There are a lot of things that Pennsylvania’s government needs to underwrite.

There are more than 3,000 schools, 14 state universities and four more state-affiliated universities. There are 24 prisons, more than 4,000 state police and three levels of state courts. State agencies do everything from supervising parks and forests and issuing hunting and fishing licenses to inspecting nursing homes and plowing roads.

The state’s annual budget is $40.8 billion, and keeping it from ballooning higher while still providing necessary services to the people has resulted in bitter verbal brawls in the Capitol that would seem more at home in a professional wrestling arena.

There is nothing that divides state government — specifically the governor’s office from the Legislature — like money. How to raise it, how to spend it, how not to spend it. The different branches have repeatedly engaged in standoffs that resulted in panic from counties, school districts and lower agencies that had to try to operate without funding.

So what can bring these two sides that agree on almost nothing together?

Well, there’s nothing like a good game of golf. Or a lot of games of golf. With a lot of spectators who will spend a lot of money. The U.S. Golf Association recently held its annual U.S. Amateur Championship at the Oakmont Country Club. It isn’t the first time the USGA has visited Pennsylvania. The club proudly touts that more U.S. Opens have been played there than anywhere else in the country. It has hosted PGA championships and U.S.Women’s Open, too.

And on Aug. 11, as the Amateur went on, the USGA announced that two Pennsylvania courses would be home to a slate of future events. Oakmont was named an anchor site and will host the U.S. Open in 2025, 2034, 2042 and 2049, the U.S. Women’s Open in 2028 and 2038, the Walker Cup in 2033 and the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 2046. Merion Golf Club in the Philadelphia suburbs of Ardmore will see the U.S. Open in 2030 and 2050 and the U.S. Women’s Open in 2034 and 2046.

This is great news for the courses, the communities and the state. According to the USGA, the U.S. Open has revenue of $165 million, of which $70 million is profit. The U.S. Women’s Open has a budget of $19 million but tends to run in the red. Then there’s all those cameras pointed at the events. The USGA made $114 million from media rights in 2019.

But there is talk now about what Pennsylvania will invest to keep these big events on Keystone State courses. An Associated Press story had Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration calling the relationship with the USGA “a partnership.” Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman shied away from monetary specifics, calling it a “handshake deal.”

”There’s no commitment of dollars or contracts, or anything like that,” Corman told PennLive. “But, now that the USGA has agreed and has committed to putting on all these types of events here in Pennsylvania … we as a commonwealth have said, ‘Look, we want to step up and be part of this,’ because obviously there’s tremendous amount of economic activity that comes when you bring hundreds of thousands of people to one site.”

Exactly what that could entail is yet to be revealed, but both branches of the state government should be open and transparent about any commitments. Taxpayer money going into sports venues is nothing new. It is always a contentious proposition, with people loving the opportunities but resenting the expense. The backroom dealing of it always makes it worse.

— The Tribune-Review, Greensburg/TNS