Pennsylvania has been without a completed state spending plan for the current fiscal year for more than three months now. While the General Appropriations bill became law on June 11, the legislature has still not reached a consensus on a revenue package. This week, we saw some incremental progress toward completing the budget, as the legislature finally passed H.B. 118 (Kaufer, R-Luzerne), an omnibus bill that makes comprehensive amendments to the Administrative Code. The bill ultimately enjoyed bipartisan support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and will soon be before the Governor for his signature.
While other bills are still needed to fill the gap between spending and revenue, this is a good first step toward finally putting the 2017-2018 state budget to bed.
Highlights:
- Requires that employees who have access to Federal tax information provide a criminal history record and fingerprints, as required under federal law.
- Increases the fee for a certified copy of a death record from $9 to $20.
- Increases fees for applications and inspections of ski lifts, elevators, escalators and boilers.
- Allows the Pennsylvania State Police to increase criminal history record check fees by publication in the Pennsylvania Bulletin.
- Prohibits the closure of a correctional facility during FY 2017-18 without a public hearing
- Sets fees to be charged to higher education institutions upon application to operate in the Commonwealth.
- Transfers $200,000,000 from the Joint Underwriting Association to the General Fund
- Requires Environmental Quality Board to promulgate regulations on manganese limits based on federal requirements.
- Removes the sunset date of the recycling fee for municipal waste landfill and resource recovery facility operators and repeals the transfer to the Solid Waste Abatement Fund.
- Extends permits to water facilities that treat water from conventional oil and gas well operations through December 19, 2019.
- Establishes the Emergency Drug and Alcohol Detoxification Program to utilize existing bed space in hospitals to provide detoxification treatments.
- Lowers the professional dispensing fees for the PACE/PACENET programs from $13 to $10.49.
- Allows the Department of Human Services to increase the fee for child welfare background checks from $10 to an amount not to exceed $13.
- Requires that all resources eligible to provide solar photovoltaic credits must be based in, and connected to, the electric distribution or transmission system in Pennsylvania.
- Renews the senior judge grant program and makes it retroactive to June 30, 2017 and extends the expiration date of the judicial surcharge for Access to Justice to December 21, 2020.