Trending
HARRISBURG -- As state lawmakers wrap up their legislative session, a long list of proposals with bipartisan support and keen public interest is on track to fail, forcing those issues back to the starting line next year.
Some, like a deal on regulating skill games, have sunk under pressure from warring and monied special interests. Others, like a long-sought measure to let child sexual abuse survivors file related lawsuits beyond the statute of limitations, became partisan bargaining chips. In a contentious election year with legislative control at stake, each party is also hesitant to give the other a win.
Every stalled proposal has its own group of frustrated backers -- from business owners to parents to Pennsylvanians concerned about surveillance technology or energy costs. Some have already waited decades for legislative changes.
There were a few successes during the final week of the session. Lawmakers sent bills to Gov. Josh Shapiro's desk that would ban K-12 students from using cellphones during the school day, strengthen the state's rules around animal testing in scientific research, and create a fund for organizations providing support for child victims of abuse or neglect. Shapiro signed the latter two bills Thursday, along with 56 other measures. He plans to sign the cell phone ban next week at a public event.
But as it stands, the General Assembly is on track to pass fewer individual pieces of legislation than in any other two-year legislative session since at least 1973-74, according to a Spotlight PA analysis.
Some skeptics of that stat note that sprawling state budget deals have increasingly woven unrelated bills into the final product, which makes it difficult to keep an exact count. But members of both parties agreed that partisan tensions between the GOP-led state Senate and Democratic-controlled state House have contributed to the low productivity.
“It is hard to get things done when you can't trust the person sitting across the table from you," state Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland) said at a party committee dinner this week, according to GANTNews.
"I worked with [former Democratic] Governor [Tom] Wolf, and it was so pleasant. He didn't want to go and become president. He wanted to take care of what was right for Pennsylvania."
Shapiro, an expected 2028 presidential candidate, has repeatedly blamed Republicans in the Senate for stalling initiatives he supports, like increasing the state's minimum wage, extending the statute of limitations for sexual abuse victims, and funding mass transit. His spokesperson, Rosie Lapowsky, echoed those sentiments Wednesday.
"The impediment to progress in our Commonwealth is the Senate Republican majority's intransigence and their inability to get things done -- they refuse to put bipartisan bills up for a vote and then blame everyone else for their own inaction," she said.
Rank-and-file state Senate Democrats hope their party will flip the upper chamber in November, which would lead to a major power shakeup and affect virtually every unfinished issue.
State Sen. Marty Flynn (D., Lackawanna), who has served in the minority party since he first entered the legislature as a House member in 2013, told Spotlight PA the current state of affairs is "just stupid."
He too largely pinned the inaction this year on Senate Republican leadership, who he accused of only running bills for a vote if there is an underlying agreement or trade with House Democrats. All legislation, he said, should at least receive a committee vote to ensure proposals are debated for their merit.
"This isn’t government," Flynn said. "It’s not supposed to work this way."
Kate Flessner, a spokesperson for state Senate Republicans, told Spotlight PA in an email that the caucus "has been the voice of reason in protecting Pennsylvania taxpayers, defending our Constitutional freedoms, supporting families, and working to keep our communities safe."
State House Democrats held a news conference Wednesday in which legislative leaders also criticized Senate Republicans for not holding more votes on bills the lower chamber had passed this year.
Post-election, lawmakers have only a handful of voting days on the calendar before the next two-year legislative session begins. While it's possible they could address some of these issues then, so-called sine die sessions have not recently seen significant action, and any bills that are partially through the process will need to restart next session.
New legislators are sworn in in January.
Regulating skill games
Lawmakers were given a strong incentive to regulate slot machine-like skill games this year when the state Supreme Court ruled them illegal in June. Justices stayed the ruling until last week, which gave lawmakers four months to act.
They didn’t. Skill games are now officially illegal and are disappearing from bars, restaurants, social clubs, and convenience stores across the commonwealth, along with the revenue they generated for such establishments.
House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) told reporters Wednesday night that active closed-door talks continued throughout the week, and that legislative leaders in the House and Senate had reached a deal. He would not share specifics.
"There was a deal reached," Bradford said. "This deal was done. The Senate ran off again because they could not get the votes."
In a statement Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) did not deny a deal existed. He noted that he and Ward were the only caucus leaders to propose their own skill games regulation bill. (The bill that the Senate leaders threw their names behind last year never reached a floor vote).
"I continue to strongly believe there needs to be a regulatory framework in place, but as we have seen, gaming reform is no doubt complex and requires agreement on numerous levels," Pittman said.
In fact, no bills to regulate and tax the industry ever received a vote this session. Shapiro had called for skill games to be taxed at the casino slot machine rate of approximately 50% in his February budget proposal.
The lack of a deal comes despite broad bipartisan support for the games' legalization and taxation.
Instead, lawmakers' divisions over the issue have to do with the monied interests trying to sway them. Skill games allies have spent many millions to woo members in recent decades, as have casinos concerned about the growing source of competition.
Casino operators argue any legalization bill should tax skill games at a rate similar to that for slot machines -- around 50%. Skill games backers argue that would put them out of business.
Allowing more sexual abuse survivors to sue
Both chambers have repeatedly passed measures that would amend the state constitution to allow a temporary two-year window for survivors of childhood sexual assault to sue their abusers, even if the statutes of limitations on their cases have passed.
Still the window has never been created -- a result of error, well-funded lobbying, and partisan fighting.
In Pennsylvania, constitutional amendments must pass in two consecutive legislative sessions with the same language. The General Assembly successfully passed a two-year window this way in 2021, three years after a landmark grand jury report detailing abuse in the commonwealth's Catholic dioceses. However, a clerical error by the Wolf administration kept it from the necessary ballot referendum.
Since then, state Senate Republicans have attempted to tie the proposal to another proposed constitutional amendment -- one that would require voters to show a form of identification at the polls each time they vote in an election. Shapiro criticized the GOP leaders earlier this year, accusing them of politicizing the issue by "tying justice to ... pet political projects."
The state House passed its latest two-year window amendment proposal in June. The Senate has not passed any such legislation this session.
Former state House Speaker Mark Rozzi (D., Berks), himself a survivor of abuse by a Catholic priest, rose to the highest position in the chamber as an advocate for survivors of sexual abuse. He largely blamed Senate Republicans for the inaction, but also said Shapiro could do more to reach a deal.
"Victims that are hanging on for this law to pass and victims who haven’t come forward yet, they deserve their day in court," Rozzi, who has since left politics, told Spotlight PA. "Whether we can go after the perpetrator or we can go after the institutions that aided and abetted these criminals, eventually they are going to be held accountable. Eventually, the hammer is coming down on them."
Making voter ID requirements stricter
Republicans have long sought to require stricter voter identification requirements in Pennsylvania, which currently requires voters to show a valid form of ID only the first time they cast a ballot at their polling location.
It's a popular idea among voters, and Democratic-led opposition calmed early in this legislative session. Shapiro, whose administration has remained open to a voter ID bill, restated that position during a recent debate with his Republican opponent, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity.
"It’s got to be based in fact," he said. "And it’s got to ensure that we are enfranchising voters in Pennsylvania, not disenfranchising them."
State House Democrats have not sent the Senate a proposal, despite one GOP-led bill receiving bipartisan support in a May committee vote. Senate Republicans have pushed to enact voter ID through an amendment to the state constitution, which would require approval from each chamber in back-to-back legislative sessions before going to voters in a referendum.
Regulating data centers
Despite a flurry of action during budget negotiations, just one measure aimed at regulating Pennsylvania's ballooning data center industry reached the governor's desk this year -- a provision, passed as part of the state budget deal, that mandates data centers using more than 10 MW of electricity annually disclose their energy and water usage.
Lawmakers in the state House have passed a wide range of other proposals on the issue, including measures that would prevent data center developers from accessing certain tax breaks, allow local governments to temporarily pause development, and repeal a major data center sales tax exemption.
During the last week of this session, the lower chamber passed a bill that would prevent data centers from obtaining public utility status, a change that would keep them from being able to preempt local zoning ordinances.
The state Senate hasn't passed any of those measures. The upper chamber also initiated fewer data center bills. The most significant, passed in June, includes measures to repeal the sales tax exemption and limit data centers' access to a tax break program that applies to certain "opportunity zones."
State Sen. Tracy Pennycuick (R., Montgomery) previously told Spotlight PA that she hoped her chamber would consider a bill she introduced that would ban the use of secretive nondisclosure agreements between public officials and data center developers. The bill was never called up for final consideration.
State Rep. Carl Walker Metzgar (R., Somerset), a rank-and-file legislator, told Spotlight PA that he thought data centers were a "great example" of the legislature's failures to compromise.
Between the conservation, land use, energy, and local control issues embedded in the data center debate, "we should be able to get that done," he said, adding, "I guess the politics sometimes gets in the way of that."
Regulating automatic license plate readers
Before leaving Harrisburg this week, the state House passed a bill with wide bipartisan support that would regulate government entities' use of automated license plate readers, like Flock cameras, to investigate crimes. It would also circumscribe government and private entities' use of the machines' collected data, only allowing the practice in an investigation involving a vehicle belonging to someone with an outstanding warrant for a homicide or other felony in the commonwealth.
It's unclear whether the bill will reach a vote in the state Senate before the end of the year.
Lawmakers from both parties rushed to introduce legislation to address the automatic license plate reader, or ALPR, industry this summer, after the technology became a hot-button bipartisan issue for people concerned about privacy and the cameras' increased use by law enforcement.
Both gubernatorial candidates spoke out in opposition to them this year.
However, policymakers and public safety lobbies, like those for police chiefs and district attorneys, differ on the right approach, from strict rules to a total ban on the technology. Details about data retention and when the technology can be used also divide legislators.
State Rep. Rob Kauffman (R., Franklin), the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, which first considered the bill advanced by the full chamber this week, told Spotlight PA that "we absolutely do not want [ALPRs] to be used as a surveillance state."
But he argued that the last-minute effort this fall was rushed. In committee, he and other Republicans voted no on the Democratic-sponsored bill over process concerns. Kauffman said he also would not support a total ban on the tech.
The issue, he said, "requires far more digging in and deep compromise."
The prime sponsor of the state House bill, state Rep. Jenn O'Mara (D., Delaware), acknowledged on the House floor that more work on the issue is likely. She said her bill was positioned as "a real solid piece of legislation" for the future, if it doesn't reach the governor's desk this year.
Rewriting Pa.'s second-degree murder law
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in March that the commonwealth's mandatory life sentences for second-degree murder were unnecessarily cruel and therefore unconstitutional.
The court gave lawmakers until July 24 to rewrite the sentencing laws -- a deadline they missed.
State Senate Republicans, with the support of some Democrats, the attorney general, and other law enforcement officials, passed a bill in June that would impose a 35-year mandatory minimum sentence for most adults convicted of second-degree murder. But some House Democrats, including a key committee chair, said that was too harsh.
Republicans in the state Senate criticized Democrats in news conferences and campaign messaging in the following weeks, accusing them of failing murder victims.
House Democrats passed their own bill in July that wouldn't include any mandatory minimum sentences but retains life without parole as a possible maximum sentence. It would ask the state sentencing commission to establish any guidelines on future sentences, and included a provision allowing incarcerated people to apply for medical release, which Republicans targeted to argue the bill was soft on crime.
The parties have not reached a deal.
Last month, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear a case -- brought by Jerome Coffey, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 1994 -- on whether the justices' March ruling applies retroactively to the more than 1,100 people already serving their convictions.
Tightening the government's gift ban
A perennial ethics issue in Pennsylvania government also received new life this session, but fell short of final passage.
Last month, the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee unanimously passed a bill that would ban lawmakers from receiving gifts in most circumstances. The committee vote came after the chamber's Republican minority threatened to force action on the issue through a procedural maneuver. The bill never received a floor vote.
The committee vote was the first legislative action on a gift ban since October 2021, when a GOP-controlled state House committee unanimously passed a similar ban. It never advanced further.
Unlike many states, Pennsylvania law places no monetary limits on gifts, only banning them in cases where the gift is intended to influence an official’s actions. Pennsylvania House rules also specifically ban cash gifts, though those are allowed in the Senate.
The law does require all lawmakers to report gifts of over $250 in value and hospitality, such as meals or travel, worth more than $650 on their yearly ethics disclosure.
Spotlight PA has previously reported on lawmakers accepting gifted trips to Israel and Taiwan, tickets to sporting events, and donations of food and school supplies for constituent events.
However, the existing thresholds, alongside lobbyists' ability to spread costs among multiple clients to keep gifts below reporting limits, may "result in a substantial skewing of the public's perception of money actually spent on public officials and employees," a 2019 state House study found.
While public records listed nearly $40,000 in gifts, meals, and other hospitality to lawmakers in 2018, the study found that the actual total was closer to $1.5 million.
A spokesperson for state House Democratic leadership did not reply to requests for comment. Pittman did not say if he'd support or oppose a gift ban bill when asked at a September public event.
But he said that he'd "be very willing to look at efforts of transparency and figure out where loopholes may or may not be."