A simple two-sentence text has been popping up on people’s smart phones this year, informing them they owe money for previous trips along the Pennsylvania Turnpike — even if they haven’t driven on the toll road.

“To prevent further fees totaling $106.00, please settle the due amount of $10.60,” one text read, before listing a website where the person could supposedly pay the overdue bill.

It’s a scam. The texts are not coming from the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and some of the people who receive them have never traveled on the turnpike.

If you click on the link, it will take you to a bogus website that asks for your credit card information in order to steal your identity, said Crispin Havener, a Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission spokesman.

The problem started in March when residents in Illinois began receiving the texts, supposedly from the Illinois Tollway. Scammers illegally obtained random lists of phone numbers, then sent texts to those numbers claiming to be from a particular state’s toll or turnpike commission, depending on the area codes, Havener said.

“It’s not a security breach,” Havener said. “There are no issues with our customer accounts.”

What is smishing?

Federal Bureau of Investigation officials call it “smishing” because the cybercriminals use short message service, or SMS, to go “phishing” for people’s credit card information.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 2,000 complaints from at least three different states in the month after these texts first appeared on people’s smart phones.

“We saw that initial batch of texts in March and April, then last month we received a new bunch of complaints, and people seem to be receiving them again now,” Havener said.

What should I do if I get one of these texts?

Anyone who receives one of these texts should following these steps, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center:

• File a complaint with the center at www.ic3.gov.
• Check your account using the toll service’s legitimate website. In Pennsylvania, it’s www.paturnpike.com/e-zpass.
• Contact the toll service’s customer service phone number. In Pennsylvania, it’s 877-736-6727.
• Delete any smishing texts received.
• If you clicked any link or provided your information, take efforts to secure your personal information and financial accounts. Dispute any unfamiliar charges.

Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNBruce.

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s multibillion-dollar surplus will soon be halved according to a projection by a state budget watchdog, the result of a long-running structural deficit combined with a growing list of obligations competing for public dollars.

The commonwealth’s recent $47.6 billion budget increased spending by 6%, with more than $1 billion in new money going to public schools in response to a court ruling that found Pennsylvania underfunds poor districts.

However, the state brought in just $44 billion in net revenue last fiscal year. So to afford the spending plan, lawmakers are reaching into the state’s sizable cash reserves, which sat at roughly $13.6 billion as of June 30, according to the Independent Fiscal Office.

That total was roughly split between the state’s rainy day fund — the equivalent of a long-term savings account — and the state’s General Fund. The latter is essentially Pennsylvania’s checking account.

Lawmakers used $3.3 billion from the General Fund to balance the recent budget, according to the IFO. That money will be spent over the course of this fiscal year.

Pennsylvania will completely deplete the General Fund surplus by the next fiscal year, the IFO estimated based on expected spending, in-progress tax cuts, and revenue projections.

That will force lawmakers to tap into the rainy day fund to balance the budget due less than a year from now if they don’t find new revenue or cut spending.

While fiscal good fortune built the current surplus, Pennsylvania’s policymakers have historically struggled to create new revenue sources as the state’s budget increases annually. This year, Gov. Josh Shapiro pitched regulating slot-like skill games and legalizing recreational marijuana to raise millions in needed dollars, but the divided General Assembly didn’t adopt either.

The rainy day fund currently contains more than $7 billion, up from just $22 million only a few years ago. This meets the level that experts say states should keep on hand. Pulling money out of that fund would require a level of bipartisan support that’s been elusive.

The IFO’s estimate assumes a 4% increase in state spending in the 2025-26 plan, much of which would pay for contractually required increases in state workers’ wages and benefits and federally mandated human services spending. It assumes education would get only a modest, 2.4% increase in line with inflation.

No one who helped draft the spending plan is saying much about what’ll happen next year to sustain the state’s spending.

Christina Fonseca, spokesperson for state House Appropriations Committee Chair Jordan Harris (D., Philadelphia), said in an email that the IFO report made “certain assumptions to arrive at its conclusions regarding the status of both the Rainy Day and General Fund balances” that the caucus disagreed with.

Fonseca said the caucus supports a financial statement from the Governor’s Budget Office. However, she did not send the statement when asked and did not respond to follow-up questions about what assumptions the caucus disputed.

Matt Knittell, executive director of the IFO, acknowledged the gap between his agency’s projections and the governor’s. Either way, the difference is a matter of degree and not of substance.

“We both agree there is a substantial deficit,” Knittel said in an email.

For months, Democrats have downplayed the IFO’s recent projections by arguing that the state’s revenue has consistently grown. Speaking to lawmakers during a spring budget hearing, Budget Secretary Uri Monson said the state has averaged almost 4% annual revenue growth over the past 25 years.

“We are very conservative on the projections of where we’re going to be but the actual results have been growing surpluses,” Monson said.

Further spending is likely. Legislative Democrats wanted to appropriate $5.1 billion to underfunded school districts over several years in this budget but only secured $500 million.

Addressing a brewing crisis in public transit funding is a top priority for Shapiro and Democrats this fall. Systems received a one-time boost of $80 million in the recent budget; Shapiro had called for $1.5 billion over the next five years.

To afford these priorities, they’ll need a lot of new cash — either from new taxes, a booming economy, or another source — or make cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Spending down the surplus has short-term implications as well, said state Rep. Seth Grove (R, York), minority chair of the Appropriations Committee.

The state collects interest on its big surplus — by spending those dollars, that revenue will disappear. The state earned almost $780 million in interest from its cash reserves in the just-finished fiscal year, according to the Department of Revenue — nearly double projections.

Meanwhile, if the general fund gets too low during the year, the state will have to borrow money to pay employees and run other key government functions. While the state isn’t currently in danger of running out of operating money, it has in the recent past. That came with consequences, including a downgraded credit rating.

Grove noted that deficits are less manageable for states than they are for the federal government. “Unfortunately at the state level, we can’t print money,” Grove told reporters early this month.

The structural deficit — where annual costs exceed annual revenue — isn’t new.

For a decade-plus, Pennsylvania has consistently spent more than it brings in under Democratic and Republican leadership alike. Neither party has mustered the political will to find the right combination of spending cuts, tax increases, or growth-inducing policies to correct the issue.

Instead, the commonwealth’s budget has raised one-time revenues by expanding gambling, taking on debt, or using budgetary tricks that shift costs around to balance the books each year.

Even the current surplus — built on stimulus dollars and unexpectedly high tax revenues — hasn’t led to consistently smooth budgetary sailing, with three straight late budgets in a divided Harrisburg.

State Senate Republicans are typically more open to increased spending than their GOP colleagues in the state House. That dynamic played out again this year, with the upper chamber passing the budget deal with more than two-thirds support. The plan fell a dozen votes shy of the mark in the lower chamber amid widespread GOP opposition.

Grove, along with his fellow York County Republicans, called the spending plan “reckless” in a news release soon after it passed.

But fellow Republican and chief budget negotiator state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman said the budget was a compromise — a product of the realities of divided government.

Pittman had a recommendation for unhappy state House Republicans: “I think they need to get a seat at the table by retaking the majority.”

BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to Spotlight PA at spotlightpa.org/donate. Spotlight PA is funded by foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results.

Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
CNN
 — 

Carol Carty misses something in today’s Republican Party and searches for it in her music choices.

“I was young when (Ronald) Reagan was around, but I really miss the ’80s,” Carty said. “I do. I’m now turning on ‘80s songs to go back to the ‘80s more than ever. I do feel like, in my lifetime, the Republican Party has changed with Donald Trump and not in a good way.”

Carty is an attorney who lives just across the Philadelphia line in suburban Montgomery County.

“It was very Republican when I was growing up,” Carty said in an interview in her Bala Cynwyd home. “And it is Democratic now.”

Carty pines for the GOP that drew her in at the age of 18: a party defined by lower taxes, less regulation, respect for the courts and the Constitution. She wishes the GOP would support reasonable gun safety measures, and let women – not politicians or judges – make difficult decisions about reproductive rights.

“A ‘Never Trump’ Republican,” Carty said. “That is how I would best label myself.”

And yet as recently as a few weeks ago, she planned to vote for Trump — and it’s not out of the question that she still might.

She backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. So why the openness to Trump this year? Carty is exasperated with Biden over inflation, immigration and more. She watched the June debate and found herself in a place for eight years she thought impossible.

“When Biden was on the ticket, I was going to vote for Trump,” Carty said. “Now it is a harder call, just because I am not a fan of Donald Trump. … I want to give Kamala Harris a chance because she deserves that chance.”

Carty is part of a CNN project, All Over the Map, to track the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of voters who are members of key voting blocs and who live in critical areas within the battleground states. Her views are telling, all the more so because they were shared by other supporters of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Reagan Republicans in our group. Harris’ ascendance on the Democratic ticket is shaking up the race in the pivotal suburbs. But the belief that she is to the left of Biden creates a quandary for Republicans who do not want Trump back in the White House but have policy and personal doubts about Harris.

“I definitely want to learn more,” Carty said. “I want to hear from Kamala Harris, what exactly have you been doing as vice president? Not what the administration has been doing in general. … What were her goals? Did she achieve them?”

That Carty isn’t ready to commit to Harris despite her profound disagreements with Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is a snapshot of the vice president’s suburban challenge: her path to victory is clearer if she can win over a good share of moderate Republicans who voted for Biden because they viewed him as a centrist or disagreed with Trump’s reaction to the Covid pandemic or were exhausted by his tweets and other chaos – or all of that.

In Carty’s case, Harris may be getting an assist from Trump’s running mate.

“I’m not a cat lady,” Carty said, some toys belonging to her 5-year-old daughter stacked in the corner of the room. “I was a childless dog lady. Because I didn’t meet the right person until I was over 40 years old. And it’s by the grace of God that we naturally had a child. So I could very well be one of those childless women and I found the comment insensitive and narrow-minded,” she said, alluding to 2021 remarks from Vance.

Carty objects to Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, and his constant attacks on judges and courts. “We have to remember the Constitution,” she said. “Does he really promote domestic tranquility?”

And whereas Vance has been a disappointment to Carty, she’s pleased with Harris’ pick to share the ticket.

“She just picked an excellent running mate,” Carty said of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. “So I am going to listen to them. I’m going to really hear what they have to say. … So I have a reason. Essentially not to vote for Donald Trump. He’s like the last resort.”

While Carty has her reservations, and looks forward to a Trump-Harris debate, she notices a clear shift in recent conversations with friends.

“Definitely I have more friends saying they’re leaning toward Harris,” Carty said.

Cynthia Sabatini lives in Delaware County. Like Carty, she remembers when the suburbs were very different.

“My street was rock-ribbed Republican,” Sabatini said in an interview at her home in Media, Pennsylvania. “Now you have to shake a stick to find the Republican.”

The suburban shift, at the presidential level anyway, began earlier than most Republicans tend to remember. George H.W. Bush was the last Republican to carry the suburban Philadelphia collar counties in a presidential race – back in 1988. But the Democratic advantage has become more lopsided in recent years, and in 2020, was especially pronounced.

“I watch his campaign rallies,” Sabatini said of Trump. “It is all about him. It is not about the country.”

Close elections are complicated, and it is overly simplistic to focus on any one subgroup. But one of several to watch, in the battleground states decided by narrow margins, are voters who describe themselves, like Sabatini, as “never Trump.”

In 2016, she wrote in a Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine. Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania that year. In 2020, Sabatini voted for Biden because, she said, “I didn’t want to see Trump elected after the chaos of the previous four years.” Biden won Pennsylvania and the White House.

“I didn’t vote for him in 2016,” Sabatini said of Trump. “I didn’t vote for him in 2020. And I don’t plan to vote for him in 2024.”

The question is, will she vote for Harris or cast another write-in ballot?

“I promised myself I will keep an open mind,” she said.

Sabatini said she has read things that worry her about the vice president.

She mentioned immigration policy, and reports Harris is tough on her staff.

“I have some preconceived notions about her,” she said. “I want to find out for myself if the rap on her, as I read it, is correct.”

So far, Sabatini said Harris “certainly has injected enthusiasm into the Democratic base and she brings an energy that certainly Biden couldn’t bring to the campaign. … There’s been, you know, quite a pleasant surprise.”

But Sabatini said she needs to hear more, on economic policy, on immigration and on leadership.

“I am particularly interested in the debates,” she said. “I want to see up close and personal how she answers the questions put to her.”

Joan London is, like Sabatini, inclined at the moment to write in a Republican she finds acceptable.

“If Donald Trump or JD Vance really says something so outrageously offensive beyond some of the things that he has said, that could drive me to vote for Vice President Harris,” said London, an attorney whose clients include municipal governments in Berks County, a more rural, Republican County just outside Philadelphia’s suburban collar.

“But it is highly unlikely,” London said. “She just doesn’t represent my values and my beliefs about policy.”

London became a Republican at the age of 18, inspired by Reagan. But she switched her registration to independent earlier this year, repulsed by Trump. Just before the switch, she cast a GOP primary vote for Haley.

There was “zero chance” she would vote for Trump anyway. But London said the Vance “cat lady” comments made her even more proud to have left Trump’s GOP.

She is married, no children or pets. Her home is decorated with family photos – her husband, her sister and her niece.

“I’ve led a very full life that way, and to say I don’t have a stake in the future of the country, I had some difficulty with that,” London said of Vance’s comments. “All I could think of Senator Vance is, are you going to tell Condoleezza Rice or Ann Coulter or Elizabeth Dole they are miserable cat ladies? I don’t think so.”

Michael Pesce, too, has questions and looks forward to debates and other campaign events to see how Harris steps out of Biden’s shadow and lays out her own ideas.

But Pesce is one Reagan Repubican ready to commit, because his opposition to Trump is unwavering. The Vance picked “reaffirmed” his take on Trump.

“He could have gone with somebody who was more centrist but he went with someone who is a sycophant, who is exactly like him,” Pesce said in an interview in Newtown, part of Bucks County. “Do I want JD Vance to be my president? It’s more of the same, so no.”

When Biden stepped aside, Pesce wished for “more of an open debate in the Democratic Party as to who they were going to run. But it is what it is.”

“I’m still not going to vote for Trump regardless,” Pesce said. “I’m not excited about voting for Kamala Harris, but it’s better than the alternative.”

When we first met Pesce three months ago, just after his GOP primary vote for Haley, he said he would support Biden despite reservations about some policies and about his age. After the June debate, Pesce was quick to say he thought Democrats should look for a new candidate.

“No way,” is how he puts Biden’s chances of winning Pennsylvania after his debate performance. “There would have been no way.”

Harris, he believes, has a chance and like the others we visited with, Pesce said the vibe of the campaign has changed completely.

“I think having a younger candidate is going to make a difference,” Pesce said. “I think the energy she’s brought to the campaign, the fact that she’s a woman and women’s rights are going to be a big deal here in Pennsylvania. And I think that’s kind of where Pennsylvania will go.”