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It’s annual “excoriate Harrisburg’s budgeting” season, though this year’s event comes with a new twist: the overpaid powers that be managed to pass a budget on the June 30 deadline, yet conveniently — and, quite frankly, remarkably — agreed to spend $32 million without agreeing where they would get the required money.

Maybe they figured on trying a Star Wars Jedi mind trick. You know, “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” It would be as if you went to buy a house and the banker told you “We just need to check your credit rating …”

“You don’t need to check my credit rating.”

“I don’t need to check your credit rating. So let’s just talk about the down payment …”

“You don’t need a down payment.”

“I don’t need a down payment.”

“Just sign over the deed to me.”

“And I’ll just sign over the deed to you.”

Or maybe Harrisburg will start issuing “Keystone Kash,” promissory notes that will be worth every penny at a future date. A bit like paying with those U.S. “Series E” savings bonds, except without the interest.

One idea actually floated should have been dead on arrival because it was brain dead: Borrow money to cover a persistent structural deficit. Seriously, you may as well put your mortgage payment on your MasterCard.

Then there was the “turn the budget into a giant crap shoot” notion: Expand legalized gambling to every bar and store that wants to put an video gaming terminal on the counter. Talk about addiction. Some state lawmakers clearly don’t recognize the monkeys on their own backs. “I know I lost our home on that last set of boxcars, but if you stake me for one more roll, I’m sure we can gamble our way out of this!”

They could offer state employees, contractors and vendors partial payment and some sort of premium to be redeemed later, after amassing enough of them. Maybe, say, Sylvan Green Stamps. Every financial transaction with the state earns a certain number of stamps. Fill up a book of stamps and you can cash them in for some reward: Get one bridge fixed for free, say, or collect enough money for your school to pay for a month of state mandates.

The absurdity of passing a “balanced budget” without balancing the income side would be comical if this were a satiric graphic novel. It’s not. It’s 100 percent real world. School districts, counties, municipalities, municipal authorities, even non-government agencies like charities that rely on government grants all face the consequences of this kind of inanity — or chicanery. With Harrisburg budgeteers, the words have become interchangeable.

So 11 school districts in Luzerne County have, this year and many years previously, passed balanced budgets before June 30 as required by law, and they did so without knowing how much money they would get from the state, even though state money makes up a big chunk of those local budgets.

Yet not only did Harrisburg wait until June 30 to pass a sate budget, they passed an incomplete one.

Worst state motto ever?

“Pennsylvania: We’ll worry about that later.”

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