Copyright Mechanicsburg Patriot News
State lawmakers got to work bright and early Wednesday morning to push through a package of bills that are poised to end Pennsylvania’s four-and-a-half-month-long budget impasse The state House began taking committee votes just after 9 a.m., and the Senate soon followed, meaning core pieces of the budget could be sent to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s desk as early as Wednesday afternoon. The process relies on what are often referred to as “vehicle” bills, which have already been through most of the committee review and voting process. Budget language is then amended into these bills shortly before passage, fast-tracking a deal. On Wednesday morning, the House amended the general appropriations line items – a $50.1 billion spending package for 2025-26 – into such an existing bill. The Senate did the same with another such bill, which now contains the fiscal code that details changes in how appropriations are to be spend and revenues are to be collected. The deal would be a 4.7% increase over the 2024-25 budget, but a middle ground relative to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposed $51.5 billion. The agreement contains a number of compromises that legislative leaders in both the Republican-majority Senate and Democratic-majority House have worked to sell to their members These include a deal to add new accountability measures to cyber charter schools, and reduce the tuition remittances school districts send to cyber charters — albeit not the hard cap on cyber payments that Shapiro and Democrats had originally sought. The spending package also retains most of the increases to K-12 public education subsidies that Shapiro had asked for in his original budget framework. Combined with Medicaid cost growth, these make up about $1.5 billion of the increased spending. Republicans are pushing for the deal to include Shapiro dropping the legal case for Pennsylvania’s attempt to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a cap-and-trade program to control power plant pollution. Some progressive Democrats remain opposed to such a concession, but may also be swayed by the deal including a state-level Earned Income Tax Credit for lower-income working families, something that progressives have long sought.
