Pennsylvania’s legislative branch has a record balance of nearly $300 million, ostensibly to ensure independence in the event of a drawn-out budgetary showdown with the governor.
According to an audit released this week by a House-Senate panel, the legislative accounts grew by more than $37 million last year over the prior year’s balance of nearly $261.5 million.
That means the legislative reserves are large enough to cover operations for about eight months based on their current combined annual appropriation of $441.4 million.
This latest audit issued by the Legislative Audit Advisory Commission with its $298.5 million balance has been building since 2017 when it was only a third of that amount.
Efforts to get comment from Commission Chairman Pat Harkins, D-Erie County, were unsuccessful on Thursday.
Citizen watchdog Eric Epstein of RocktheCapital called it “unjustified and totally out of control.”
The combined reserves of the House and Senate and a dozen legislative service agencies has nearly doubled over the past decade.
Epstein pointed out the reserves, when added to this year’s $441.4 million appropriation, the two legislative chambers and service agencies total nearly $750 million, potentially putting the legislative branch on track to reach the $1 billion mark by 2030, if not before.
“You can’t justify this,” he said.
Over the years, lawmakers have insisted they need a healthy reserve to preserve their governmental branch’s autonomy in the event of a protracted budget stalemate such as the nine-month impasse of 2015-16, but even that year, they ended up with $118.4 million in reserve.
On occasion, the legislative caucuses have agreed to dip into their surplus accounts to fund items in the budget with the 2019 school safety grants being a recent example.
The breakdown on the amounts held in reserve as of June 30, 2023, has the Senate caucuses sitting on $47.5 million, the House caucuses holding $181.9 million. The legislative service agencies such as the Legislative Reference Bureau, Independent Fiscal Office and Capitol Preservation Committee, have $69 million in reserve.
How much is too much when it comes to these reserves? That’s a question lawmakers have been asked and pondered many times over.
Gov. Josh Shapiro, when he was a state legislator who chaired the advisory audit commission, called for a policy that limited the legislative reserves to no more than two to three months of the Legislature’s operating costs and returned he rest to the state Treasury.
“The attitude needs to change as to who that money belongs to,” said then-Rep. Shapiro in 2009 when the surplus reached $201.5 million. “I think we should be reinvesting close to $150 million, dollars that are sitting in the legislative leadership accounts, into meeting the needs of Pennsylvanians.”
An attempt to get a comment from the governor for this story was not successful.
Shapiro’s Revenue Secretary Pat Browne, who also chaired the commission when he was senator, said in 2010 that he thought three months would be sufficient, which at that time would have been $80 million to $90 million.
Former Gov. Tom Corbett also favored capping the excess money the legislative branch held in reserve.
Epstein said, “This isn’t a reserve. It’s a slush fund. It’s unconscionable to hold $300 million in it.”
He also was critical of the commission’s failure to post an agenda in advance of its meeting, as well as the its timing, on Tuesday, when access to the Capitol was limited because Shapiro used the Rotunda to deliver his budget address.
