Our Pennsylvania state government relations team is actively monitoring legislative, regulatory and administrative changes in Pennsylvania related to COVID-19. They’ll continue to provide updates as new information is available. The below is an update as of Thursday, March 27. For additional updates and information as the situation evolves, please visit: https://www.bipc.com/covid-19-statewide-measures-and-local-government-initiatives.
Contact the Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney Pennsylvania Government Relations team here.
Administration
At a press conference held on March 23, Governor Wolf and the Department of Health issued a “stay-at-home” order for all residents in seven counties to prevent further spread of COVID-19 coronavirus. This policy took effect at 8:00 p.m. that evening and will continue for a period of two weeks, until April 6, 2020. The original counties were Allegheny, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Monroe, and Philadelphia. On March 24, Erie county was added to the order and on March 25 the order was expanded again to include Lehigh and Northampton counties. Then on March 27, the following counties were added: Berks, Butler, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Luzerne, Pike, Wayne, Westmoreland and York.
At this point, 19 counties are subject to a stay-at-home order. Residents of these counties may leave their residence ONLY to perform any of the following allowable individual activities and allowable essential travel:
Allowable Individual Activities
- Tasks essential to maintain health and safety, or the health and safety of their family or household members (including, but not limited to, pets), such as obtaining medicine or medical supplies, visiting a health care professional, or obtaining supplies they need to work from home.
- Getting necessary services or supplies for themselves or their family or household members, or to deliver those services or supplies to others, such as getting food and household consumer products, pet food, and supplies necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation, and essential operation of residences. This includes volunteer efforts to distribute meals and other life-sustaining services to those in need.
- Engaging in outdoor activity, such as walking, hiking or running if they maintain social distancing.
- To perform work providing essential products and services at a life-sustaining business (see below for details about life-sustaining business activities).
- To care for a family member or pet in another household.
Allowable Essential Travel
- Any travel related to the provision of or access to the above-mentioned individual activities or life-sustaining business activities (as described above).
- Travel to care for elderly, minors, dependents, persons with disabilities, or other vulnerable persons.
- Travel to or from educational institutions for purposes of receiving materials for distance learning, for receiving meals, and any other related services.
- Travel to return to a place of residence from an outside jurisdiction.
- Travel required by law enforcement or court order.
- Travel required for non-residents to return to their place of residence outside the commonwealth.
Exempt Operations
- Life-sustaining business activities.
- Health care or medical services providers.
- Access to life-sustaining services for low-income residents, including food banks.
- Access to child care services for employees of life-sustaining businesses that remain open as follows: child care facilities operating under the Department of Human Services, Office of Child Development and Early Learning waiver process; group and family child care operating in a residence; and part-day school age programs operating under an exemption from the March 19, 2020 business closure Orders.
- News media.
- Law enforcement.
- The federal government.
- Religious institutions.
On March 25, Governor Wolf announced that new funding is available to help small businesses impacted by COVID-19, through a new program under the Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority’s (PIDA) Small Business First Fund, the COVID-19 Working Capital Access Program (CWCA). PIDA authorized making $60 million available to provide loans of $100,000 or less to for-profit businesses with 100 or fewer full-time employees. Funds are expected to become available this week.
On March 26, the Governor announced that he will spend up to $50 million in transferred state funding to purchase medical equipment and supplies for hospitals, nursing homes, and emergency workers. The funding will be deposited into a restricted account under the Governor’s jurisdiction and be used if there are insufficient funds available from the disaster proclamation. This is a result of H.B. 1232, which is discussed in greater detail below.
Governor Wolf also announced the creation of a new web portal that will expedite the procurement of critical medical supplies for Pennsylvania’s health care system. Manufacturers, distributors and other suppliers can inform the state of supplies available for purchase, which will allow officials to more quickly and efficiently procure supplies for hospitals and medical facilities.
Legislature
The House of Representatives held voting session on March 24 and both chambers were in session on March. 25. The following bills passed in both chambers and were signed by the Governor.
H.B. 68 (Ryan, R-Lebanon) – Unemployment Compensation Law
- Amends the Unemployment Compensation (UC) Law to extend the time period for an employer to request relief from charges from 15 to 21 days and makes changes to the law in response to the COVID-19 emergency in order to comply with Federal law which will allow Pennsylvania to be eligible for Federal UC administration funding as well as Federal emergency UC benefits.
H.B. 1232 (Dunbar, R-Westmoreland) – Fiscal Code
- Permanently establishes the Enhanced Revenue Collection Restricted Account. Revenues collected and the amount of refunds avoided as a result of expanded tax return reviews and tax collection activities by the Department of Revenue will be deposited into the account.
- Provides up to $50 million of additional funding to be made available for the Commonwealth’s COVID-19 response efforts within the health care system.
- Requires available federal funding and any funding made available through the Governor’s disaster proclamation to be used before the transfer of funding can occur.
- Extends medical marijuana temporary regulations until November 20, 2021, or upon the Department of Health’s publication of the final-form regulations, whichever is sooner.
- Provides temporary powers and duties for Commonwealth agencies at times when an emergency makes it impossible to comply with law relating to state finance or state tax.
S.B. 422 (Vogel, R-Beaver) – Election Code
- Changes the date of the general primary election to June 2, 2020.
- Consolidates polling places.
- Establishes the Pennsylvania Election Law Advisory Board.
- Amends sections relating to absentee and mail-in ballots.
S.B. 751 (Aument, R-Lancaster) – Public School Code
- Revises the educator evaluation system.
- Allows the Secretary of Education to order the closure of all school entities until the threat to health and safety caused by the pandemic of 2020 has ended and waive the requirement that school entities be open for at least 180 days of instruction.
- An employee of a school entity may not receive more or less compensation than the employee would otherwise have been entitled to receive from the school entity had the pandemic of 2020 not occurred.
- School entities must provide cleaning staff with appropriate cleaning materials.
- Notice must be given to all parents of special education students of a school entity’s plan for ensuring a free and appropriate public education.
- School entities must make a good faith effort to develop a plan to offer continuity of education using alternative means during the closure period.
- No school entity will see any loss in school subsidies or reimbursements from the Commonwealth as a result of actions taken by the Secretary.
- School entities will be required to keep paying intermediate units and career and technical centers as well as approved private schools and private residential rehabilitative institutions where public schools have placed students.
- Each school entity may renegotiate a contract for school bus transportation services to ensure contracted personnel and fixed costs, including administration and equipment, are maintained during the period of school closure, and will be eligible to receive reimbursement from the state as if the pandemic of 2020 had not occurred.
- The Secretary of Education must apply to the United States Department of Education for testing waivers to permit cancellation of assessments for the 2019-20 school year.
- Standardized testing for home education students is cancelled, as are evaluations of home education programs.
- A school entity may apply to the Secretary for a waiver of any provision of the School Code, regulation of the State Board of Education or standards of the Department directly related to the school entity’s staffing needs or impacts the school entity’s instructional program or operations as a result of the pandemic of 2020.
- Each active professional educator’s current continuing professional education compliance period is extended by one year.
The Governor also vetoed H.B. 1100 (Kaufer, R-Luzerne), which would create an energy and fertilizer manufacturing tax credit.
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