Weekly Wrap

The holidays have come and gone and folks in Harrisburg are ready to get back to the legislative grind. On Tuesday, the General Assembly convened the 2017-2018 legislative session and six new Senators and 23 new Representatives took the oath of office.  As is always the case on swearing-in day, the House formally elected Rep. Mike Turzai (R-Allegheny) as Speaker of the House, the Senate formally elected Sen. Joe Scarnati (R- Clearfield) as President Pro Tempore and each chamber adopted its operating rules for the upcoming session.

The House of Representatives and the Senate also named the chairmen of the standing committees for the new session. Due to several retirements at the end of last session, there are a number of new chairmen in each caucus.

For a list of the new Senate Republican Chairs, click here.

For a list of the new Senate Democratic Chairs, click here.

For a list of all new committee chairs in the House, click here.

Getting right down to business, members have started circulating co-sponsorship memos, soliciting support for some new initiatives as well as some repeats from last session that didn’t make it to final passage before November 30. So far we’ve seen memos on issues ranging from soup to nuts, including:

To review all co-sponsorship memos circulated to date, click here.

A Look Ahead

The House and Senate will both return to the capitol city on January 23 for voting session. Plenty of issues could be up for consideration this year, including those listed above, but there’s also some unfinished business from the 2015-2016 session.

To balance the state budget for the current fiscal year (which ends on June 30, 2017), the legislature counted on $100 million or more in new revenue from expanding gaming in the Commonwealth. Legislation to authorize any sort of new gambling—be it iGaming, slots at bars and taverns or fantasy sports betting—has yet to be enacted.

And speaking of gaming, the Commonwealth only has until the end of the month to adopt legislation to re-authorize the local share assessment on the state’s casinos. Last fall, the court invalidated the state’s formula for calculating payments to communities where casinos are located; without new legislation those host municipalities will be out over $140 million.

Beyond the unfinished business, it looks like we’ll be heading into the new fiscal year with a $360 million deficit and a structural deficit approaching $2 billion. We expect the debate about whether to raise taxes or reduce spending to be front and center this spring, as well as issues like pension reform, property tax reform and human services spending.

Read more from Sen. Jake Corman (R-Centre) here.

We’ll hear what Gov. Tom Wolf plans to do about these issues when he delivers his budget address on February 7, followed by an explanation of each agency’s fiscal needs during budget hearings later in the month.

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