor. What the county won’t get back is the interest for that loan, which could be as much as 4.5%.

“It’s like organized crime,” Westmoreland County Commissioner Ted Kopas said. “Money rightfully intended for county taxpayers will now have to be used to pay interest. I don’t know if anyone in the state is paying attention to any of this.”

That comes on top of cuts and furloughs the county already has made, and similar loans and cuts and furloughs in other counties. There are 67 counties in Pennsylvania, more than 2,500 municipalities and thousands of other big and small agencies that are straining under the load of another budget impasse.

The missed deadline often prompts pie-in-the-sky solutions. What if we didn’t pay the lawmakers or governor while there was no budget? What if we treated the budget like the election of a new pope and locked them in their chambers until they came to a decision? Good luck getting them to vote for that.

But what if we treated them like children? What if we refused to respond to the tattling and snitching as each side plays the aggrieved party and demands consequences for the opposition? Ignore a child throwing a tantrum and eventually the child will stop, if only out of exhaustion.

This is not a Democrat-versus-Republican issue. This is a state government-versus-the-rest-of-Pennsylvania issue. And unlike the anonymity of lottery winners, it impacts everyone.