The Pa. Senate is back on Tuesday and poised to pass a short-term budget. Will it have transit funding?

HARRISBURG — The Pennsylvania state Senate is poised to return to Harrisburg on Tuesday to advance a short-term budget — against the will of Democratic officials — as closed-door negotiations drone on into a seventh week past the budget deadline and leaders face an urgent SEPTA funding deadline.

As of Monday evening, Senate Republicans appeared to be on track to consider a short-term state budget on Tuesday afternoon that would allow the state to send out its payments to school districts, counties, and other state-subsidized services while leaders negotiate a final budget deal, according to a source close to the plans.

The Senate’s plans were not finalized as of Monday evening, and remained unclear whether the Senate action would include additional funding for public transit, as SEPTA stares down a Thursday deadline before a 20% service cut is implemented later this month.

Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman hinted at a short-term budget plan in a statement Monday afternoon, explaining that the Senate would return Tuesday “to consider options to address the consequences of a budget impasse.”

Pittman said the Senate would return in response to the “political rhetoric” from Gov. Josh Shapiro at a news conference on Sunday outside SEPTA headquarters, and House Majority Leader Matt Bradford’s “performance session” in the state House, which on Monday passed another transit funding bill, 108-95, with one Democrat opposing the bill and seven GOP members voting in support.

The efforts, Pittman said, “did nothing to advance a commonsense solution to help all Pennsylvanians.”

Shapiro and Bradford, who are the top budget negotiators at the table with Pittman, in their individual remarks Sunday and Monday repeated most of the same calls for the Senate to pass transit funding to avoid SEPTA cuts.

Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) also floated last week that the Senate could send a short-term budget to the House if they don’t reach a deal soon.

“If they can’t come to an agreement on the budget in the next week or so, and we send a stopgap budget and the governor refuses to sign it, then all those entities, and all of those schools that don’t get funded, will be on the governor,” Ward said in an interview.

Both Shapiro and Bradford have opposed a short-term budget, adding that they are already more than a month late on a budget and don’t want to kick these issues down the road.

Bradford has emphasized that the House has made every change the Senate GOP has requested — albeit, without a funding mechanism that the Senate GOP supports — to secure support from their caucus, with no proof of what they’d support.

“We need to see what [the Senate] can pass,” Bradford told reporters Monday after the House passed transit funding for a fifth time in two legislative sessions. “But the governor has been very clear that is not going to get the job done. They have an obligation to pass a year budget. They have yet to do that. … They need to show what they have 26 votes for.”

Public transit funding — and how to pay for it — remains among the top sticking points among the GOP-controlled Senate, Shapiro, and House Democrats in reaching a final budget deal. Other sticking points include how much to tax so-called skill games, Medicaid spending, and more. The state budget was due by July 1, the start of the fiscal year ,and a late budget requires counties and school districts to secure additional financing until state funding is released.