The seemingly endless budget deadlock finally concluded on Wednesday, as Governor Tom Wolf backed off his latest veto threat and allowed the Republican $6.6 billion spending package to become law without raising new taxes, writes Mark Scolforo and Marc Levy of Associated Press on Daily Local News.

This ended the nine months of budget impasse that has resulted in millions in borrowing costs for county governments, forced social-service agencies’ layoffs and threatened to close schools. First-term Governor Tom Wolf has been under pressure by Democratic lawmakers to yield on his veto threat. Some had even raised the possibility of voting with the Republicans to override his veto, which would have been a damaging political blow.

Wolf still insisted on Wednesday that in order to end the long-term deficit, the state needs to see a major tax increase.

“What I did do is bring attention to the fact that we have this big structural deficit, we have this train wreck coming at us July 1 … and I believe that everybody in Harrisburg now understands that,” said Wolf.  

That attention is a poor consolation prize, given that the adopted budget package is similar to the one Wolf previously vetoed, and that only pieces of his once-ambitious agenda are left intact. The budget does include an increase in spending of three percent, but does not include the multibillion-dollar tax increase that Wolf had sought to end the long-term deficit.

“While the budget does not address many of Wolf’s key issues, the battle is not over and hope is not lost,” said State Representative Warren Kampf. “We tried but we couldn’t get it across the goal line…. but the legislation we passed adds $200 million in new money for basic education and the Ready-To-Learn Block Grant program.“

State Sen. Andy Dinniman, said he broke from his party caucus to vote in favor of the budget last week.

“I was concerned about what would happen if we didn’t move forward with the budget,” he said. “People were hurt, many badly hurt, when institutions, programs and individuals could not get services, and money was not available. We now have a clean slate on which to resolve this, We can’t go year to year with huge deficits; our own constitution says the budget has to be balanced.”

To read more about the final budget see here.