Average Pennsylvanians juggle financial obligations every day.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean just earning money and paying bills. It means doing it in a timely manner. If that doesn\u2019t happen, banks and bill collectors share the news. A credit rating can tank quickly.<\/p>\n
Credit scores, for all their digits and formulas, are not about math. Plenty of people with lower incomes have high credit scores. What the numbers evaluate is behavior, especially patterns.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because a credit score is a math problem that uses your financial numbers to determine your reliability. It\u2019s made up of a number of moving parts: new credit, age of accounts, total amount owed. But the single biggest chunk of the score \u2014 35% \u2014 is about your history of fulfilling your obligations.<\/p>\n
Imagine applying for a car loan if you had paid your rent on time just eight times in 23 years. What about getting a mortgage if your record showed five straight years of failing to meet due dates?<\/p>\n
The state of Pennsylvania lives in that reality \u2014 and its credit history wouldn\u2019t suddenly look better simply because this year\u2019s budget missed the deadline by only about two weeks. On Sunday, leaders passed a budget after working behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t just about dates. Oh, it\u2019s about being late again. But when these budgets are late, they don\u2019t just miss deadlines. They also miss points, as corners are cut and items are avoided to get to an agreement.<\/p>\n
This budget is remarkable for what it did not get done. Important issues were sacrificed.<\/p>\n
Municipalities are crying out for help on data centers. The recent skill games verdict has revealed complications that can be fixed only by lawmakers. Pennsylvania is surrounded by states that have done their jobs on the issue of marijuana.<\/p>\n
So how long do residents need to wait for the Keystone State to set aside partisan hurdles and get to work? The answer, more often than not, remains the same: longer than necessary.<\/p>\n
Perhaps being late would be acceptable \u2014 occasionally \u2014 if there were progress. Pennsylvania, however, is delinquent on time while simultaneously wallowing in what we have rather than building what we need.<\/p>\n
The pattern established by Pennsylvania\u2019s government is an expectation that deadlines don\u2019t matter and the work will get done \u2014 or not \u2014 on politicians\u2019 schedules.<\/p>\n
Cynically, it leads one to ask: Did this year take a mere 12 days because of a commitment to get the work done or because all 203 House members and another 25 state senators are up for reelection? <\/p>\n
State leaders are lucky voters aren\u2019t evaluating actions and issuing judgments like the credit bureaus. One might call it a credibility score.<\/p>\n
This year, voters can, and that deadline can\u2019t be avoided.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Nov. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Average Pennsylvanians juggle financial obligations every day. That doesn\u2019t mean just earning money and paying bills. It means…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-243009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}