State Budget Passes - 101 Days Late!

Governor signs bill on October 9, 2009

The State Legislature has finally – 101 days late – passed a budget for the Commonwealth. Governor Rendell signed it around 9pm on Friday, October 9, 2009.

That would seem like a good thing – but it really isn’t.

Why?

As we have said from the beginning of the Human Services Campaign, we knew that this budget cycle was going to result in a serious attack on human services funding and that the attack would continue even after this budget was completed.

That is exactly what has happened.

Even though we were successful in ending the payless paydays for state employees and staving off the more draconian cuts in funding that were contained in Senate Bill 850 earlier in the budget cycle, we still have to deal with a state budget that essentially flat lines funding for most human services programs and cuts others.

This budget cuts $50 million out of the Department of Welfare, including $3 million out of support for County Assistance offices and a $4.8 million cut in human services development funding.

This budget also drains the Rainy Day Fund completely, to the tune of $755 million.

In short, this budget does more damage to human services programs, even as we start the next budget cycle. The social safety net is frayed beyond belief.

And, in next year’s legislative session, we will also be fighting a group of legislators who will be targeting municipal pension funds for massive and damaging changes.

We are entering a new election cycle as soon as the November General Election is over. We will be electing a new Governor, and every member of the State House of Representatives is up for re-election, along with half of the State Senate.

The combination of bad choices on this year’s budget, coupled with the politics of an election year, spells disaster for next year’s budget.

So what does SEIU Local 668 need to do?

One, we need to ramp up our Human Services Campaign to meet the challenges we will be facing very shortly in the next budget cycle.

We need to start educating the voters of Pennsylvania, the people we serve every day, about the need to restore some of the drastic cuts in human services funding that are part of the new budget.

If nothing else, this budget battle shows us that our representative form of government is broken and needs to be repaired.

We can no longer depend on any elected official, of any political party, to fight this battle for us.

SEIU Local 668 must lead the way in restoring funding for human services and we must lead the way in holding those running for public office accountable.

We have to start demanding more responsibility from our elected representatives and the candidates running for public office.

That means no more endorsements based on a candidate’s general promise to support us. We want a hard and specific commitment to support our Human Services Campaign goals or they won’t get our endorsement.

We have our work cut out for us as we move forward.

SEIU Local 668 will lead the way by continuing our Human Services Campaign because that is the only way we can be sure that our needs, and the needs of the citizens and taxpayers we serve, will be met.

The only good thing about the Governor signing this budget today is that the budget battle for this year is officially over.

But this budget settlement ends nothing. This fight is just getting started.