One week late, Pa. lawmakers are in the ‘red zone’ of finalizing the state budget — and creating a new funding system

HARRISBURG — Lawmakers in the state Capitol are finalizing the details of a new way to fund public education and nearing a budget deal, a week after the deadline to approve a new spending plan.

The cornerstone of the more than $47 billion budget is expected to be its investments in K-12 public education and higher education. And that funding has been the biggest hang-up during negotiations.

Leaders agreed in closed-door talks on how much new money to spend on the public school system but had not agreed how to allocate those funds, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) said in a news conference last week.

It’s not yet clear how much new money lawmakers will add to the more than $16 billion they already spend each year toward funding local school districts. Public education advocates — as well as top Philadelphia officials — had been asking the state to add $1.4 billion to public education.

Leaders are also close to a deal on cyber charter changes, including the creation of a reimbursement fund for school districts, Pittman added.

By Monday, leaders were “crossing our t’s and dotting our i’s,” said House Appropriations Chair Jordan Harris (D., Philadelphia), a key stakeholder at the negotiation table, with budget bills likely to start moving through the legislative process early this week.

Unlike last year’s budget talks — which blew up after Gov. Josh Shapiro negotiated a controversial school voucher program with Republicans that he later line-item vetoed at Democrats’ request — this year’s negotiations appear more coolheaded. House Democrats, Senate Republicans, and Shapiro all continue to say that negotiations have been moving in a positive direction.

Lawmakers are in the process of creating a new public school funding system after a Commonwealth Court judge ruled last year that the way Pennsylvania currently funds its public schools is unconstitutional.

Officials spent months collecting public comment and studying the issue to create a system that would “adequately and equitably” meet the needs of students, no matter their zip code.

But Democrats and Republicans still disagreed, with members of each party submitting their own reports to a funding commission. Democrats then advanced a plan to increase state funding for public education by more than $5 billion over seven years.

“Our caucus has been committed since Day One to address the Commonwealth Court’s ruling, and we believe that we are close to a consensus around how we do that and how we drive the money out to districts,” Harris said Monday.

A small group of legislative leaders, along with Shapiro, are negotiating a deal in private. Their staff members typically kick off budget negotiations, with leaders coming to the table when they near a deal.

“I think the Republican and Democratic leaders and staff who are hard at work deserve a lot of credit for continuing to move the ball down the field,” Shapiro told PennLive on Sunday, according to a recording of the interview provided by the governor’s office.

“I said last week, we’re in the red zone. I think now we’re deep in the red zone, and we’re going to get there,” Shapiro said. “It is hard being part of the only divided legislature in the entire nation, but ... all parties are treating one another with respect.”

School vouchers were poised to be a major sticking point as part of this year’s negotiations, but Senate GOP leaders avoided that debate by focusing instead on existing or new tax credits to help children attend private schools.

Republican leaders maintain that they will continue to fight for school choice in future budgets, Pittman said last week, and a Senate committee fast-tracked an $8,000 tax credit program for private school and homeschool students.

“Empowering parents, to some level, is an absolute priority,” Pittman added.

Shapiro’s budget proposal unveiled in February included more than $48.34 billion in spending. Several parts of that proposal — such as legalizing recreational marijuana — proved to be nonstarters among Senate Republicans.

Lawmakers were sent home over the weekend as legislative leaders continued to hammer out a deal. All legislators were sent a mass email on Saturday that included a bomb threat, which led to the evacuation of the state Capitol, but Harris told reporters that they continued negotiating the budget during that time. Legislators returned to work Monday with no active threat to the Capitol.