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 The state still has only a partial $23.4 billion emergency budget
in place nearly a year after Wolf made his 2016 budget proposal the
first time, for $29.9 billion.
Wolf, a Democrat, had said he would support a negotiated budget of
$30.8 billion, but state House Republican leaders scuttled it at the
last minute in December.
"It's a gigantic cloud hanging over this year's process," said
Christopher Borick, associate political science professor at
Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, of the impasse and
partial budget.
The incomplete deal, which Wolf called "garbage" and a "ridiculous
exercise in budget futility" before stripping it down and signing it
in December, was hammered out after school districts across the
state threatened to close because of the lack of funding.
 One question now is whether Wolf will use that tone, or a more
conciliatory one, during Tuesday's budget address.
"Wolf is committed to his agenda. I think he believes it's the right
thing to do," said G. Terry Madonna, public affairs professor at
Pennsylvania's Franklin & Marshall College.
Wolf took office in January 2015 pledging to restore education
funding, to be paid for in part with a tax on natural gas
extraction. He has already said his new budget will include $200
million of additional funding for K-12 public schools, on top of the
$377 million increase proposed in the now-defunct compromise budget
that Senate Republicans had supported.
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But while Wolf may view his clear win in 2014 over incumbent
Republican Governor Tom Corbett as a mandate from voters,
Republicans can point to how they increased their majorities in both
houses of the state legislature in that election.
Those results "represented very mixed messages from the voters of
the state," Borick said. "That sowed the seeds very much for the
type of gridlock we saw last year, where both sides felt empowered."
The logjam makes fixes for the state's now $2.3 billion structural
budget deficit that much harder, Moody's Investors Service said in
October when it threatened to lower its Aa3 rating on Pennsylvania's
nearly $11 billion of outstanding general obligation debt.
(Reporting by Hilary Russ in New York; Editing by Daniel Bases and
David Gregorio)
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