Newly enacted Pennsylvania budget fails to remedy long-standing problems [editorial] | Our Opinion

THE ISSUE

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, signed the state’s 2026-27 budget last Sunday. The $50.8 billion spending plan is balanced, as required by the state constitution, and does not contain any new taxes.

The governor and the politically divided state Legislature don’t deserve cookies for enacting a bipartisan budget a mere 12 days past the June 30 deadline.

Yes, it’s a decided improvement over last year, when the 2025-26 budget was signed 134 days into the fiscal year. Last year’s monthslong impasse caused considerable pain and angst for school districts, counties and nonprofits across the commonwealth.

It’s incredible, really, how a major election year can encourage politicians to focus on their jobs.

For the school districts that had to draw from savings or were forced to contemplate borrowing to pay basic operating expenses during last year’s seemingly eternal and infernal impasse, a budget that was only mildly tardy was a relief.

As LNP | LancasterOnline reported, “Lancaster County’s 17 school districts will see $360 million in state funding for the 2026-27 school year — roughly $18.42 million more (5.4%) than the districts received for the 2025-26 school year.”

But as school officials told this newspaper, that increase isn’t nearly enough to offset “rising costs due to inflation and the growing number of students reliant on special needs services.”

In the Elizabethtown Area School District, as in other county districts, the burden of school funding continues to be shifted to local property taxpayers.

In June, the Elizabethtown Area school board unanimously approved an $84.8 million budget with a 4.3% property tax increase. “More than half of that increase was earmarked for a planned high school and middle school construction project, not education services,” LNP | LancasterOnline noted.

To cut costs, that district eliminated its full-day kindergarten program — a truly sad development for parents and their young children — and decided to eliminate staff positions through attrition.

“How are we supposed to tighten our belt buckle and make it work?” Elizabethtown Area spokesperson Troy Portser asked.

Elizabethtown Area is far from alone in asking that question.

“The slight increases in Basic Education and Special Education funding do not come close to bridging the gap between the increase in costs districts are experiencing in Special Education, cyber school costs, and other state mandates that are not funded,” Manheim Central Superintendent Ryan Axe said in a statement last week.

The new budget “keeps Pennsylvania moving toward constitutional compliance by adding $565 million in adequacy and tax equity investments, which will make a real difference for many students,” said Deborah Gordon Klehr, executive director of Education Law Center-PA, in a joint statement issued by her organization and the Public Interest Law Center. “But our schools remain billions of dollars short of the funding the General Assembly identified as needed. And until every child — wherever they live — has access to a well-funded public school, Pennsylvania’s constitutional obligation remains unmet.”

That was a reference to the landmark 2023 Commonwealth Court ruling that found Pennsylvania’s system of funding public schools to be unconstitutional. The School District of Lancaster was one of the historically underfunded districts that sued state officials.

With this new budget, Pennsylvania continues to take one step forward, two steps back.

For true progress to happen, our supposedly full-time, generously compensated state Legislature will need to make politically difficult decisions about tax reform, cyber charter regulation — last year’s reforms were welcome but didn’t go far enough — and funding levels for shrinking rural school districts.

One positive about the 2026-27 budget was a $10 million boost in funding for career and technical education.

This increased funding “will allow more students to participate in these programs as we respond to the increased demand schools are seeing for participation,” state Rep. Bryan Cutler, of Drumore Township, who serves as Republican chair of the House Education Committee, said in a statement.

We agree.

We’re also very pleased that the commonwealth’s 47 rape crisis centers will receive an additional $12 million in funding, a near-doubling of state support. These centers do essential work in helping Pennsylvanians navigate the trauma of sexual assault.

Republican state Sen. Lisa Baker of Luzerne County was among those who hailed the increase. “As chair of the Judiciary Committee, I know the lifesaving work these centers offer survivors, and the importance of increased funding so they can continue to support individuals during horrific times,” she said in a statement.

We are disappointed, however, that the new budget keeps funding for county mental health services flat.

As LNP | LancasterOnline reported, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania “had pushed state budget negotiators to deliver an additional $40 million for county mental health services in the 2026-27 budget, with half of it to be dedicated to services for mental health crises.”

Kyle Kopko, executive director of that association, told this newspaper that “inflation, the consumer price index keeps going up, so effectively it’s a cut in terms of overall costs.”

More fundamentally, the 2026-2027 budget writes another chapter in Pennsylvania’s long history of kicking problems down the road.

As Jaxon White reported for the nonpartisan newsroom Spotlight PA, the new budget — praised by legislative leaders as fiscally responsible (they do enjoy praising themselves) — only was balanced with the help of some accounting tricks.

“The biggest involves delaying two months’ worth of payments — each costing about $1.3 billion — to the state’s Medicaid managed care organizations,” White noted.

Matthew Knittel, director of the state’s Independent Fiscal Office, said this maneuver could cause “cash flow issues” for the managed care organizations responsible for organizing health care for most Pennsylvania patients covered by Medicaid.

Knittel also said the state budget’s creative accounting did not solve the core problem of Pennsylvania spending more than it brings in.

State lawmakers continue to fail to enact new revenue sources — while also failing to reform a property tax system that burdens older citizens who own their homes and are on fixed incomes.

They also balked yet again at raising the state’s minimum wage, which remains at a paltry $7.25 an hour, where it’s been since it was set at the federal minimum in 2009.

Lawmakers make six-figure salaries and receive automatic cost-of-living pay hikes every year. While their salaries rise annually, they refuse again and again to increase the state minimum wage, even as it continues to decline in value.

But, hey, at least they finished the budget and can now hit the campaign trail, right?

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