Pa. lawmakers free up funding for community colleges, public libraries

Lawmakers in Harrisburg agreed Wednesday night to release almost $262 million for the state’s 15 community colleges that had been held up for almost six months, plus $70 million for public libraries.

The breakthrough on the last scheduled day for legislators to meet this calendar year also means K-12 school districts will receive additional aid for initiatives including facilities work, mental health programming and student teaching support, said state Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills.

He and other Democrats and Republicans savored the late-night conclusion to a budget stalemate that had left an otherwise completed Commonwealth spending plan for Fiscal 2024 partly in limbo.

The community college appropriation, totaling $261.6 million, was held up because the House and Senate could not agree on a fiscal code, the vehicle that governs the annual disbursement of funds to certain state agencies.

The resolution means those colleges can avoid further short-term borrowing and other measures that would have compounded the longer beyond July 1 they had to wait to receive their Fiscal 2024 support.

The 15 community colleges, including those in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Westmoreland counties, enroll 230,000 students.

“This is exactly what can be done when you have the will to compromise and the will to get things done, and that is exactly what we had over the last several weeks,” Costa said by phone as the bills headed for Gov. Josh Shapio’s desk to be signed. “I think we all recognized that time is of the essence and that the disputes that we had with regards to some education funding were preventing us from getting to full closure on the state budget.”

Republicans issued an equally upbeat statement.

“We were able to increase the child-care tax credit and secure funding for community colleges while maintaining the fiscal solvency of the Commonwealth. We must all continue to work better together to ensure that Pennsylvanians have certainty to chart a prosperous path forward,” said Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward. R-Hempfield.

Community colleges had begun tapping into millions of dollars in lines of credit, which collectively would require hundreds of thousands of dollars in monthly interest payments.

That and other lost earnings tied to the appropriation holdup would otherwise go for classroom and other campus needs, said Tuesday Stanley, who chairs the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges and is president of Westmoreland County Community College.

Depending on the length of delay, those lost funds would have eroded or eventually exceeded the 2% funding increase that community colleges were anticipating from the state this fiscal year making it a net funding loss, Stanley said.

“The delay in state payments might become a net funding cut,” Stanley’s organization warned in a statement last month.

Costa said Wednesday’s breakthrough also means $175 million for school districts for facility work including environmental remediation, as well as $100 million to support mental health programming.

What did not pass was funding for the University of Pennsylvania veterinary school, meaning a likely holdup at least into early next calendar year, Costa said. The $33 million subsidy became entangled in controversy surrounding testimony in Congress on free speech and antisemitism that led Penn President Liz Magill to resign Saturday.