Not as easy as they thought

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Following last November's Republican election sweep in state offices, the newly-elected governor and many of the GOP legislators who gained or retained their seats in the General Assembly began a boastful campaign that they would put the embarrassments of the past eight years to rest by not only adopting a state budget on time for once, but would also have the state spending plan wrapped up in record time.
Well, there's a week to go in June, and we don't think any records are about to be broken.
The governor, lawmakers and many in the general public believed that with a Republican in charge, and Republican majorities in the state House and Senate, everyone would be in agreement about everything, and a budget could be passed well before the June 30 deadline.
And while the deadline may still be met, the news out of Harrisburg is anything but the holding hands, singing Kumbaya feeling of brotherhood that many said would follow the Republicans' dominance last November. In fact, if anything has been clear these past few months, it's that regardless of party, human nature tends to shine light on our differences, rather than our similarities.
At a town hall meeting recently in Distant, state Sen. Don White, a Republican from Indiana whose district also includes part of Armstrong County, said that Republicans from the eastern part of the state are very different from those in the same party in the western counties. White noted that the differences can be so distinct, that it sometimes seems like he's working with Democrats instead of those in the same party to which he belongs.
Pennsylvania is a large, diverse state. The values, traditions and beliefs of those raised in the Philadelphia area aren't always the same as those from rural Forest County, or even another metropolitan area such as Pittsburgh. The needs we have in Clarion or Armstrong counties, aren't going to be the same as the needs of people in Erie, or Lancaster or the northeast corner of Pennsylvania that is squarely in New York City's shadow.
Although it has posed its difficulties for people like Sen. White, we find it refreshing that the Republican party is representative of the diversity of Pennsylvania, at least to the extent that one, small interest group cannot control the government that represents us all.
Sure, the Rendell administration embarrassed the state by its inability to pass a budget on time for eight years straight. Beyond embarrassment, the tardiness hurts counties, school districts and other municipalities as they try to adopt budgets that rely heavily on state funding. Many schools districts, which also must adopt budgets by June 30, are waiting as long as they can to see what they will even get from Harrisburg in the next fiscal year.
But this delay may be better than having a majority of legislators so in lockstep with one another and the governor that a budget breezes through in early June, or May or even earlier in the year before proper debate and public involvement can take place.
And we're also glad to see that the Republican Party, which has been harshly criticized for many years as having abandoned the "big tent" approach of Ronald Reagan, may still be a party of diversity, a variety of ideas and even opposing viewpoints.