Leaders of the commonwealth\u2019s divided legislature reached a $50.85 billion budget deal today; with the house and senate expected to vote on the deal on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The spend plan, which is 11 days past the annual June 30th deadline, is a 1.5% increase from last year and is $2.4 billion less than what Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro proposed in February.<\/p>\n
Elections in November and summer sporting events added motivation for this year\u2019s budget to wrap up in July, compared to last year\u2019s 4 1\/2 month late budget. Spending plans must pass by simple majority in the Democratic controlled House and Republican controlled Senate before heading to Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s desk for signature.<\/p>\n
Education got at least a $565 million increase to funding, most of that going through a newer adequacy formula; that formula is the legislative response to a 2023 Pennsylvania supreme court ruling that said existing school funding schematics were unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
Public school teachers who retired before 2001 will also get a cost-of-living adjustment to their pensions\u2013 something the teachers have long advocated for when they were NOT grandfathered into the significant educator pension updates in Act 9.<\/p>\n
Retirement updates for municipal police and fire are included in the final deal.<\/p>\n
Notably missing is any updates to minimum wage (a Democratic policy focus for the year) and legislative clarity around skill games (which are set to be treated as illegal slot machines starting Oct. 12). A $1 billion bond Shapiro pitched for housing and infrastructure costs did not get action; more isolated housing policies that deal less with funds and more with rules are included.<\/p>\n
Data center rules are also one of the few policy areas that could see change. The state senate passed a bill Saturday night that allows local governments to put an 18 month pause on zoning and planning applications for data center projects. Eliminating an existing tax break on internal equipment for data center facilities could also be part of a final deal.<\/p>\n
The state house and senate are both scheduled to start session at noon on Sunday to complete final votes on the spending plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leaders of the commonwealth\u2019s divided legislature reached a $50.85 billion budget deal today; with the house and senate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[222,2288,52,3069,37,33,28,5929,30,29,28238,382,66],"class_list":["post-241402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-budget","tag-bureau","tag-cost-of-living","tag-data-center","tag-harrisburg","tag-josh-shapiro","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-capitol","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pension","tag-politics-of-the-united-states","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}