Dear Neighbor,
Late Friday evening, the General Assembly approved a $40 billion budget and sent it to Gov. Tom Wolf for his signature into law. While this spending plan made historic strides in education funding and multi-million-dollar investments into Pennsylvania’s long-term care facilities – it still missed multiple opportunities to help those who need it most.
Small businesses needed our help more than ever this year. However, the budget that was passed contains no measures to help locally owned businesses recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. I vehemently supported the PA Rescue Plan - which designated $250 million to help these businesses get back on their feet and prevent them from closing for good - but this was not included in the final budget. The budget presented to the governor also failed to provide any relief specifically to childcare facilities. As parents have been trying to get back to work for months now, affordable full-day childcare remains inaccessible to many, thereby creating hardships and financial strains on countless families throughout the commonwealth. Another way we could have helped working families would have been to allot funding for property tax relief. Many of you have reached out to me about too-high property taxes, and the PA Rescue Plan designated $250 million toward expanding property tax and rent relief. However, the majority party failed to include this measure in our budget as well.
The state had a $10 billion surplus thanks to federal funds we received from the American Rescue Plan. These stimulus dollars were meant to go to the people and organizations who needed them most – whether it was local business owners, property taxpayers who desperately need relief or underfunded school districts. However, the majority party chose to mostly stockpile this money for future use via the Rainy-Day Fund.
I ended up voting yes on this budget, because it included nearly $2 million for Phoenixville, Tredyffrin-Easttown and Spring-Ford Area school districts, and $282 million for long-term care facilities throughout Pennsylvania. The pandemic highlighted how ill prepared many schools and care facilities were for a life-threatening disaster and increasing their funding will help bridge this gap while improving efficiency and safety.
Although I feel that we could have done so much more with our funding from the American Rescue Plan, investments in education, infrastructure and seniors are critical. Ensuring that Pennsylvania students to seniors have the tools they need to succeed, and modernized facilities are hugely important steps to helping our commonwealth recover from last year.
Additionally, while this spending plan may not be perfect, I’m pleased that we were able to finalize this before our June 30 deadline. Creating a budget is the legislature’s biggest job of the year, and it’s a time where we all need to be especially effective. Since I’ve taken office in 2019, I’ve done my part in passing a timely budget to help keep Pennsylvania moving forward, so I’m happy that this year was no exception. |