News & Brews June 30, 2025
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Budget deadline arrives; budget does not
Today is the state budget deadline, but don’t expect a state budget. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that the state “is expected to start the new fiscal year Tuesday without a spending plan in place.” This is neither surprising nor unusual. “The state budget has been adopted by the statutory June 30 deadline just eight times in the past 21 years.” But, “Legislative leaders say they are confident this budget impasse won’t drag on for many weeks or months as has happened in the past.” Among the sticking points: bailing out mass transit and taxing and regulating skill games.
Could Amazon ‘investment’ cost Pa.?
Much brouhaha surrounded Amazon’s recently announced $20 billion data center investment in Pennsylvania. But Spotlight PA says that “many key details, like the centers’ full impact on electricity supply and prices, and the amount of tax revenue the state will forfeit to Amazon, are still unknown.” For example, the state “approved a sales tax exemption for Amazon on key equipment that could potentially cost the state millions of dollars that otherwise would go toward education, health care, and other basic services.” Plus, the impact on the state’s energy system remains unclear.
Top Pa. senator ‘spoke out early’ on U.S. Steel deal
The Inquirer reports on the key role Pa. Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward played in advancing the recently finalized U.S. Steel / Nippon Steel deal. For Ward, “it was personal.” Her father “who was a specialty steel machinist in Washington County where she grew up, lost his job when steel plants across the region announced closures, as the steel industry started shifting jobs overseas.” Ward said, “I could not be quiet. We have to save these jobs. I had to speak up, and I wanted to. I am honored to be in a position where people in power maybe, kinda listen.”
McCormick, Fetterman split on ‘big beautiful bill’
In a Saturday procedural vote to advance President Trump’s “big beautiful bill,” Pa.’s U.S. senators split their votes, with Sen. Dave McCormick voting ‘yes’ and Sen. John Fetterman voting ‘no’. The bill advanced 51-49, and the Senate is planning on a final vote this week.
‘Don’t destroy what’s working for our kids’
The Rev. Joshua C. Robertson writes in PennLive, “In a single week, Gov.Josh Shapiro ended the Harrisburg City School District’s receivership despite no meaningful academic progress, and the Pennsylvania House passed HB 1500—it’s a bill designed to gut cyber charter schools, the only other free option for children trapped in zip codes that fail to see or serve them.” The added gut punch? “Three of the representatives in particular who voted for this—Dave Madsen, Justin Fleming, and Carol Hill-Evans—have stood in our churches, shook our hands, and claimed to support what we are doing. Now they are co-sponsoring the destruction of our solutions.” Robertson rightly contends, “In times like these, with our inner city children in crisis, no one should be cutting school budgets or treating cyber charter students like second-class citizens.”