When will Pennsylvanians get fed up?

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is among the highest-paid legislatures in the country. The lowest is New Hampshire, where a lawmaker pulls in just $100.

The highest paid?

Neighboring New York at $142,000.

But the Keystone State is close to the top, with a salary over $106,000. That’s more than double the average resident’s salary and 50% more than the median household income.

Likewise, Pennsylvania’s governor takes home more than most other top state executives. Once again, New York is the highest at $250,000 a year. It’s the only state with a higher gubernatorial salary than Pennsylvania. At $229,642, Gov. Josh Shapiro makes more than California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In five states, the governor makes less than a Pennsylvania legislator.

That much taxpayer money in an elected official’s pocket should merit a basic level of return. Do the job the people require. And yet Harrisburg finds that too much to expect.

A legislature’s job is to decide how the money gets spent. A governor’s job is to sign off on that plan and to facilitate the expenditures.

There was a time when Pennsylvania’s elected officials could do this reliably.

The budget was due by the end of the fiscal year on June 30 so that it could start in the new fiscal year July 1. The budget would be passed in the waning days of June, sometimes even in May. In one shining example of efficiency, the budget was passed three months early in March 2003.

But blowing past that deadline is not just common. It’s the default. Since 2000, 14 budgets have passed late. Nine of those ended up being signed in July, but five have gone over a month. The longest stretched nine months, with that impasse ending March 2016.

These, well, let’s go with spitting contests, are political sieges. Over the past 25 years, there have been 19 years of Democratic governors. At the same time, there have been seven years of narrow Democratic majorities in the House while the GOP has held the Senate with an iron fist since 1993. That means the negotiations aren’t just a tug-of-war between the governor and the lawmakers or their parties. They are a melee with battles on all sides.

It shouldn’t be. This is not supposed to be children fighting to see who can break a pinata and scrambling for the lion’s share of the candy. These are adult professionals entrusted by their constituents to do important work — and paid well for it.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe continuing to cash a check while not getting the job done makes it less urgent. The average Pennsylvanian couldn’t wait two weeks for a missing paycheck, much less nine months.

What if elected officials’ salaries were held in abeyance — essentially escrowed, with no interest — until a budget was signed? And that would be a complete budget, not like the years the job was cut into smaller bites to pass in pieces. In 2023, the budget was “done” in August; it wasn’t finished until December.

Pennsylvania’s elected officials have set themselves up to be among the best-paid government leaders in the world.

Yes, that’s not just the United States. A state representative from Westmoreland County makes more than the prime minister of Greece. Shapiro’s annual salary is about three times that of the president of Brazil — despite Pennsylvania having 6% of Brazil’s population and 37.5% of its gross domestic product.

For what they are paid, these officials should be able to do their mandated work in a timely fashion. A missed budget deadline should be the radical exception, not the expected norm.

— Pittsburgh Tribune-Review