HARRISBURG, Pa. — Gov. Wolf on Nov. 30 agreed to find a short-term solution to prevent hundreds of state road projects from halting on Dec. 1, the governor’s office confirmed.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation Yassmin Gramian last week warned the projects would have to stop Dec. 1 due to a lack of funding.
PennDOT projected it would lose $500 million to $600 million in 2020 because of reduced travel during the pandemic. Offsetting that revenue shortfall would require the transportation agency to halt hundreds of projects, officials said, as well as stop December bids for 51 future projects.
“Such a drastic reduction in construction dollars would have been devastating to the construction-related industries in Pennsylvania,” Gramian said.
A pause on the projects would place 240,000 construction jobs in jeopardy, according to Pennsylvania Senate Democrats.
PennDOT sought a $600 million bond loan in the state’s annual budget at a Senate Transportation Committee hearing Nov. 23.
However the money was not included in the Fiscal Code passed Nov. 24.
“We’re now about to be forced to suspend hundreds,” Gramian said. “We have done everything we could on our own to avert this situation.”
Pennsylvania state Republicans in both houses accused PennDOT of waiting too long to ask for the funds.
“PennDOT came in at the last hour. To ask the legislature to vote on borrowing $600 million, that’s a lot, and that’s nothing that gets done in a day or two days or three days,” said State Sen. Kim Ward (R-39), chair of the Senate Transportation Committee.
The legislature would need to vote separately on the bond loan in order to pass it apart from the annual budget.
But there wasn’t enough time, Ward said. Monday was the legislature’s last day of this year’s legislative session.
Projects were then set to halt Tuesday, until a conference call was held Monday between the leaders of both houses, the chairs of the respective Appropriations Committees, the governor’s office and PennDOT.
“The governor said he would take care of this short term so the projects would not stop and he took responsibility for making sure everything kept moving,” Ward said.
State Rep. Tim Hennessey (R-Montgomery/Chester) wrote in a statement,
“The request for additional PennDOT funding in the form of an authorization to issue bonds up to $600 million was received late and did not make it into the fiscal code bill in this year’s budget. Today (Nov. 30) is the last day of the 2019-20 legislative session and neither the House nor the Senate will be called back before the start of the new legislative session in January. However, I was a part of today’s conference call with the governor in which he said he would work to find the revenue needed to fund the agency into the new year when we can revisit the matter.”
The governor’s office wrote in a statement,
“Legislative Republicans asked the governor to fix the problem created when language on bonding authority was not included in the enacted Fiscal Code. The governor agreed to explore a short term solution, and the administration is looking at potential ways to make sure that construction projects do not stop.”
No details were released on how the governor would find the funding.
The respective Democratic and Republican caucuses in both houses will work toward a long-term solution when they reconvene in January, Ward said.