FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 26, 2024
CONTACT: Kirstin Snow, snow@pennpolicy.org
NEW ANALYSIS: PENNSYLVANIA 2024–25 STATE BUDGET
Harrisburg, PA—Today the Pennsylvania Policy Center (PPC) released a new paper, “The Fiscal 2024–25 Pennsylvania Budget,” by executive director Marc Stier. The analysis examines Governor Shapiro’s second budget and highlights funding successes as well as failures.
In February, PPC called Governor Shapiro’s executive budget proposal A Pennsylvania Budget to Celebrate. After criticizing a 2023–24 budget that included the right priorities but inadequate funding for them, we wrote that the budget presented by Governor Shapiro today not only has the right priorities but provides the funding needed to meet them—at least in the next fiscal year. The investments the Governor proposes for public K–12 education, higher education, economic development, housing, and other priorities are substantial and bold. And as important as the proposed new funding is, the Governor’s budget also recognizes the need for Pennsylvania to do some things differently in all these areas.
The budget enacted by the General Assembly has many of the good features that Governor Shapiro proposed and also the funding to match them. There are some major new initiatives—but there are also some major missed opportunities. In many respects, it falls short of Governor Shapiro’s proposals and in some cases falls far short of them.
Stier commented, “This is disappointing. And Pennsylvanians should know why. While most of the Governor’s proposals received strong, and sometimes bipartisan, support in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, they were rejected in the Republican-controlled Senate—and that is despite the best efforts of the Senate Democratic leadership to move them forward.”