Would zero-based budgeting be good for Pa.?

A quick dive into the dark arts of budgets

• Joseph Darius Jaafari
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  Joseph Darius Jaafari was a staff writer for the PA Post. His work covering crime, the military and LGBTQ issues has been featured in The Marshall Project, Rolling Stone Magazine, The Atlantic and The New York Times. He is a graduate of the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has produced for VICE and The New York Post. He is a native Arizonan and infamous for his love of tacos.

Jeffrey from Pen Argyl, Pa., sent us a question asking if the legislature uses zero-based budgeting, and how do legislators decide on how much money a department receives? He also asked for a story that wasn’t “fluff.” So, instead, we’ll give him some wonk.

But I’m not the best situated to answer that question. So, I turned to WITF Capitol Bureau Chief Katie Meyer, whom I have incredible respect and admiration for. Here’s what she had to say:

Joseph: Let’s answer Jeff’s question. Why don’t we do zero-based budgeting in Pa.?

Katie: This is a concept that goes back a few decades, and over the years a bunch of states have incorporated it into their budgeting processes in various forms and at different times. Basically, what it means is that you start at zero every year; there’s no assumption that any money is going to be spent. All of the agencies that want funding would have to basically prove that they deserve it and prove what they need to use it for. Conservatives love that.

J: Why?

K: Because the idea is that growth in spending would be less of a given. It stands to reason with inflation that costs are going to go up year over year. But many conservatives sort of chafe at the idea that the state budget needs to keep expanding. And so they are always looking for ways to sort of bake it into state law, or state practice, that there needs to be less expansion of state agencies and more just doing what we can.

J: The legislature is run by Republicans who claim to be fiscal hawks. So, why hasn’t zero-based budgeting been rolled out here?

K: Well, first off, not all Republicans are really gung-ho about cutting programs viciously. And look at historical context. You look at governors who have been very, very eager to spend less money on state programs like, for instance, Tom Corbett, who was Governor Wolf’s predecessor. He tried his darndest in the wake of the recession not to raise any taxes and to keep cutting state programs. And it was very unpopular. He was voted out.

J: What are the consistent issues with the budget that you see from the lawmakers’ side?

K: We don’t bring in enough revenue on a consistent basis to easily cover our expenses. For example, we haven’t raised our sales and income taxes, and meanwhile, lawmakers haven’t cut programs aggressively enough to make up the deficits that keep cropping up.

J: That doesn’t sound like it would be popular. 

K: Well, I think people don’t realize how many different pots of money that we’re scrambling around to try to make all the numbers add up. One of the fun ways Pennsylvania funds transportation is that we’ve got a fund that’s mostly for roads and bridges, called the Motor License fund. And a lot of that money, which is ostensibly for large infrastructure projects, actually goes to state police because a while ago they were like, “This is a pot of money we could use to fund the police because we don’t have money for that.” So they said, “Police use the roads. So we’ll just fund them from that.” And that’s been a big drain on the transportation budget for a while.

J: So, what happens?

K: So, in the past, they had to pass the funding and the spending bills together. And if they didn’t do that, there was a government shutdown.

J: Got it. Essentially, there needed to be two items passed: one bill for how much money to spend on each department, and one that showed where that money was going to come from. If those didn’t pass at the same time, it would affect how a department does its job, and some government workers would have to temporarily work without pay. Is that different now?  

K: That changed about a decade ago. The state Supreme Court ruled state workers can’t have payless paydays, so lawmakers had to come up with a new strategy for budget impasses. So groups say now, “Oh, we’re gonna spend this amount this year on schools.” And that’s great. But then there’s the component of where that money is coming from. And they’re like, “Aha, we’ll figure that out later.”

J: So they treat their budget how I treat paying off my student loans. Essentially, budgeting for a $40,000 income when really I’m making $30,000. 

K: Exactly. And that you’re a person who’s very optimistic in that you’re going to be able to find that extra $10,000 in the couch cushions. And there are a lot of couch cushions in the legislature.

Hope that was a good breakdown for you, Jeff. For further reading on the topic, check out this report from the National Conference of State Legislatures, or this explainer from The Conversation. Also, GOP state Reps. Frank Ryan (Lebanon) and Seth Grove (York) recently introduced a zero-based budget bill, and Scott Wagner made zero-based budgeting a plank in his campaign to unseat Gov. Wolf in 2018. And see page 4 of this report by the accounting firm Deloitte for a breakdown of the disadvantages of zero-base budgeting for governments.

If any of you others have questions on a law, policy or cultural nuance in the state, submit it through our Listening Post. – Joseph Darius Jaafari

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