With Gov. Josh Shapiro’s initial budget proposal in the rearview mirror, state lawmakers must now begin to weigh which proposals will make it into the final plan by this summer. Pittsburgh-area officials say upcoming hearings will focus on contentious topics that include education, public transit and energy policy.
Senate Democratic leader Jay Costa says he’ll be paying special attention to hearings on public school funding. Shapiro has proposed $500 million to be split among the state's most underfunded schools. But Costa hoped to see more money allotted to other districts, too.
“Certainly the governor's made a strong proposal in education on the adequacy and equity side” with help for struggling districts, Costa said. “But places like the city of Pittsburgh, for example, the school district only being part of a $75 million allocation statewide with all 500 school districts is disappointing.”
Republican House member Jeremy Shaffer of Pine Township has similar concerns. He says “high-performing schools” in his prosperous suburban district would see only a 1 percent funding increase based on the governor’s proposal.
Republican leaders also continue to call on Shapiro to support school vouchers — a proposal he backed in his first budget but ultimately stepped away from in the face of strong Democratic opposition in the House.
“School choice has to be on the table,” said Republican House leader Jesse Topper, of Bedford. “There are some students that simply do not do well in a public school setting, no matter how great the school.”
Area lawmakers also say they’re also worried that while Pittsburgh Regional Transit needs $100 million dollars to avoid a crisis, Shapiro’s budget offers less than half that, directing most state aid to Philadelphia’s Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Transportation Authority.
“We are on a course for a crisis” at PRT, Costa said.
Rep. Valerie Gaydos (R-Moon) said she can get on board with more transit funding, especially if it includes allocations to repair roads and bridges.
“We've got the community colleges and we've got other facilities out in the suburbs of Pittsburgh” that would benefit from transit service, she said. “And I think the expansion of mass transit is a very positive thing.”
But she said her support hinges on where the $300 million proposed for transit in Shapiro’s budget comes from.
She and Republican leaders say Shapiro’s proposal relies much too heavily on hypothetical revenue from legalized marijuana sales and regulated casino-like game terminals. And if the Republican-controlled Senate won’t back those “sin tax” initiatives, Gaydos worries taxes will go up on her constituents.
“People always think that you're cold-hearted when you don't want to pay for things,” she said. “But the reality is we have to be pragmatic and realistic, and where's it going to come from? From you and me.”
Speaking to reporters in a post-budget address Capitol huddle, Democratic state House leader Matt Bradford said he’s willing to work with Republicans to make the business climate more hospitable, and to lower corporate taxes.
Shapiro has said he wants to speed up the reduction in corporate net income tax two years ahead of schedule, a proposal he hoped Republicans would applaud. Bradford said such initiatives could draw a bigger tax base to Westmoreland County, for example, which lost 10% of its population in the past decade.
“As we continue to lose — hemorrhage, frankly — population particularly in the western part of the state, we need to attract and retain both people and businesses,” he told reporters.
Shapiro did suggest one such way to do that: streamlining permits to encourage business development, especially in the energy sector.
Senate Republican Leader Joe Pittman of Indiana County and GOP House leader Topper say they want energy companies in particular to be welcomed in southwestern Pennsylvania, while the governor says he wants electric generators to more quickly get onto the multi-state grid run by PJM.
Pennsylvania is often the butt of jokes in energy and manufacturing, Pittman said last week.
“I’ll give you a good example,” Pittman said, “When U.S. Steel opened the steel plant in Arkansas, the governor of Arkansas said ‘We put shovels in the ground faster than Pennsylvania issues permits.’”
Democrats say such efforts to help industry should be balanced with proposals to support renewable and green energy.
“Data centers, crypto[currency miners], and electric vehicles have all really put a burden on the electrical generation system,” Costa said.
But state lawmakers are likely to face another round of contention over a decision that former Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, made in 2019: joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a multi-state system in which polluters pay for, and trade, pollution credits as a way of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
Republicans have pushed back for years on the approach: As recently as last week the Senate again passed a bill to repeal RGGI.
Shapiro has unveiled a plan to replace the state’s attempts to join RGGI with a pollution-credit system that’s homegrown and would only operate statewide. But Topper called it “a non-starter” with Republicans.
Other Allegheny County lawmakers, meanwhile, say they’ll be seeking budget provisions that could help their constituents.
State Rep. Abigail Salisbury, whose district includes several lower-income communities east of Pittsburgh, said a top concern was addressing the theft of food-stamp benefits by “skimmers," which read and steal data from electronic benefit cards, similar to credit-card scams.
“People are frequently coming to my office to try to find alternate food options because their entire benefit was stolen,” she said.
Pennsylvania’s program is especially vulnerable to such fraud, Salisbury said, because it doesn’t use “smart cards,” discernible by the small metal squares found on many credit and check cards. Users also aren’t able to freeze their accounts via the state’s benefits app, she added.
“I’ll probably be harping on [the program’s security] during Human Services, Agriculture, Auditor General and Attorney General [hearings],” Salisbury said.
She also expects to address “reported antisemitism issues at Pitt” during hearings on money for higher education, she added.
Last month three state lawmakers from the region — Rep. Jason Ortitay (R-Cecil Twp.) Sen. Devlin Robinson (R-Bridgeville) and Sen. Lindsey Williams (D-Pittsburgh) — expressed support for a $100 million literacy program in next year’s budget. They were joined by Philadelphia Democrat Jordan Harris for a film screening and panel with the state’s literacy coalition in Harrisburg.
Shapiro’s budget didn’t include that ask. The coalition said in a post-budget statement that it will continue to push lawmakers to negotiate for a literacy program modeled on one used in Mississippi, where students have logged significant gains in reading proficiency.
"Pennsylvania is in the midst of a literacy crisis, and we cannot afford to wait any longer,” said Rachael Garnick, the state’s literacy coalition manager. “Right now, only 33% of Pennsylvania’s fourth graders are reading proficiently. This is not just a statistic: It represents real children who are being left behind, denied the foundational skill that determines their future success.”
