Editorials

OUR OPINION

June 12, 2008

State budget process hurts those who need help most

ONE HARBINGER OF summer that we could do without is Pennsylvania’s annual, down-to-the-wire tussle over how state tax dollars will be spent.

Already this month, lawmakers signaled they might not have a new budget in place by the June 30 deadline, meaning “non-essential” state workers could again be furloughed and important services shut down. A similar situation last year resulted in a one-day closure, sidelining about 24,000 state employees.

But there’s something even more maddening about budget season than the potential for a stalemate between the political parties. Too much of the process involves flat-out begging.

Consider, for instance, the case of some of the Commonwealth’s providers of residential and other services for people with mental disabilities. Those providers want a 3 percent increase, or cost of living adjustment (COLA), inserted in the 2008-2009 budget.

They say that, in essence, the governor’s administration told them: Get in line and ask for it.

Oh, and be prepared to do the same thing next year.

And the year after that.

“We don’t see that as good public policy,” said Thomas Pugh, a senior vice president with Allied Services in Wilkes-Barre Township. He and other advocates for the more than 700,000 mentally disabled residents already receiving services – and the nearly 23,000 on waiting lists – consider the budget-making process flawed.

Why should they be compelled each year to organize “rallies” and lobby for support? Why should the region’s mentally disabled individuals and their parents be rounded up each year, transported to Harrisburg and paraded before legislators and the news media to state their case for additional funding?

Certainly, the area’s mental health advocates have become skilled – as have their peers in other social services groups – at sending caravans of constituents southbound on Interstate 81 to the Capitol where they grovel before the governor and other elected officials. But it unnecessarily consumes people’s time and energy. And money.

Plus, the effort doesn’t guarantee success.

As Pugh recently pointed out during a discussion with The Times Leader’s editorial board, in those years when the mental health advocates have been rebuffed, the programs suffer. Care providers opt to postpone needed maintenance on buildings. Or they don’t give pay raises to employees, which in turn leads to excessive turnover.

Other lobby groups could make similar statements, arguing that more state cash be directed toward the elderly, health care, schools, state parks, the environment, etc. But, in the case of mental health spending, advocates have maintained that new taxes aren’t necessary, merely new priorities.

Area lawmakers should lead the charge to revamp the way budgets get drafted in Harrisburg, ensuring that many of the state’s most vulnerable residents are no longer reliant on artful pleading.

Why should the region’s

mentally disabled individuals and their parents be rounded up each year, transported to Harrisburg and paraded before legislators and the news media to state their case for

additional funding?

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