Pennsylvania revenue secretary must appear before Senate or risk going to jail
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Gov. Josh Shapiro’s revenue secretary is headed for a rare showdown on Tuesday in the Pennsylvania Senate that could potentially end with him going to jail.
Revenue Secretary Pat Browne lost his quest to get the state Supreme Court to block the Senate Republicans’ effort to compel him to come before the chamber and explain his reasoning for refusing tax records for an Allentown revitalization program the chamber subpoenaed him to provide.
“I’m glad that the legal games are over and I look forward to getting some answers,” said Sen. Jarrett Coleman, R-Lehigh County, who chairs the Senate committee that issued the subpoena.
“It’s unfortunate that the department repeatedly wasted taxpayer resources by filing unnecessary lawsuits that try to derail the Senate’s ability to conduct legislative oversight.”
An attempt on Monday to get a comment from Browne or Shapiro’s office was unsuccessful.
Browne has said he is not legally permitted to disclose the tax data while Republican senators maintain that their request for the data is a permitted exception to the confidentiality laws.
The high court on Monday issued its ruling on Browne’s appeal that upheld a Commonwealth Court decision.
That was followed later in the day with the Senate voting along party lines to adopt temporary rules establishing a process for questioning Browne or his attorney about the tax revenue funneled into the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone since its launch in 2011.
Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa of Allegheny County called the Republicans’ effort to demand Browne come before the chamber “not necessary. It’s inappropriate, and something we should not be doing.”
Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana County, said while rare, the chamber is following the same process last used in 1974 in the House of Representatives when it called a member of the Pennsylvania State Police before them.
“It’s a process that we’re being very methodical about. We’re following precedent [and have] the right and the responsibility to review programs we create from time to time,” Pittman said.
Browne, a longtime Republican state senator who represented Allentown until losing a primary battle in 2022 to Coleman, crafted the legislation creating the Allentown Neighborhood Improvement Zone.
This one-of-a-kind revitalization program allows virtually all the revenue from state taxes collected from businesses in the 128-acre zone to be returned to developers who built or rehabilitated buildings inside it to pay off construction debt. The program lasts another 19 years.
According to annual reports for the program, more than $700 million has been returned to developers since the program’s inception.
Those reports show the aggregated collections for seven tax categories but combine the total collections for at least nine other taxes, which produce the lion’s share of the tax revenue funneled into the program.
Senators last December voted unanimously to have the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee conduct a performance audit of the program. It was unable to get the granular tax data it said it needed to conduct a review, which led to the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee subpoena.
By a party-line vote, the Senate earlier this month passed a resolution directing its sergeant-at-arms to bring Browne before the Senate within three days it was in session. Tuesday is the last of those three days.
That resolution goes on to say if the chamber is unsatisfied with Browne’s response, it could consider a separate resolution that only requires a simple majority vote to pass to hold him in contempt. He then would be sent to Dauphin County Prison until Nov. 30, when the legislative session ends, or until he produces the tax records the Senate wants to see.