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By MARC LEVY
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania are working to assemble a budget plan that would use billions in federal pandemic relief and surplus state tax dollars to help prop up existing programs, boost aid to public schools and inject cash into sectors hard-hit by the pandemic.
The extra cash sloshing around has also brought a blitz of requests — and demands — on how to use it.
Still, it is not all found money, especially as Pennsylvania faces a shrinking working-age population in the coming years who will pay taxes.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Pat Browne, R-Lehigh, said the state’s finances are under extreme pressure to meet growing demands on the state’s health care and human services, in particular long-term care for the elderly.
“This is the problem that we have,” Browne said.
Even maintaining current programs by using all of the $7.3 billion from the American Rescue Plan bill signed by President Joe Biden in March and $3 billion in surplus state tax collections over the next three years will leave Pennsylvania with a deficit, Browne said.
Republicans also worry that the economy and tax collections are headed for a slowdown after vast amounts of federal relief works its way through the economy and the spending slows.
The new fiscal year begins July 1, and lawmakers say they expect to wrap up work on the budget plan by the end of next week.
While Republicans are behind closed doors considering which hard-hit sectors to help with the federal aid, Democratic lawmakers have rolled out expansive plans to use it. Those plans include things like improvements to school technology and aging school buildings, or grants for housing programs and frontline workers.
Highway builders, hospitals, nursing homes, affordable housing advocates, violence prevention advocates and others are also seeking a share for their causes.
Decisions on how to use the money are being heavily influenced by work in Washington to assemble a wide-ranging infrastructure funding plan, and Republicans say they do not want to direct money to something — say, expanding broadband networks — that may receive substantially more federal money.
Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Centre, said that he would like to help nursing homes and affordable housing efforts, as examples of sectors that are struggling in the wake of the pandemic.
Then there is Gov. Tom Wolf’s top priority that Republicans say they are trying to accommodate. The Democrat in February asked the Republican-controlled Legislature for a $1.35 billion boost in aid to public school operations and instruction, or 20% more, on top of the $6.8 billion they currently receive.
The majority of that $8.1 billion would go out through a 6-year-old school funding formula designed to iron out inequities in how Pennsylvania funds the poorest public schools. A portion of it — about $1.1 billion — would ensure that no school district receives less than it does now.
“The governor has a plan out there and I’m not critical of it, I just don’t think we can do it all at one time,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Stan Saylor, R-York.
A motivator is a pending lawsuit accusing the state of unconstitutionally neglecting its poorest public schools.
Republican lawmakers see Wolf’s proposal as a way to head off a state Supreme Court decision that effectively takes the decision out of their hands by ordering them to ramp up aid to public schools.
For their part, Pennsylvania’s public schools have received roughly $6.2 billion over the past year from three federal pandemic aid bills, according to House Appropriations Committee estimates.
But school boards have continued to press Republican lawmakers to fix what they say is a pressing, debilitating and long-term problem of being forced to overpay for tuition to charter schools and cyber charter schools for the children who go there.
Republicans have their own education demands, preparing legislation that would substantially expand state taxpayer support for private and religious schools, stoking pushback from public school advocates.
The legislation would more than double tax credit programs to $500 million in two years — money that corporations and businesspeople that donate money can effectively direct to favored private and religious schools.
The existing program subsidizes those donations with a tax credit of up to 90%.
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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/timelywriter.