Editorial: Start planning path to next Pennsylvania budget now

Pennsylvania has a 2024-25 budget.

Hallelujah.

The budget came in a mere 11 days late. In Pennsylvania political time, that’s practically early.

The 2023-24 budget overshot the June 30 deadline by almost half a year. The last parts were signed Dec. 14, making it closer to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s February 2024 budget address than the day it should have been dragged across the finish line.

It is unsurprising that budgets become the most tangled traffic jam in the state’s political landscape each year. They are the intersection of party politics and the jockeying for position that happens between the executive and legislative branches.

The only way to avoid these kind of snarls are to get everyone on the same page. That’s why they are less likely to happen when the governor, House and Senate are all of the same party.

But groupthink isn’t a solution. It’s merely a symptom of the problem. The budget is a bus everyone wants to steer — but that’s the best way to cause a crash.

The real solution is for everyone involved to stop making the most important job the government does every year into a competition. What if, instead, it was approached like a carefully planned journey with necessary concessions and detours along the way?

When you’re driving, you don’t get to just ignore the road signs because you don’t like the guy who erected them. You don’t get to hit the truck passing you because you don’t want it to get ahead. And you don’t get to blame the last-minute traffic for your failure to get behind the wheel in time to get the job done.

The governor’s budget address happens each year in February. The budget is supposed to pass four months later.

Everyone knows the deadline. Everyone knows we need to fund education, transportation, social services and more. The budget isn’t a last-minute crash to avoid.

So here’s an idea, Harrisburg. Why not plan this process early this time? Maybe you won’t have the numbers until next year, but you could do the broad strokes. Stake out the route, prepare for contingencies and pack some snacks to get through a few long slogs through the math.

In the aftermath of a hard-fought election year, 2025 could have much bigger issues on the agenda than the one you know is coming a year out. Don’t take a wrong turn on this one.