PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — With portions of the Pennsylvania budget still hung up in Harrisburg, some nonprofits that depend on state funding are struggling to make ends meet.
At issue are a series of code bills which still need to be passed that specifically spell out how the state’s budget is to be spent. “We are five lines in a 200-page fiscal code,” said Sheri Cole, executive director of The Wardrobe, which provides professional clothing to those in need.
The nonprofit — with locations in Philadelphia, Upper Darby and Bucks County — is one organization facing financial straits. Cole says 40% of her nonprofit’s funding comes from the state and they’ve had to lay off an employee and dip into reserves to stay operational. Preschools and community colleges have also been affected, and even libraries have had to cut programming while they struggle to pay bills.
Cole says in more than 20 years, she has experienced a budget impasse that delayed funding about four times. “We kept thinking every month, ‘Oh, they're gonna pass it this month, they're gonna pass it next month.’ We were told, ‘Well, nobody's complaining about it.’ So, therefore they're just not going to do their jobs? Right?”
But what was different this year, she said, was silence from the Department of Human Services as a provider.
“Not a word until August,” Cole recalled, “when one of our partners who refers people for our services sent us an email saying, ‘I'm so sorry to hear that the PA Workwear program has been eliminated.’ And we were like, ‘It's been eliminated? We haven't heard that it's been eliminated.’”
That isn’t something she says they can do at this point, “because we're in the fiscal code. Like, they can't eliminate it. The legislature is telling them to fund it.”
Pennsylvania’s state budget was supposed to be approved by the end of June. While Gov. Josh Shapiro signed a $45.4 billion budget plan more than a month after the deadline, the code bills weren’t finalized in time. Now, lawmakers will not return to session to vote until mid-December.
“Six months in, the fiscal code bill is not on an upcoming agenda,” Cole added. “The House and Senate have both passed their own versions. They just need to come together and pass one clean joint version of it.”
Cole says The Wardrobe employees are now encouraging constituents to call and write to their lawmakers and have posted a script on their website.
“All of these small organizations are now having to stop everything to put together advocacy campaigns and try and do what they can to ring the alarm bell.”