Former Gov. Ed Rendell’s failure to have a state budget in place by the June 30 deadline was one way Gov. Tom Corbett differentiated himself from the prior administration. For the first three years of his administration, Corbett and the Republican-dominated Legislature produced budgets that were on time and without tax increases, a vow Corbett repeated in his election campaign.

This week, just ahead of the 2014-15 budget deadline, a $29.1 billion state spending plan was passed. And although it was approved by lawmakers by a partisan vote, it cannot be described as a responsible budget.

Facing a gaping $1.4 billion budget hole, Republican lawmakers voted to include $2 billion from one-time cash infusions, some delayed payments, transfering unused funds from prior years, and generally playing accounting games to balance the budget.

This budget, if passed by Democrats and Rendell, would have been blasted by Republicans as full of smoke, mirrors and gimmicks. For a political party that claims fiscal responsibility as a core principle, this GOP budget is nothing to be proud of. If not an outright sham, it’s surely full of questionable moves.

Corbett has not yet signed the budget, but it will become law without his signature 10 days after passage in the Legislature.

Granted, crafting a budget for the coming year was a tough job. The biggest problem was a massive and unexpected shortfall in tax revenues.

The crisis posed by the underfunding of two big pension funds for state employees, including state lawmakers and public school teachers, created a challenge — and an opportunity — for Corbett and lawmakers. The pension funds are underfunded by about $50 billion. Harrisburg’s pension crisis is not the worst in teh U.S., nor is it the least- troubling pension problem. Yet, Harrisburg, despite bipartisan acknowledgement of the problem, has done nothing.

This year’s budget negotiations offered an opportunity for compromise and a way to make progress on two big problems — a revenue shortfall and the pension crisis. A month or so ago, Corbett said he was willing to consider an extraction tax on natural gas produced from the Marcellus Shale formation in exchange for pension reform that makes real progress in cutting the $50 billion funding gap and reduces the burden expected to fall on state taxpayers.

Adding a gas extraction tax, something that every other state in the Marcellus region has in place, would produce badly needed new revenue. Despite Corbett’s opposition to an extraction tax in the past, he was right to say he would consider the tax in exchange for pension reform, because the pension crisis is a serious threat to state taxpayers and property owners in local school districts who will be facing major tax increases without reforms.

Instead of working out a deal addressing these two issues, Republicans in the Legislature stepped away from pension reform, which has no support from Democrats and would be controversial in an election year.

Corbett and Republican lawmakers often comment that Rendell used one-time federal stimulus money to fill a state budget gap and to temporarily boost spending on education. They contend Rendell’s budget gimmicks left them with a mess and vulnerable to charges that they cut education funding, when they argue it was the loss of federal stimulus money, not a drop in state money going to education. Now, Republicans could be setting up the next governor, possibly Democrat Tom Wolf, to be in a similar situation.

Some Harrisburg observers suggest Republican lawmakers, concerned mostly about their own re-elections, wanted to avoid tough decisions. In that scenario, they agreed to the budget games, gimmicks and some “smoke and mirrors” to make their 2014 campaigns less controversial. There’s also speculation that they punted on pension reform, so that if Wolf wins the governorship, as polls are predicting, they can dump the pension crisis on the Democrats’ lap and criticize Wolf’s efforts at reform.

Corbett has not yet signed the budget. But he’s in a tough position with pension reform sidelined by GOP lawmakers and a budget full of gimmicks his party is supposed to stand against.