Editorial: Get budget passed before recess
The state Senate ended a needless 34-day delay in passing the state budget when Majority Leader Kim Ward, a Hempfield Republican, interrupted the chamber’s unduly long summer recess Aug. 2.
Ward reconvened the chamber, which already had passed the budget, to enable Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the Senate president, to sign it and send it to Gov. Josh Shapiro to sign it into law.
Shapiro did so, thus releasing most of the budget’s $45.5 billion to schools, social service networks and a wide array of state and local government agencies.
The delay occurred because of a dispute between the Republican Senate and the Democratic House and governor over a controversial $100 million scholarship program providing public money to private schools. The Republican Senate majority claimed Shapiro had agreed to it, but Shapiro said the Senate should not have approved it without reaching an agreement with the Democratic-majority House, which opposed it. The House passed the budget only after Shapiro promised to line-item veto the scholarship program, and the Senate left town without authorizing Davis to sign the budget even though it had passed both houses.
Even now both houses remain recessed — the Senate until Sept. 18 and the House until Sept. 26 — even though several hundred millions of dollars approved in the budget can’t be distributed until the Legislature passes required fiscal code bills.
Among those appropriations are $100 million in “level-up” funding for the state’s poorest school districts, hundreds of millions of dollars in in-state university tuition assistance for Penn State, Temple and Lincoln universities and the University of Pittsburgh; restoration of $100 million for adult mental health services; and more.
To prevent needless budget delays beyond the July 1 beginning of the fiscal year, and to ensure the passage of related budget-enabling legislation, both legislative houses should adopt rules precluding any recess until they pass and implement the budget.
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