HARRISBURG — With just four days remaining until SEPTA’s service cuts go into effect Sunday, there is diminishing hope that lawmakers in Pennsylvania’s divided legislature will be able to reach a deal to stop them.
Top legislative leaders and Gov. Josh Shapiro remain at an impasse over how to fund mass transit — as well as on an overall state budget, now eight weeks past its July 1 deadline.
» READ MORE: Everything we know about how SEPTA could change on Aug. 24
While the leaders are publicly hopeful they can reach a deal in time to reverse the cuts — which go into effect the day before the academic year begins for the Philadelphia School District, where 52,000 students rely on SEPTA for transit to and from school — Senate Republicans, House Democrats, and Shapiro have yet to find a compromise on how to fund it.
Here’s what you need to know.
There’s still deep disagreement over how to fund mass transit
House Democrats, the Senate GOP, and Shapiro remain at odds over their plans to fund mass transit and stop SEPTA from cutting 20% of its service on Sunday. And there has been no sign that anyone is budging.
Senate Republicans maintain that their plan, which would offer $1.2 billion over two years to Pennsylvania’s mass transit agencies and rural roads and bridge infrastructure until leaders are able to hammer out a recurring revenue stream for transit, is the best solution.
» READ MORE: Is there actually $1 billion sitting in a fund for SEPTA? Explaining the Public Transportation Trust Fund.
Under the GOP proposal, the money would come largely from the Public Transportation Trust Fund, which was created to serve as a capital and emergency fund for the state’s mass transit. A small additional portion would come from interactive gaming revenues. Republican senators argue that only $1.3 billion of the funds in the PTTF are allocated to future projects, meaning there is more than $1 billion sitting in the account, which continues to grow by $400 million each year.
However, House Democrats — as well as SEPTA, whose board is led mostly by Democrats — say the Senate GOP’s plan would raid mass transit agencies’ capital accounts meant for upkeep of the systems, divert some of the necessary funds away from those projects to road and bridge repairs, and ultimately make public transportation in Pennsylvania less safe.
Democrats believe their plan to increase mass transit’s share of the sales tax by 1.75 percentage points from its current share of 4.4% to 6.15%, initially pitched by Shapiro as part of his annual budget proposal, would give SEPTA what it needs: a dedicated, recurring revenue source. Senate GOP leaders have rejected this option — despite House Democrats’ passing some form of it five times over the last three years — at every turn, concerned that increasing transit’s share of the sales tax would ultimately require a tax hike down the line or a cut to another public good.
And in the week since lawmakers from both chambers were last in Harrisburg, they have only dug their heels in further, with escalating attacks from the Senate GOP that claim that Democrats are “manufacturing a crisis,” while House Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to defund mass transit and purposefully hurt the Philadelphia region, which is the state’s biggest economic engine.
» READ MORE: The SEPTA funding debate digs up Pennsylvania’s perennial rural-vs.-urban divide
Lawmakers in the House and Senate remain on a 24-hour call, meaning they must be ready to return to Harrisburg with a day’s notice. However, that call is unlikely to come before Sunday. As of Wednesday, neither chamber was scheduled to return until September, weeks after the SEPTA transit cuts go into effect, and days after a 21.5% fare increase begins on Sept. 1.
Top GOP senators say they already sent Democrats their best offer
Top Senate GOP leaders have said in the week since passing their mass transit bill — which was promptly killed last Wednesday by a House committee — that House Bill 257 was their best and final offer.
The Senate had been reticent to pass a stand-alone mass transit bill, preferring to negotiate it as part of a final budget deal. But, leaders said, the urgency in Southeastern Pennsylvania to avoid SEPTA’s deep service cuts and fare increases motivated them to move their separate mass transit funding bill.
President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R., Westmoreland), in an interview Wednesday, said the only way she sees the Senate passing mass transit funding before Sunday is if the House reconsiders the Senate’s proposals and sends them back to the chamber with a compromise that won’t raise taxes.
“We are standing as a wall, protecting all of Pennsylvanians’ wallets,” Ward said.
Beth Rementer, a spokesperson for House Democrats, said in a statement that lawmakers are “extremely concerned” about the looming cuts and continue to work with all parties to reach a solution on “a crisis that Senate Republicans acknowledge.”
“Our most recent bipartisan-passed mass transit bill fully funds SEPTA and all of our mass transit systems, puts accountability measures in place and invests in roads and bridges — using available resources and without raising taxes,” Rementer added, in reference to a bill passed by the House last week that included GOP oversight priorities. “Senate Republicans need to do their job and get to yes on a real plan, one that doesn’t sacrifice safety for service.”
SEPTA needed the funding by Aug. 14
SEPTA said it needed to receive state funding — or at least the promise of it — by Aug. 14 to forestall the planned service cuts. That didn’t happen.
SEPTA general manager Scott Sauer testified before the House Rules Committee last week that the service cuts and fare increases will go into effect as planned in the absence of additional state funding.
“We will continue with those cuts as scheduled,” Sauer said then.
“We have to wait for a proposal that is both immediate and sustainable,” Sauer added. “Two years is not the sustainable solution we were hoping for. We need something that’s going to carry us into the future.”
SEPTA projects a $213 million operating deficit that top officials attribute to chronic underfunding, pandemic declines, and inflating expenses.
If a funding solution is assured to SEPTA after Sunday, officials have said, it will take at least 10 days to reverse the cuts and resume normal service.
Shapiro would need to find a magic solution on his own
There remains some hope among public transit advocates and lawmakers alike that Shapiro will have an emergency lever to pull, as he did in November 2024 when he flexed $153 million in federal highway funding as a “stopgap” to prevent service cuts at the time.
But flexing federal funds is likely no longer an option under President Donald Trump’s administration, which would need to approve such an action and would have little motivation to do so to help the Democratic-led city.
It’s unclear what other option Shapiro may have for using his executive powers to block the cuts from going into effect.
Ward said she believes Shapiro already has a solution he could use, without any legislative approval: the Public Transportation Trust Fund, which is ultimately under the purview of the governor’s office.
Shapiro, for his part, said at a news conference Tuesday he has remained at the negotiating table to try to bring House Democrats and Senate Republicans together to try to stop the cuts from happening, citing the tens of thousands of Philadelphia schoolchildren who depend on SEPTA to get to class.
But the onus remains on the two chambers to reach a deal and send him a bill, he added.
“Now’s a moment where both sides need to make some tough choices,“ Shapiro said. ”Compromise is hard, especially in a polarized environment that we find ourselves in. They got to make tough choices and they got to remember this isn’t just some political game here in Harrisburg.”
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