HARRISBURG - A state budget that dumps billions in federal coronavirus money into savings, boosts spending on education and provides aid to nursing homes easily passed the Legislature on Friday.

Panther Valley was a winner, along with 99 other low-funded school districts, thanks to a Level Up proposal sponsored by Rep. Mike Schlossberg, D-Lehigh. Tamaqua also received Level Up funding.

About $100 million is earmarked for the state’s 100 poorest districts, partly in response to a lawsuit over school funding that will soon go to trial in Commonwealth Court.

House Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre, said the money will “help lift people up in tough, challenging school districts,” while Schlossberg, D-Lehigh, called it “an acknowledgment of the struggles that our poor schools face.”

“We were able to increase education funding to a record level across the commonwealth and a lot of these dollars are being driven out by the new funding formula which will benefit struggling school districts in Carbon County and throughout the commonwealth,” Rep. Doyle Heffley. R-Carbon added.

The money can be used to hire more educators, upgrade schools that were built more than a century ago and provide students and faculty with 21st century technology.

“The fight for fair funding is far from over and the fight for equity in education isn’t over, but this is a great first step for the most underfunded districts to reach adequate funding,” Schlossberg said.

Gov. Tom Wolf also asked for a sweeping overhaul of the state’s personal income tax to underwrite increases in funding for public education. He initially wanted to cut the tax rate for lower earners and shift a bigger burden to higher earners to raise about $4 billion more each year.

Republicans pushed back on Wolf’s plan as too bloated and excessive, and have for the last few weeks negotiated with the governor on a compromise plan.

Wolf, however, continued to push for a massive new state commitment of $1.3 billion annually for public schools, on top of the $6.8 billion already dedicated, to help fix long-term disparities in how the state distributes aid to the poorest districts.

The final budget plan increases basic education funding by $300 million. Of that, $200 million will be sent through the fair funding formula - which determines a district’s share of state dollars based on factors like enrollment, students learning English or experiencing poverty, and median household income. The other $100 million is “Level Up” funding.

The budget

Supporters described it as a sensible approach that targets spending increases while setting aside a large contingency reserve for when federal stimulus ends in the coming years, but Democratic opponents decried what they saw as a missed opportunity to make significant economic and educational progress.

“It is not the kind of practice we should do, to keep squirreling away money while we go begging to get things done,” said Rep. Mike Sturla, D-Lancaster, who nonetheless supported the $39.8 billion general fund budget plan.

The House vote was 140-61, with a handful of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans joining dozens of the more liberal Democrats in voting against it. The Senate vote was 43-7.

It puts into savings about $5 billion in federal coronavirus relief money and boosts K-12 education state support by $300 million.

“Yes there is money being put away, but this is not austerity simply for austerity’s sake,” said Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford. “We can all see the warning signs - supply shortages, employee shortages. And we understand that yes, a onetime infusion of money into the economy will stimulate it, but only temporarily.”

It pumps $279 million into transportation infrastructure and directs $280 million to nursing homes and similar facilities, both drawing from the federal pandemic money.

House GOP leaders highlighted the $2.5 billion added to the state’s rainy day fund and that much of the rest of the pandemic money was also unspent, calling it a way to prevent future tax increases. The budget contains no tax or fee increases.

“Those people who want to spend every nickel this year are setting us up for a major tax increase in the future,” said Sen. Dave Argall, R-Schuylkill. “This makes sense.”

Among the budget legislations’ other provisions are a ban on the Department of Human Services creating new programs not expressly authorized by the General Assembly, a Republican effort to control costs at the agency. It also would end overtime regulations imposed by Wolf.

About two-thirds of the new spending is on human services, such as Medicaid, while budget makers also had to use $1 billion-plus to fill a hole in the prisons budget created when the state used federal money to cover costs in that department this year.

With federal money and $2.4 billion in coronavirus money in 2020-21, and including additional spending approved later in the year, the current year’s budget is about $39.8 billion, according to Republican staff on the House Appropriations Committee.

By comparison, the 2021-22 spending deal passed Friday amounts to $38.6 billion in the general fund, along with $1.2 billion in federal support that mostly pays Medicaid costs and about $1 billion on coronavirus relief, for a total of $40.8 billion, or an increase of roughly 2.6%.

Some Democrats wanted greater spending to help small businesses, improve public health and fix toxic schools. The budget deal did not include a raise in the state’s minimum wage.

“We have not done anything for the restaurants, for those in our districts who are making $2.83 whether they’re serving a hamburger or they’re serving a steak,” said House Minority Leader Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia.

Sen. Katie Muth, D-Montgomery, said the public will not be happy “when they find out that this money could have been pushed out in a historic, epic way, to invest in the people of Pennsylvania and it wasn’t.”

The budget spends about $370 million in federal aid for continuing efforts to combat the current pandemic.

In education, the budget spends about $350 million in pandemic money on learning loss, summer enrichment and afterschool programs, to help children whose educations were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The budget also funds $30 million in grants to prevent violence, directed to “wherever those dollars are needed,” said House Appropriations Chair Stan Saylor, R-York.

Heffley added that the budget has other benefits.

“This budget allocates funding for 180 new state police troopers and additional money for the Capitol Police in Harrisburg. As we saw in the crime wave that swept the nation last summer, it is important to provide enough resources for those on the front line,” Heffley said.

“We allocated $279 million in federal relief funds for road and bridge projects. There is also additional money to get more people with disabilities the services they need, and Pennsylvania’s nursing homes were allocated $282 million for their ongoing COVID-19 mitigation efforts to protect our most vulnerable citizens.”

“Overall, this budget is good for the commonwealth and Carbon County as we continue to move forward and restart the economy,” Heffley said.

Local school funding from state Budget

• Jim Thorpe Area, $36,792, 1% increase; $93,152 for special education, 9.8% increase, total, $129,944 2.7% increase.

• Lehighton, $360,068, 3.9% increase, with $69,283 for special education, 4.2% increase, total, $429,351 3.9% increase.

• Northern Lehigh, $153,730, up 2.2%; $63,314 for special education, up 4.9%; overall, $217,044, a 2.6% increase.

• Northwestern Lehigh, $117,559, up 2.0%; $33,895 for special education, 2.4%; overall, $151,454, a 2.1% increase.

• Palmerton, $125,694, a 1.9% increase, with $77,980 for special education, 6.2% increase; $203,674 overall, 2.6% increase.

• Panther Valley, $729,969, 8.1% increase, which includes $340,930 from Level Up funding, with $148,047 for special education, for a 11.3% hike, overall $878,016, 8.5%.

• Pleasant Valley, $395,148, up 1.7%; $210,931 for special education, up 5.9%; total $606,079, 2.3% increase.

• Tamaqua, $482,719, up 6.6%, which includes $184,726 in Level Up funds; $112,515 for special education, 7.6%; overall, $595,233, up 6.8%.

• Weatherly Area, $35,960, up 1.1%; $35,884 for special education, up 7.4%, total, $71,844, a 1.9% increase.