The time has come for Pennsylvania lawmakers to start thinking about the next budget again.

On Tuesday, the commonwealth’s general assembly packed into the house chambers in Harrisburg to hear Governor Josh Shapiro’s 2026-2027 budget address.

The governor is proposing a $53.2 billion dollar budget, up from $51.4 billion last year, but for taxpayers, Shapiro said they won’t be bearing the burden.

“My budget doesn’t raise taxes, in fact, it continues to cut taxes, and it doesn’t require a broad-based tax increase today, tomorrow, or at any point in the next 5 years,” said Shapiro.

Shapiro looks to address rising housing & rent costs in budget deal

Shapiro proposed an additional $565 million for public education, a $15 state minimum wage, $100 million for a “federal response fund” and more.

For some Erie taxpayers, they say they want to see their money spent on housing opportunities and homeless initiatives.

“With my taxpayer dollars, I would like to see affordable housing, instead of these expensive buildings going up for rich people,” said Anthony Pittman, Erie resident.

“They need to get more grants and funding for housing to get people off the streets and get them into apartments and housing,” said Jim Buckingham, another Erie resident.

The Erie residents said housing prices have only been going up, and Shapiro’s proposition is to build more houses to drive costs down.

To do that, he said it starts at the local level and is proposing the creation of a catalog of zoning laws across the state’s 2,560 municipalities to help local governments understand what works best.

Additionally, the governor is proposing a modernization of the state’s municipalities planning code and the creation of a $1 billion-dollar critical infrastructure fund to boost housing and infrastructure projects.

But finalizing last year’s budget wasn’t smooth sailing. It took lawmakers four months to pass an overdue budget, and citizens are hoping that doesn’t happen again.

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“Another government shutdown would hurt us, it would really, really, really hurt us,” said Pittman.

“Another government shutdown just wouldn’t work, they need to get their act together,” said Buckingham. “Stop fighting between themselves and just come to a solution.”

But this time around, Shapiro said progress will take togetherness, and plans to meet with party leaders sooner than later.

“We all recognize it took too long last year, and that had real impact on Pennsylvanians, but we learn some valuable lessons through that process. We learned that we all need to be at the table, and we all need to be at the table sooner,” said Shapiro.

The full budget report in brief can be found here, and a video of Shapiro’s address can be found here.

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