Pa. House passes Shapiro's transit proposal, with more money for roads; measure heads to Senate

With two weeks until the state budget deadline, the Pennsylvania state House agreed Tuesday to commit nearly $300 million of tax money to public transportation agencies. It's a key part of Gov. Josh Shapiro's budget proposal, and was recently amended to include half a billion dollars for infrastructure upgrades sought by Republicans.

The measure, House Bill 1364, would increase the amount of sales tax revenue earmarked for the state's 52 public transportation systems.

"This bipartisan bill injects critical dollars into public transit across Pennsylvania and adds new funding to repair roads and bridges — because folks rely on both to get where they need to go," Shapiro said in a statement after the 107-96 vote. "It's time for the Senate to get this funding done in this year's budget."

Republicans have argued that transit spending only benefits urban areas, rather than the communities where their constituents live. Those concerns prompted an amendment to the bill last week, a change that added $500 million in bond money to cover road and bridge infrastructure around the state. (Another amendment last week would establish an advisory commission to review future transit spending.)

But the addition seemed to have done little to change minds in the GOP: The vast majority of Republican legislators still voted against the bill Tuesday, despite more of them approving the recent infrastructure add-on.

How they voted

Allegheny County House members voted along party lines, with every local Democrat in favor of the plan and every Republican opposed. Democrats Frank Burns of Johnstown, one of the House's most conservative Democrats, and Tarah Probst of Northeast Pennsylvania both broke with their party.

Seven GOP House members, mostly from the Philadelphia area, also voted with the bill's Democratic sponsor and Transportation committee chair, Ed Neilson.

Discussion of the measure was constrained Tuesday, with Neilson and Republicans submitting remarks for the record without delivering them. They did so to speed up a voting process that has recently been devilled by technical problems with the House's vote-counting equipment: House members had to rise or remain seated to register their vote on the bill.

But in an interview earlier this year, Neilson said, "In public transit there is a formula, but the formula is based on an agreement that was made probably 20 years ago."

This is the fourth time since Shapiro took office in 2023 that the Democrat-controlled chamber has approved Neilson's transit-funding idea. And House Democrats were widely expected to pass it again: The state's two largest agencies, Pittsburgh Regional Transit and Philadelphia's SEPTA, have warned that without state help, fare hikes and service cuts are inevitable.

Legislation heads to Senate

The legislation now goes to the Republican-led Senate, and it's unclear if other conservatives from the Philadelphia suburbs would join their House colleagues.

Though the measure is important to Shapiro's budget proposal, other ideas to fund transit systems have been floated: Allegheny County House Democrats say adding fees to ride-hailing services and increasing fees to car leases and rentals could support public transportation. In the Senate, Pittsburgh's Lindsey Williams and Philadelphia's Nikil Saval introduced identical bills to do so on Monday. Both chambers have yet to discuss the legislation in their Transportation committees.

A tax on so-called "skill" games, long debated by Harrisburg lawmakers, could also figure into the transit funding equation this budget season. Proposals to regulate the machines found in corner stores, restaurants and veterans halls range from the manufacturer-support 16% up to more than 50%, which casinos must pay on their slot machine revenue.

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