PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania’s budget was supposed to be completed more than three weeks ago. With no movement in Harrisburg to finalize the spending plan for this fiscal year, county officials say they’re paying attention, but are not overly concerned.
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Budget impasses aren’t uncommon in Pennsylvania. They can last days, like last year, which was eight days overdue, or months, like 2015’s budget which wasn’t finalized until March 2016.
Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie says the average Pennsylvania budget impasse is about 100 days. He thinks this will be on the shorter side.
“The fact that a budget did get passed, I think it's certainly better than some of the impasse has happened in the past where the no budget was passed for months and months and months,” he said.
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The Republican majority Senate passed a budget that included money for private school tuition vouchers for public school students in the lowest-performing schools. Gov. Josh Shapiro agreed to line-item veto vouchers to get the budget through the Democratic majority House. But Senate leaders haven’t signed the bill, so it’s stuck in limbo.
Montgomery County also has reserves to cover several months without state money, according to county commissioner Ken Lawrence.
“We're a large, well run county with a large budget,” Lawrence said. “For some of the smaller counties, they might not have the level of reserves that we do. So it's going to impact them, the longer it goes.”
The House and Senate aren’t due back in session until mid-September.