One of the oddest budget cycles Pennsylvania has ever seen might now be in its death throes.

Think about it.

A budget that started with the Democrat governor and Republican-controlled General Assembly closer than ever in their respective starting points wound up taking far longer than normal to complete.

But here we are.

With final passage of a massive gambling expansion package Thursday, the Legislature has sent Gov. Tom Wolf a $2.3 billion fiscal patch for the unbalanced $32.0 billion spending plan, and left for its customary election season break.

The ball is in Wolf's court now. If the governor signs the bills on his desk or simply lets them become law without his signature, the siege is over.

READ MORE: Pennsylvania's budget fight will come with its own price tag

If he does something else? We'll see.

Here's a look at the top lingering questions from the endless debate, both of the what now and what's next variety.

And spoiler alert, there are more unknowns than knowns.

What will the governor do?

if past practice is our guide, this probably shouldn't be much of a mystery.

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rior to the budget, Wolf had been on a compromising, bipartisan roll with the General Assembly, chalking up bipartisan agreement on big issues like public employee pensions, liberalization of wine and beer sales, and legalization of medical marijuana.

He had also agreed, in concept at least, to more than 90 percent of the borrowing and betting package that was on the table before the House balked at a set of tax increases earlier this month.

And if Wolf really had major concerns about the expansion of legal gambling, he had ample opportunity to weigh in on that during the protracted budget talks.

So most Capitol sources reached by PennLive for this story do expect the pragmatic Wolf to accept this package as the best he's going to get. And yet ...

The governor made clear two weeks ago - after an earlier break in the talks - that he is prepared to manage the current budget through a series of fiscal moves he said he can take unilaterally.

So would he, for example, continue with his plan to borrow funds against the state-owned liquor stores as opposed to the General Assembly-backed borrowing against future tobacco settlement payments?

Or could Wolf set aside the new gambling expansion bill and decide to "manage" that $200 million through spending freezes or, perhaps, a lease of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex?

READ MORE: Could smokers help solve another Pa. budget? Not in the way that you think

Wolf Administration officials are not sharing at the moment, saying only that the governor's decisions will be made known once they have carefully reviewed the package of bills in total.

If Wolf signs it, will Pennsylvania's casino companies "enthusiastically participate" in the new lines of business the gaming bill has opened up for them?

Seemed like a good bet, in bettor's parlance. But it is not a dead-lock cinch.

It was easy to find sputtering anger from casino representatives after drafts of the gambling bill hit the street Wednesday afternoon.

Eric Schippers, a spokesman for Wyomissing-based Penn National, called it a bad stew of tax rates that are too high and market over-saturation that will leave the casino companies fighting just to maintain market share.

Some operators have declared little interest in building satellite casinos in smaller markets. Others say they have to wait and see what municipalities declare themselves casino-free zones by the end of the year.

Penn National seems to be spending as much time studying a lawsuit to block the law's provisions as it is joining the competition.

But there other casino companies that are clearly interested in the satellites, and maybe interested in building more than one if others in fact take a pass.

As for the Internet-based games, Las Vegas Sands, which operates the casino in Bethlehem, has long opposed and abstained in Nevada and is expected to do the same here.

READ MORE: 'It can be a hassle:' Drivers divided on Pa. plan to allow gambling at truck stops

Most of the firms are complaining about the high tax rates, but the legislature's hunch, of course, is that in the end most won't be able to pass up the one truly new line of business in the bill.

All of us are going to have to get used to a potential new market in Pennsylvania has now gone deeper down the rabbit hole of legalized gambling than any other "regional jurisdiction" (meaning not Las Vegas) in the country.

But getting that anticipated $200 million in licensing fees? Only time will tell.

Will the budget plan quell concerns about Pennsylvania on Wall Street?

We suffered one credit downgrade in September, courtesy of S&P Global Ratings, that left Pennsylvania lugging around a credit rating lower than all but two states (Illinois and New Jersey) in S&P's rankings.

The raters were particularly critical of a pattern of using one-time fixes to cover over recurring deficits.

Looks like we went and touched that hot burner again.

Between the proposed borrowings, the fund transfers and the one-time gambling licenses, easily more than 90 percent of this $2.3 billion package would be defined by any fair reading as one-time fixes.

There is this. After the first quarter of the current fiscal year, Pennsylvania's tax collections are exceeding the projections that the budget was built on, after falling about $1.1 billion short in fiscal 2017.

But the raters may still grade us harshly.

READ MORE: Budget stalemate costs Pennsylvania a credit downgrade

Here's what Matt Fabian, a bond market analyst with Municipal Market Analytics, said about the proposed 2017-18 package Thursday:

"Deficit borrowing and gimmicks like fund transfers are bad by almost any measure.

"Were the Commonwealth's ratings already in a much stronger place, its chances of getting by without a (further) downgrade would be better. As it is, the ratings are fairly weak and this revenue budget raises the risk of downgrade above 50%."

Clearly the Wall Street types just don't get the Pennsylvania Legislature.

For the controlling forces here, it's not so much how you solve the budget, as it is can you solve it without raising taxes.

Even when that forces them into weirdly inconsistent policies like voting for new caps on government borrowing for capital projects even as they agreed to borrow to cover this year's deficit.

So by their measure, this budget is a win.

Will there still be a shale tax in Pennsylvania anytime soon?

It felt like a game-changing moment this July when the state Senate passed a severance tax on natural gas extracted from the Marcellus Shale formation, long a top goal of Wolf's.

And then there was that moment earlier this month when the House Finance Committee passed its own version of a shale package to the full House with a bipartisan 16-9 vote.

But with House Speaker Mike Turzai and Majority Leader David Reed steadfastly against the tax, that bill was not called up for consideration while the leadership-sanctioned revenue package still had life.

Know this. The issue will be very much alive as long as Wolf is governor.

House Democrats insisted Thursday they will continue to work with like-minded Republicans in that chamber to see if they can knit together a tax bill that can draw a critical mass of support, even outside of the budget cycle.

"We will continue to try to work with the Republicans to come up with a plan that we can all agree on that will pass the Senate and that will help fund - probably not as much this year - but help us fund next year's budget," said Rep. Frank Dermody, the House Minority Leader.

Minutes earlier, Reed, an Indiana County Republican, suggested that he expects and will permit floor consideration of a shale tax at some point in the current legislative session, but he refused to commit to any particular timeline.

Will House Speaker Turzai run for governor?

Don't be surprised.

There are already three announced candidates in the race for the 2018 Republican nomination: Pittsburgh attorney Laura Ellsworth, retired Army officer and business consultant Paul Mango, and state Sen. Scott Wagner of York County.

But Turzai, by virtue of his years in legislative leadership, would bring an instant GOP establishment cachet to the primary campaign if he chose to run.

No one - be they legislative colleagues, senior party leaders or campaign consultants - professes to know for sure what the attorney from the Pittsburgh suburbs is thinking after months of mixed signals.

READ MORE: Gubernatorial candidates have differing views about the 'taxpayers' budget'

But at a fundraising reception in Pittsburgh with former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz Friday morning, Turzai looked "runner-ish."

"There was a lot of energy and excitement in the room, and he's more ready than he's ever been before to challenge the governor," said Jeff Coleman, one of the speaker's political advisers.

Reached at the Capitol after the last of the budget votes Thursday, Turzai said Pennsylvania Republicans are going to have to wait just a little bit longer. With municipal and court elections scheduled for Nov. 7, Turzai said, any announcement about his future won't be coming before then.

If the budget is truly completed, what else will our political leaders do?

There's actually a pretty long agenda.

Reed said Republicans are anxious to restart talks on significant reforms to school property taxes, and possibly a broad restructuring of the state's business tax menu as well.

For the Democrats, there are persistent calls to extend the longstanding anti-discrimination protections to cover questions of sexual orientation and identity, or possibly an increase in the state's minimum wage.

The Wolf Administration, meanwhile, is eager to work with both parties to try to land the new Amazon headquarters project for Pennsylvania.

If all that isn't enough, never fear.

The governor's 2018-19 budget address is little more than three months away.