COVID-19 changing the way the state will budget

HARRISBURG — The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way the state budget is being handled, just as it had been last year.

The ceremony surrounding the governor’s budget address — one of the high points of the civic year at the state Capitol — will be absent this year.

The Senate budget hearings are being postponed to sometime in the spring while the House budget hearings are on track for a normal timetable.

Gov. Tom Wolf plans to deliver his sixth budget address to the General Assembly on Tuesday via a prerecorded video in order to, according to his office, avoid a situation where people in close proximity and some without masks could spread COVID-19.

This news means, at the very least, the governor won’t be standing at the rostrum in the House chamber addressing a joint session of the House and Senate. He won’t have an escort to the rostrum by a special committee of lawmakers.

It is less likely that a crush of post-address news conferences by the various legislative caucus leaders on the Rotunda balcony will occur.

And the Capitol Complex is closed to the public, so

protesters won’t be present in the Rotunda.

So, on a day where public attention is usually focused on the fiscal condition of the commonwealth, things are likely to be disjointed.

There have been curveballs on budget address days before.

The day’s schedule was compressed in 2010 due to an approaching blizzard. Then-Gov. Ed Rendell gave his address a day late in 2005 and 2006 to accommodate, respectively, the Philadelphia Eagles, who lost a Super Bowl, and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who won a Super Bowl.

And this won’t be the first joint video address: The late Robert P. Casey gave one as governor in the fall of 1987 to unveil a proposal to overhaul local taxes. He was recuperating from heart surgery.

Meanwhile, the Senate has adjusted its session days to reflect the decision by Senate Appropriations Committee’s majority chairman, Pat Browne, R-Lehigh, to delay the budget hearings, Senate Majority Leader Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, said in a recent memo.

As a result, the Senate is now scheduled to be in session Feb. 22, 23 and 24, dates that in previous years were devoted to budget hearings.

John Guyer, the Senate Appropriations Committee executive director, said he hopes to release a revised budget hearing schedule in the next week or so.

But the House is sticking to its original plans.

“We plan to stick with the weeks of Feb. 16, 22 and March 1,” said Neal Lesher, spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee’s majority chairman, Stan Saylor, R-York.

Mr. Lesher said a specific hearing schedule would be out soon.

Normally, the budget hearings start by mid-February and run until early March. Cabinet secretaries and agency directors appear to be grilled by lawmakers on the Senate and House Appropriations Committees.

In 2020, the budget hearings were completed by the first week of March. That was shortly before the pandemic triggered gubernatorial shutdown orders for businesses, schools and institutions.

Mr. Browne recalled wistfully in an op-ed last month how a brightening state fiscal picture at the start of 2020 changed “in the blink of an eye” due to the pandemic.

The loss of state tax revenue resulting from the shutdowns and unanticipated emergency spending led lawmakers to enact a twopart budget for fiscal year 2020-21. They waited to see what the U.S. Congress provided in the way of federal relief and the level of state tax revenue after the filing deadline for 2019 taxes was extended from April to July, with the first part of the budget enacted last June and the second part last November.

It now appears that budget may end much better than balanced, thanks to federal stimulus assistance and an economy that has recovered faster than expected, although that recovery is slowing as stimulus dollars work their way through the economy. The state’s fiscal future looks to be more difficult in the short term as Pennsylvania continues to climb out of the hole dug during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Congress and President Donald Trump enacted a second COVID-19 aid relief package in December, and new President Joe Biden is proposing more federal relief aid.