A group of Pa. lawmakers didn’t take pay during the budget impasse. A bill would force all to abstain

All 12 have since received all the pay they were due during the nearly six-month impasse.

Burns, Jones, Miller, Rossi, and Sappey did not reply to requests for comment. Those who did respond to Spotlight PA had different definitions of when the impasse ended which influenced how many checks they declined.

Hogan worked for former U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), who believed in not taking pay during periods of budget impasse. He declined only his July paycheck after speaking with leadership, who he said told him he could consider the budget finished after that month.

“I thought I had done what I was supposed to do with it,” Hogan told Spotlight PA.

Shusterman, a small business owner, said she and her colleagues went back and forth over how to define the relatively unusual impasse. For instance, she noted that one last budget item, funding for the University of Pennsylvania’s Veterinary School, is still in limbo.

Her bar for defining an impasse was a lack of any measure that would “prevent the commonwealth from running,” she said.

Cooper said she declined pay under the terms of her proposed bill. Under her proposal, pay would be suspended if the legislature fails to pass a main appropriations bill by the June 30 deadline. Lawmakers would be retroactively paid when that bill passes; Cooper’s legislation does not require the passage of accompanying code bills to resume pay.

In October, with the appropriations bill passed but code bills still in limbo, Cooper said she decided to take her pay “to show other legislators that I was following my bill” and rally support for her proposal.

Warren told Spotlight PA that he initially considered the impasse to be over after the state House passed the main budget bill in early July, which was why he deposited that paycheck a few weeks later.

However, on second thought, Warren, an attorney, decided to withhold his pay due to the lack of code bills.

“If service organizations and entities that are supported by state funds are in a position that they have to wait for funding, I can too,” he told Spotlight PA.

In an email, Brennan, also an attorney, told Spotlight PA he picked up his checks but did not deposit them until the day after Shapiro signed the last code bill in December.

“In the Brennan house, there was much rejoicing,” he said. “It’s not the same as what the community colleges, nonprofits, and so many others felt, but there is a cost to having things grind to a halt for that long — interest, carrying costs, opportunity costs, frustration, stress, etc.”

“It definitely put things in perspective and gave a greater sense of urgency,” he added.

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