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GOP stopgap bill possible next step in budget talks

3 min read

HARRISBURG – Republicans who control the Pennsylvania Legislature started planning their next move in the 2-month-old budget stalemate with Gov. Tom Wolf, with no signs the sides are nearing an agreement.

The Senate will be back in session in mid-September, and Republicans saif if there is no light at the end of the tunnel in their talks with the Democratic governor, they will pass a stopgap budget plan.

One aim of the stopgap package would be to get money to counties and nonprofit organizations that deliver a broad swath of the state’s safety net services but are now trying to do so without the state aid on which they normally rely.

To get by, some counties are dipping into cash reserves to front the money while nonprofits are taking out loans, putting off services or postponing bills to keep operating during the stalemate.

“If there is no end in sight for the budget being done in the short term, then we will go to what options are available to send a stopgap budget to the governor to fund important services,” said Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson.

Besides safety net services, public schools also are weathering a loss of state aid during the stalemate, which is hitting particularly hard in one of Pennsylvania’s poorest school districts.

Chester Upland School District, just south of Philadelphia, said it cannot meet a scheduled payroll Tuesday. Teachers and support staff, including bus drivers and secretaries, returned to school last week and voted to continue working if they are not paid.

Education Secretary Pedro Rivera said, because of the stalemate, the state government does not have the kind of emergency money it used in the past to prop up deficit-ridden districts.

Wolf spent last week meeting privately with top lawmakers, with no reports of significant progress.

It is not clear whether Wolf would sign stopgap legislation.

The governor made no decision on that and “would prefer to work expeditiously toward a final budget agreement,” spokesman Mark Nicastre said Friday.

For now, credit ratings agencies are casting a critical eye on Pennsylvania, while counties, school districts and social services agencies scramble for backup plans.

Service providers said they support Wolf’s efforts to reverse cuts to their funding enacted under Republicans in the last four years. But they are upset aid does not continue flowing to them during the stalemate when every state worker remains on the job and gets paid.

Waiting lists for services are growing. In rural northeastern Pennsylvania, a four-county agency that administers services to help keep the elderly in their homes has a waiting list of more than 50 people.

“That may not sound like a lot for a large area, but for a small, rural area, it is,” said Marlea Hoyt, executive director of the Bradford/Sullivan/Susquehanna/Tioga Area Agency on Aging, which serves about 1,600 people a month on an annual budget of about $7.4 million.

The agency gets a little federal money and county governments are helping pay some bills, such as gas for volunteers who deliver prepackaged meals to people’s homes.

It has exhausted its cash reserves and took out a $750,000 loan, Hoyt said. Meanwhile, landlords and vendors have been kind enough to let their bills go unpaid, she said.

“We’re lucky because we have dedicated service providers who are willing to defer their payments,” Hoyt said, “but the question is for how long?”

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