What About the Electorate in PA's Budget Fight?

I've been involved in Pennsylvania’s budget process for about 15 years, either as an actor or an observer. 

I'm used to the opaque nature of negotiations. 

The governor presents a budget early in January or February. For about two months, legislators hold hearings with agency secretaries where they question the leaders and staff on specific funding lines, policies, or components. It's an opportunity to publicly highlight policies either in the budget or those on the outside looking in. Certain lawmakers have a specific focus that they repeatedly emphasize year after year, while others respond to the intricacies of the budget for that particular year. 

The governor and their administration usually do a roadshow, touting key budget proposals like increased school funding, property tax reform, or economic development investments to win legislative and public support. 

Advocacy groups and activists rally their supporters to promote or attack parts of the budget that help or hurt their cause. 

Sometime in May, the administration and legislative leaders sit down to hash out the specifics, and if everything goes well, a budget is completed around the June 30 deadline. 

But a lot of the time, the public at large is in the dark. And it's partly by their choosing. 

That question up top – what about the electorate? – came up on a call with advocates and activists where many folks were expressing frustrations that even people who were incredibly clued into the budget and public policy in Pennsylvania had difficulty understanding where we stood in the process. 

The House just passed a funding bill. Maybe it's a vehicle – a term for legislation that can be amended to move quickly through the legislative process – that can be amended when there's an agreement. The Senate gutted and replaced it – when a legislative body takes a bill sent over from its counterpart and changes it to the point of being unrecognizable. 

With this limited action, aside from a handful of staff and elected officials, no one has a clear understanding of where we stand and what is precisely on the table. 

And most people don't care at all. 

When I was in Gov. Wolf's office, we had huge budget fights with the legislature. We fought for increased education funding and a structurally balanced budget – among other things – and held out nine months past the budget deadline. We traded barbs with legislators and harangued them about the critical importance of our priorities. It was all wrapped up in "the budget."

After we took stock and assessed what had happened, we tried to determine if anyone cared about "the budget" as a whole, and we found that they didn't very clearly.

We looked at our social media analytics. Everything about “the budget” performed terribly. Not that people were made or hate watched or engaged. They just didn't care at all. 

It matched some of the qualitative and quantitative research we saw that showed that people cared about individual components – education funding, taxes, marijuana legalization, health care funding – but their eyes glazed over when information about "the budget" process or "the budget" as a singular entity. 

In subsequent years, we changed a bit of our process and messaging – especially on social media – and made an effort to really focus on the individual components and get out of the budget muck to the extent possible. 

In the past few years, the administration and the legislature have taken that approach miles further. There are almost no pressers outside of the offices after negotiations. 

Legislators and the governor are sticking to their regular messaging well beyond the Capitol. 

Even though the budget is late, the heat between negotiating parties is turned way down. 

The result is less animus and less information. 

The electorate – even those intimately involved in policy or impacted by commonwealth funding – has little information. And it's kind of their fault. 

Elected officials are responsive to their constituents. Their constituents might be calling on them for more transit funding, or more education funding, or lower taxes, but most aren't talking about it in terms of a comprehensive budget and even fewer are asking for status updates from their legislators. 

As the budget stalemate drifts into the fall, people will be forced to reckon with it. Schools and some nonprofits will be squeezed without new funds and as their reserves dwindle. 

And most Pennsylvanians will be happy to hear little bickering from Harrisburg as they go on their vacations and go about their lives. 

It's up to legislators and advocacy groups to raise the temperature, and that works best on specific issues – we're seeing effective advocacy around transit, education, marijuana legislation, healthcare investments, and other targeted policies and funding. 

But the electorate gets what they want, and when it comes to “the budget,” they want to be left alone.