HARRISBURG — More than two months in, the effects of Pennsylvania’s budget impasse are compounding. Many of the programs hurting most are smaller ones that tend to get little attention.
Across the commonwealth, small nonprofit programs like rape crisis centers are laying off staff and scaling back services, or preparing to do so. Wealthy counties are dipping into reserves to fund child services and programs for people with intellectual disabilities, while poorer counties are taking out lines of credit (and associated interest) or putting some services completely on hold.
“We urge you to contact your state representatives to let them know how important these programs are,” the Community Action Partnership of Cambria County posted on Facebook last month, announcing it would indefinitely halt rental and utility assistance programs and a daycare. “Without state funding, the community suffers.”
The budget was due June 30, but disagreement in the divided state government over funding transit and overall spending levels, and a lack of consensus on new revenue sources, have deadlocked lawmakers.
Programs affected by a delayed budget fall into two large categories: schools and other education initiatives, including libraries; and health and human services, many of which are administered by counties with help from state money.
This latter group is sprawling, encompassing everything from emergency medical services, to substance use and problem gambling treatment, to foster care agencies.
As Spotlight PA reported last month, some of the missed payments over the summer were large.
According to Pennsylvania’s budget secretary, Pennsylvania’s Department of Education did not send about $1.4 billion in basic education funding to K-12 schools in July and August, along with $255 million in special education funding and around $99 million in “federal subgrant payments.” County child welfare programs missed $390 million in payments, another striking number.
Many other categories of county services and nonprofits have missed payments closer to the range of a few million dollars. But while those amounts look small on paper, they can also have a big impact because these programs operate on narrow margins.
Struggling counties and nonprofits
Getting a full accounting of all the programs cutting back staff and services amid the impasse is difficult. But as the months have passed with no budget deal, more and more counties and organizations have begun to make their struggles publicly known.
Chester County, outside of Philadelphia, missed $10 million in state funding for human services programs in July and August, according to WHYY. At a news conference last month, Democratic state Sen. Carolyn Comitta said the county, which is the state’s wealthiest, is “absorbing those costs for now, but they cannot bridge the gap forever.”
Still, there had been cutbacks even in Chester — at that news conference, Committa introduced a speech pathologist who was laid off from her specialist job at a local school district.
Other counties have already had to make tougher decisions.
The Lycoming-Clinton Joinder Board — which oversees those counties’ children and youth services, early intervention, mental health and intellectual disability services, and other programs — had to increase its line of credit to $3 million to keep everything running, according to the Williamsport Sun-Gazette.
Clinton County Commissioner and Joinder Board President Jeffrey Snyder noted at a recent meeting that “any interest paid, not only by this joinder, but other counties in the Commonwealth, aren’t accounted for. So therefore it is an additional burden on the taxpayers.”
“Quite frankly, I think that every county needs to be sending a letter to their legislators and demanding that they do the job that they’re getting paid for,” Snyder said, according to the Sun-Gazette.
Last month in Western Pennsylvania's Cambria County, the Community Action Partnership, which administers housing and utility assistance, early childhood, and health assistance programs from an office on Johnstown’s main street, temporarily shuttered several of those resources, according to TV station WTAJ.
This affected the organization’s ability to process rental and utility assistance applications, and closed a preschool program it ran that served 95 children.
According to WTAJ, Cambria County Community Action Partnership head Joshua Yoder said that “being a grant-funded entity, we need to make sure that we’re on top of those things. I would say it was in the last month that we realized, because really with our pre-K program starting at the end of August, we really had to take a hard look and make some tough decisions.”
A range of other state-funded public services are administered by networks of nonprofits and companies across the commonwealth, not by counties. Ones affected by the impasse include organizations that provide breast cancer screenings, domestic violence services, and rape crisis centers.
Some of the 48 rape crisis centers that operate across Pennsylvania have already had to cut back services, said Joyce Lukima, the chief operating officer with the state Coalition to Advance Respect, which does policy work and advocacy for the crisis centers.
“People are so committed. They do everything to not get to that place,” Lukima said of centers. “But the longer this happens, it forces people to have to make these untenable decisions that they shouldn't have to make.”
These centers operate 24/7 hotlines for survivors to call and receive advice, have staff accompany them to emergency rooms and police stations to act as advocates, and provide support through the legal process. Some also offer counseling.
In July and August, they missed $3.4 million in state payments, according to Pennsylvania’s budget secretary.
When a budget impasse freezes state funding, there are a few steps centers take, Lukima said. First, many take out a line of credit, which they’ll later have to pay back with interest. Then, if that line of credit runs out and there’s still no state funding, they furlough or lay off staff. The last resort, Lukima said, is cutting services.
The centers that have already hit this point tend to be the smaller ones in rural areas, she said.
Things are getting tight even in bigger, deeper-pocketed centers, however.
Mary Onama, executive director of Montgomery County’s Victim Services Center in Norristown, said her organization gets 37% of its funding from the state, and has already missed $70,000 in payments. If there’s no budget by October, that number will grow to about $150,000.
The Victim Services Center’s finances are more diversified than some rape crisis centers because it also provides support to people who suffer other violent crimes, which comes with its own funders. But Onama told Spotlight PA she recently had to have a “very transparent” conversation with her workers, in which she told them that if the impasse goes beyond mid-October, they’ll have to cut back hours and triage services. In the worst-case scenario, she said, the absolute last thing to go would be the center’s 24/7 crisis hotline.
“That means cutting really critical services,” Onama said, including accompanying survivors to hospitals, to court for trial, and to police interviews. Doing these things alone is “very frightening and very difficult,” she said.
This isn’t Onama’s first state budget impasse. She’s been the head of the Victim Services Center since 1998.
“We’ve been here before,” she said. But she added, “It doesn’t make it any easier. In fact, it makes it more ridiculous.”