five-month budget standoff last year<\/a>.<\/p>\nSome celebrated a budget far smaller than what Shapiro sought. Most celebrated more education funding, no new taxes, restrictions on data centers or leaving the state Rainy Day Fund untouched.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the floor yesterday, I thought one of the most realistic comments that was made was you don’t always get what you want, but you very often get what you need, or at least somewhat of what you need,\u201d state Sen. Rosemary Brown, R-Monroe, said Monday.<\/p>\n
The unfulfilled desires<\/p>\n
Democrats could not celebrate raising the minimum wage or legalization and taxation of recreational marijuana, both goals long proposed by their party\u2019s governors and annually unfulfilled. Neither side could celebrate regulation and taxation of skill games found in local bars and other venues.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because Shapiro, a Democrat, proposed all three in his February budget address, but none made the final budget. He and legislative leaders are planning to negotiate on skill games over the summer because of a recent state Supreme Court ruling.<\/p>\n
Shapiro also noted the lack of increased mass transit funding, which he had proposed.<\/p>\n
The state House voted 167-35 and the Senate 44-6 to pass the $50.8 billion spending plan, only 1.4% more than this year and far less than Shapiro asked in his February budget address.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat shows we found consensus,\u201d Shapiro said.<\/p>\n
The ‘stuff done’ list<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s news release listing the budget\u2019s \u201cstuff done\u201d included:<\/p>\n
$565 million more to address a state Commonwealth Court order demanding more money for inadequately funded school districts plus another $58 million in basic education funding and $55 million more for special education.Requiring schools to provide students 30 minutes of daily recess.$11.6 million more in funding for Penn State and state-related universities outside the state university system.$5.9 million toward maximum grant awards for college students.$10 million more for career and technical education.$5 million more for childcare staff retention and recruitment.$10 million more for student teachers as they\u2019re training.$1 million more for monitoring the performance of area agencies on aging.$10 million in dedicated funding for the 988 suicide hotline.$5 million for walk-in mental health treatment.$16.2 million to train four more classes of state troopers.$658,000 to boost staffing for ChildLine, the state\u2019s child abuse reporting hotline.$20 million for the state\u2019s hazardous waste cleanup fund.$19 million to plug abandoned oil and gas wells.Covering the $78.1 million debt of the State System of Higher Education.$12 million more for rape crisis centers.$10 million to help farmers whose crops were devastated by late-season frost.A cost-of-living increase in pensions for retired police officers, firefighters, teachers and state workers.Money for a rainy day untouched<\/p>\n
Brown said the Republican-controlled Senate did well to reduce Shapiro\u2019s $53.3 billion proposed spending plan without using any of the more than $7.7 billion Rainy Day Fund.<\/p>\n
Shapiro had wanted to use almost $4.6 billion in the fund to balance the budget, a move the state Independent Fiscal Office warned against because of the deficit that would produce next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being very smart and not getting us into any sort of you know stronger deficit and being able to pay the bills down the road,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n
Brown praised the budget\u2019s plan to spend $775 million rapidly on local road and bridge projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you’re going to see some roadwork happening beyond what we’re doing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Big bucks for schools<\/p>\n
Rep. Kyle Mullins, D-Lackawanna, touted the additional $565 million for inadequately funded schools. A 2023 state Commonwealth Court ruling required the state to spend more money on these school districts.<\/p>\n
Mullins noted the state again set aside $5 million for neuromuscular disease research, an appropriation he first successfully fought for last year.<\/p>\n
The spending plan also adopts restrictions he proposed requiring data center operators to annually report energy and water usage, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the first law of what I hope will be many if the Senate chooses to pass the litany of bills that we’ve sent them to reign in data centers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Walsh: ‘I just don’t feel it was responsible’<\/p>\n
The only lawmakers in northeast and northcentral Pennsylvania to vote against the spending plan were all Republicans: Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, of Clinton County; Rep. Joe Hamm, of Lycoming County; Rep. David Rowe, of Union County; Rep. Joanne Stehr, of Schuylkill County; Rep. Robert Leadbeter, of Columbia County; and Rep. Jamie Walsh, of Luzerne County.<\/p>\n
Walsh said he favors the new road and bridge spending but voted no because the budget pushes $1.3 billion in payments to managed care organizations into the next fiscal year. That will add to the next budget\u2019s deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I just feel it’s deceptive … I just don’t feel it was responsible to do that,\u201d Walsh said.<\/p>\n
Beyond that, he decried the budget\u2019s spending.<\/p>\n
A year ago, \u201cRepublicans were flipping out, not wanting to go over $47 billion, and here we are approving this $50.8 billion (budget),\u201d he said. \u201cSince 2010, our budget has doubled. It\u2019s just out of control. It’s not sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown downplayed pushing the $1.3 billion into the next fiscal year.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the meantime, we can give ourselves some time as well to see where Pennsylvania’s revenue numbers come in, what other types of you know revenue sources might come in,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Josh Shapiro portrays the state\u2019s new budget as another example of Republicans and Democrats teaming up to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-242596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242596","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=242596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}