Without a budget to spend, Gov. Ed Rendell (D) could furlough the entire state workforce. So, the government sent them their last foreseeable paycheck, worth only 20% of what it owed them.

“I did not get paid. My mortgage company was threatening me,” recalled Judy Aims, a state worker in 2009. “I had to call my dad and throw myself on his mercy.”

Mercifully, paychecks resumed after nine days. A completed budget arrived three months later.

“You know, when state employees got laid off, when state parks were closed down, you know, that was a major line in the sand,” former Sen. Jake Corman (R) said.

A line Corman said no longer exists after a PA Supreme Court ruling that all employees must be paid during an impasse.

The ruling created a different reality for lawmakers in Harrisburg, he added. When a budget was late earlier in his career, legislators didn’t go home after June 30; they stayed. He spent his Independence Day in the capital.

“There’s no more furloughs, so that pressure’s gone, right?” said Rep. Seth Grove (R-York County), who was appropriations chairman last year.

He said with no screaming unpaid workers, or an election this year, a tardy budget is no surprise. There simply isn’t any pressure, he said.

Aims, now retired from her state job, has a few points she’d like to make about pressure,

“If I did half the stuff they did, I wouldn’t have worked for the state for 27 years,” she said. “There’s no obligation to make them do their jobs, and they keep getting re-elected over and over and over again. They have no pressure to do their jobs. That’s what everybody should be focusing on right now.”