Penn to receive $33 million in funding from state after four-month Pa. budget stalemate

Following a four-month impasse, Pennsylvania lawmakers passed a $50.1 billion state budget on Wednesday.

The Nov. 12 bill — which outlines advancements in public school funding, a tax credit for lower-income residents, and ends the state’s participation in a climate program — passed with bipartisan approval in both the Pennsylvania House and Senate. Penn will now be eligible to receive $33.3 million in state funding that had been withheld since the budget deadline passed on July 1.

The Pennsylvania General Assembly’s four-month-long stalemate was driven by partisan disagreements about state spending. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro initially proposed a deal that was nearly a billion dollars higher than the finalized budget, while Republicans were aiming to spend two billion dollars less.

“I could have stood here on June 30 and brought you a budget that looked really different, that didn’t have education funding, that didn’t focus on our workforce development, didn’t have a tax credit for working families,” Shapiro said at a news conference after signing the budget. “I think the key when you’re in these positions — I know the leaders feel the same way — is staying at the table.”

Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine was allocated $31.5 million, a repeat from last year’s budget. In the 2023-24 budget, funding was withheld over concerns regarding antisemitism. Penn Vet is the only state-funded veterinary school and has received state funding since 1889.

Penn Vet falls under the budget’s agriculture total, alongside the Penn Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases, which maintained its $1.8 million allocation from last year.

$665 million was set aside in new funding for public schools. Much of that money will be allocated toward the state’s adequacy and tax equity formulas, which allocate funds for low-income schools deemed to be inadequately funded in a 2023 court ruling. The money will be directed to programs such as gun-violence prevention and student-teacher stipends.

“This budget has good work in it that helps address … the issue of affordability, which sang loud and clear in the most recent election as a predominant issue that Pennsylvanians want us to address,” Senate Minority Appropriations Chair Vince Hughes (D-Philadelphia) said on the Senate floor earlier this week.

Democrats also agreed to remove provisions for additional public transportation funding. In lieu of the measures, Shapiro approved SEPTA’s use of its capital funds over the next two years to help fill the budget’s deficit.

The compromise also resulted in the end of Pennsylvania’s involvement in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a program that charges power plants for the amount of carbon emissions they release into the atmosphere. Pennsylvania first entered the program in 2019. Since then, Republicans have been pushing to leave.

“There are many ways this budget falls short,” Pennsylvania Sen. Nick Saval (D–Philadelphia) wrote in a Nov. 12 social media post, citing the “withdrawal of our commonwealth from the Regional Greenhouse Gas initiative — the only meaningful tool Pennsylvania has had to lower energy costs, reduce deadly emissions, and chart a path toward a clean energy future.”

Lawmakers did agree on the creation of a state tax credit for individuals who also qualify for federal state tax credits. Pennsylvania's policy would equal 10% of the federal credit.

“We put money back into the pockets of low-income, working Pennsylvanians,” State Senate President Kim Ward (R–Westmoreland) said on the floor of the chamber. 

---