Governor Shapiro’s First Budget Proposal

​On Tuesday, March 7th Governor Josh Shapiro proposed his first budget address.  The $44.4billion proposal is approximately a $2billion dollar increase from the current Fiscal Year.  The Governor gave his address to a joint Session of the House and Senate with new legislative leadership, including Speaker 

Joanna McClinton and President Pro Temp Kim Ward, the first women to hold those posts.
 
“Seven weeks ago, when I took the oath of office, I spoke about the mandate the people have given us – they want us to reject extremism and division, and they want us to get real things done. We have the opportunity to pass a commonsense budget that speaks to their needs,” stated Governor Shapiro.
 
Shapiro also referenced that Pennsylvania’s General Fund Surplus and the savings in the Rainy-Day Fund are the largest in the Commonwealth’s history and that “we’ve built our budget around a conservative revenue estimate – so conservative, in fact, that we’re using projections that are $3 billion lower over the next five years than the Independent Fiscal Office – a notoriously cautious group of economic forecasters.”
 
Links to full Budget Proposal, Governor's Executive Budget and Line Items. Items of note–
 

• Raise the minimum wage to $15 on Jan 1, 2024.
• $66.7 million in childcare services for low-income families
• Funding for Governor Shapiro’s Office of Transformation and Opportunity, a one-stop-shop for businesses looking to grow and contribute to aggressively reigniting Pennsylvania’s economy.
• 50% more in the Commonwealth’s Manufacturing Innovation Program, which connects Pennsylvania’s universities to businesses.
• $20 million for a new program to invest in historically disadvantaged businesses. 
• $24.7 million in job retention and recruitment efforts for nursing, teaching and policing jobs. This will be a $2,500 rebate for those newly employed in these fields (for up to three years).
• $23.8 million investment in workforce training and apprenticeship programs
• Changes in funding for the Pennsylvania State Police with goal to reduce PSP’s reliance on the Motor License Fund leading to an estimated $1.5 billion will be available for road and bridge projects
• Increase of $5.75 million for new staff in the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) for improving air quality testing, increasing dam inspections, safeguarding water quality, and more.
• Expansion of the Property Tax Rent Rebate from $650 to $1000 a year and the income cap for renters and homeowners would increase to $45,000 a year, and that cap would be tied to the cost of living.
• Eliminating the GRT cell phone tax but increases the 911 surcharge on phone bills to $2.03, up from $1.65 to increase emergency services funding for counties not including a $36 million increase in resources for emergency medical services (EMS) and fire services.
• Increase of $30 million for the Pre-K Counts program.
• $2.7 million in additional funding for the Head Start Supplemental Program to help address staffing shortages in early childhood education programs.
• Increase of $567.4 million, or 7.8 percent, for basic education funding,
• $60 million increase state higher education institutions.