HARRISBURG - Unless a new state budget is signed within days, the services Pennsylvanians finance with their tax dollars will become patchy, and more than 25,000 state employees will stop receiving paychecks at the height of summer.
The Health Department will still process birth and death certificates and liquor stores will remain open. Casinos will shut down, driver licensing offices will close and it will be more difficult - in come cases impossible - to obtain certain permits.
Monday was the second day of the fiscal year without a budget. Many hope this year is like the last four under Gov. Ed Rendell, when budgets were settled with the Legislature after the fiscal years began, but furloughs were avoided.
If not, 5,550 campsites at state parks will be emptied and reservations made by thousands of campers will be canceled.
"There's not a lot of precedent for it," said Jason Baker, the assistant manager of Pennsylvania's largest park, Pymatuning State Park in Crawford County. "But it hasn't happened (in the last four years) and we're hoping that that's the case here, too."
The last furloughs occurred in 1991 during a 34-day impasse, sparking a demonstration at the Capitol by unpaid workers. This time around, furloughs are scheduled to take effect next Monday.
At the Capitol, there was a lot of fingerpointing and partisanship, but no promises.
"I think the wheels are turning so slowly that we will not get a budget done by next Monday," Sam Smith, the House Republican leader from Jefferson County, told reporters.
The Democratic governor has insisted that the Legislature approve his priorities - including massive new funding for highways, mass transit and alternative energy programs - along with the $27 billion-plus budget. Republicans, who control the Senate, have insisted on a relatively frugal budget and taking more time to review Rendell's proposals.
Rendell's aides were talking to legislators in an attempt to make progress, said his spokesman, Chuck Ardo.
"We are hopeful that that will happen soon and that everybody will roll up their sleeves, get to work and hammer out a budget document," Ardo said.
The Senate's Republican leader, Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County, said he had not heard from Rendell or his staff since the chamber recessed Saturday night. Today, the Senate plans to return to insist on its budget proposal, thereby setting up a committee to negotiate the document with the Democratic-controlled House.
"We're adamant about living within our means, and we'll do everything we can to do that," including giving up legislators' pet programs, said Sen. Gibson E. Armstrong, R-Lancaster.
Beginning Monday, about 25,000 to 40,000 employees are to be furloughed. Another 1,700 administration hires will work without pay. About 64,000 will work and be paid. Critical state services will remain functioning, including state police patrols, health care and cash assistance for the poor, food safety inspections and unemployment compensation.
Some state contractors, such as highway construction firms, will be asked to continue working without pay.
The state's five slot-machine casinos will close without Revenue Department workers to monitor the state's take of the gambling money, meaning some casino employees will not have work.
"They've worked so hard for this opportunity," said Mike Graninger, the general manager of The Meadows Racetrack & Casino in North Strabane Township, which opened its slots parlor last month. "A month later we get shut down, it would be so terrible for them."
Sharon Schorr, a clerk typist for Rendell's bureau of fiscal management who has a daughter in college and tuition bills to consider, will be furloughed.
She can't afford to go unpaid for very long - "That's what credit cards are for," she joked - but said the bright side is that she normally can't buy extra vacation time.
"Even if I'd offer them money, they wouldn't give me extra time," said Schorr, 48, who was sitting on a Capitol complex plaza bench in the noon sun.
With Schorr was Cyndi Tresco, a budget analyst who will work without pay.
Tresco, 49, said it is unfair that people with bills, such as the mortgage on her new house in suburban Harrisburg, will bear the burden. And as one who has endured the last four years of late budgets, she said the threat of furloughs this year seems more real.
"It doesn't feel the same as it ever felt," Tresco said. "It seems more uncertain than it ever has."