Harrisburg leaders miss budget deadline for 5th consecutive year
(The Center Square) — For the fifth year in a row, state leaders have failed to meet the June 30 deadline for finishing an annual budget — a situation that will have little practical effect in the short term but raises the ugly specter of last year’s 135-day impasse.
In 2025, even though political leaders spoke in late June and early July of being “close” to a deal, none was reached until November. Billions of dollars in state payments were withheld, counties lost millions of dollars, programs were cut and employees were furloughed.
Chances for making the deadline this year ended before 3 p.m. Tuesday.
The Republican-controlled Senate concluded its daily voting session with members intending to leave Harrisburg and head home for the long July 4th holiday weekend, even though they would be “on call” for a hasty return. The Democratic-controlled House, meanwhile, stayed in Harrisburg and was scheduled to be in session both Wednesday and Thursday.
The Republican-generated exit from the Capitol led to finger-pointing by Senate Democrats, who are outnumbers in the chamber 27-23.
“We should stay here and continue the work that needs to be done,” said Sen. Jay Costa, D-43rd, the top Democrat in the Senate. The top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, Sen. Vincent Hughes, D-7th, said the majority was “walking away” from the budget work and should stay and “work this out.”
The comments were brushed off by Senate Republican Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-41st.
Negotiations that have been taking place behind closed doors are on “a very good trajectory” and are likely to produce a deal “in the next several days,” Pittman said in the Senate chamber.
A short time later, his sentiment was echoed at a news conference by Rep. Jesse Topper, R-78th, the top Republican in the House.
Regardless of what lawmakers are saying in public, Topper said, “At the end of the day, the talks continue.”
In a written statement, top Senate Republicans said this week, they “received the necessary clarity on many outstanding issues which were delaying” the conclusion of the budget.
Private negotiations between party leaders are standard procedure in working out a budget deal, which is then transformed into workable pieces of legislation that become public and are voted on in both chambers. If they pass both, they go to the governor for his possible signature.
The closed-door approach is taken “to avoid having the scrutiny or debate that you would have on a normal bill,” said Nathan Benefield, chief policy officer for the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg think tank. Another downside to the secretive approach, he said, is that when rank-and-file lawmakers finally are handed the budget-related bills — often a hundred pages or more in length — they may have only a matter of hours to read them before voting.
The fact that lawmakers and Gov. Josh Shapiro once again missed the deadline, Benefield said, is emblematic “of the culture in Harrisburg. Not being serious about that budget deadline.”
