The Warren County Commissioners are calling on the General Assembly and Governor Shapiro to prioritize their responsibilities and work collaboratively to finalize a budget without further delay.
This appeal comes in response to repeated budgetary delays that have significantly disrupted county operations and imposed undue financial strain on county taxpayers.
Warren County Commissioner Tricia Durbin outlined how the state budget impasse will directly impact the county. Those impacts range from Human Services and behavioral health funding to probation funding, some salary funding and grant dollars.
“Anything that comes from the state is gone,” she said.
“With the legislature recessed until after Labor Day, counties face growing risks to critical services for seniors and children, while our mutual constituents grow increasingly frustrated by the ongoing delay,” the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania said in a letter to the governor and General Assembly.
“We are not telling you how to do your job; we are simply asking you to do your job. Our residents cannot pay for the Commonwealth’s inaction.”
In the last 25 years, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has missed at least a dozen budget deadlines, causing significant disruption.
In those past instances, funding has been retroactively reimbursed but Durbin cautioned that the reimbursement would only come if a specific program’s funding is included in the state budget.
Warren County Fiscal Director Bret Baillie said that the county - unlike others across the state - is not currently in a position to have to borrow funds to cover the funding gap but acknowledged that might be a possibility should the impasse continue for an extended period.
The Pennsylvania House and Senate are currently recessed, leaving counties to guess what state funding levels might look like.
Durbin said that party shouldn’t matter in instances like this that “put constituents at risk of financial harm.”