Governor Wolf is letting last year’s budget pass without his signature, but county leaders said the damage has already been done. 

 

“It is not a very organized approach from Harrisburg to addressing this problem,” Blair County Commissioner Terry Tomassetti said.

 

Almost nine months later, the 2015-2016 budget will become law, but Governor Wolf will not sign it. 

 

“I cannot in good conscience sign this bill,” Wolf said. “I cannot in good conscience attach my name to a budget that simply doesn’t add up.”

 

Signature or not, services still suffered. 

 

“That put a lot of counties and governments and school districts in tough financial straits,” Tomassetti said.  “We, however, were in very good condition.”

 

Blair County had enough reserve funds to keep them afloat, but that wasn’t the case for everyone. 

 

“This was a decision the governor made and it’s really hurt vendors – vendors being the people who provide these services,” Tomassetti explained. “In some cases services haven’t been available because some of the companies closed down. They were too small to cover the load financially.”

 

Counties, their services and schools are not in the clear yet. 

 

“This means that schools will stay open through the end of the year, but unless Harrisburg changes its ways, they won’t have adequate funds for next year,” Wolf said.

 

The budget cuts expenditures by another $238 million and it is $290 million out of balance.  The budget will become law on Sunday.  

 

Come Monday, they will start work on next year’s budget, which starts off with a more than $2 billion deficit. 

 

“Let’s build a responsible and balanced budget for 2016 and ’17,” Wolf said. “We need to get back to work to create a budget in fiscal year 2016 and 2017 that actually has the money we all know we need.”

 

 

At the conference Wednesday, Governor Wolf repeated that he and legislators will work on “doing the right thing” for next year’s budget.  When reporters there asked what that entailed, the governor did not elaborate.