June 2024 | Legislative Update
Volume Matters – Call Your Legislators about Budget Priorities: June 2024 Legislative and Budget Update
It’s budget season in Harrisburg. Here’s where it stands.
Status of Budget Negotiations:
While the state constitution mandates that the state budget must be completed by June 30, legislators do not always meet this deadline and did not last year nor did they in multiple other recent years.
From our conversations with legislators, they are largely indicating slow progress in budget negotiations. Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R-Indiana) was quoted just a few days ago indicating that the pace of budget negotiations will need to pick up substantially to meet the June 30th deadline and even indicated that the budget negotiations are likely to still be incomplete in July.
The two parties appear to be far apart on key budget provisions including whether and how to draw on the state’s multiple billion dollar surplus, school funding, and a school voucher program among other things.
While it’s still all up in the air, budget decisions will happen fast. We still need to make it known that housing priorities should be key priorities; Volume and quantity in number matters.
Our Budget Priorities:
The Housing Alliance continues to advocate for several budget priorities: an increase of at least $50 million for the statewide Whole Home Repair program in the general appropriations bill, an increase of revenue for the statewide PHARE program of up to $100 million per year in a tax code bill if one is completed, and an increase of $10 million for the Homeless Assistance Program and $5 million for legal representation in eviction proceedings.
What You Can Do:
Please contact your legislators to indicate the importance of both a PHARE funding increase and a Whole Home Repair program funding increase along with the increase for Homeless Assistance Program and legal representation in eviction proceedings.
And please sign on to our letter of support for the PHARE funding increase here.
Resources on PHARE and Whole Home Repair Program:
About the Whole Home Repair Program (from PA DCED)
More Detail on the PHARE proposal:
Regarding PHARE, currently the law provides that up to $60 million of revenue from the state realty transfer tax is allocated to PHARE for programs in any county across the Commonwealth. (See note below for the specifics of the exact formula.) A PHARE funding increase needs to be included in a tax code bill and not the general appropriations bill. The legislature sometimes but not always completes a tax code bill as part of the budget package.
We have been building bipartisan support for this increase. Legislation to increase the funds to $100 million was sponsored by Senator Vogel (SB 532) and by former Rep Sara Innamorato (HB 1316 ). There is also a proposal from the Governor to increase funds to $100 million over several years. We support an increase in PHARE to $100 million. While these proposals are slightly different, we are not supporting one over the other.
(The current PHARE formula is as follows. 40% of revenue from the state realty transfer tax that is above the baseline revenue from fiscal year 2014 but no more than $60 million is allocated to PHARE.)
Other Housing Alliance Legislative Priorities:
Our other legislative priorities including increasing funds for homeless prevention, limiting access to all eviction court records, and zoning reform remain our priorities but are not budget items this year. More on those priorities next month.
Media Coverage of Our Key Priorities:
Commentary: State investment helps with affordable housing gap, but more must be done
DANA HANCHIN AND AARON ZAPPIA
Lancaster Online
May 8, 2024
Commonwealth investment helps close NEPA’s affordable housing gap
SHANE POWERS AND AARON ZAPPIA GUEST WRITERS
Scranton Times Tribune
May 7, 2024