PA Lawmakers Are Keeping $399M of YOUR Tax Dollars for Themselves

Rock the Capital

1 day ago

6 min read

...and it's growing every year!

Every month, the Governor's Budget Office publishes a Status of Appropriations report for the General Fund. Its year-end report for June 30, 2026, shows that the Pennsylvania legislature (the House, the Senate and their support agencies) finished the 2025-26 budget year with a $399 million surplus, up from $388 million the year before and it’s not for you.

The legislature spent $485.5 million in 2025-26. That means its surplus could cover nearly 10 months of spending, and it has been about that size for years. Here is where the money stands:

	Available	Spent in 2025-26	Unspent June 30, 2026
New 2025-2026 money	$495.8M	$333.4M	$162.5M
Carried over for years	$388.3M	$152.1M	$236.2M
Total	$884.2M	$485.5M	$398.7M

Here is what we believe every Pennsylvania taxpayer should be concerned about.

How the surplus keeps growing

1. The PA legislature gives itself more money than it needs every year. It approved $495.8M for itself and spent $485.5M, so the surplus grew by about another $10M. Year after year, it has set its own budget above what it spends. That money comes out of the General Fund, so it can't go to schools, tax relief, or our state's Rainy Day Fund.

2. The money never goes back. Legislative funds sit on the "continuing" ledger, which means unspent money stays with the legislature indefinitely. Executive-branch agencies, by contrast, returned about $777M of unspent prior-year money to the General Fund this year (the "lapses" column). Every legislative line shows $0 lapsed. The legislature has written itself an exception: its accounts are ‘non-lapsing,’ so unused money stays put, while most state agencies must give theirs back.

3. The report shows no plans for the money. Executive agencies record "commitments," meaning money promised under contracts or purchase orders, and the legislature records $0 in commitments in every account. Nothing in this report, or in any other report we are aware of, shows that the $399M is set aside for anything.

Where the money is sitting?

4. About a third of the surplus sits in two House "Special Leadership Accounts." This is the most striking find.

House Republican account: $97.9M unspent. Every year from 2016-17 through 2025-26 shows $6–7M appropriated and $0 spent, and some balances date back to 2010-11. This year the caucus spent about $6.8M, all of it from the 2009–2015 balances, while $7.2M of new money was added.
House Democratic account: $34.3M unspent. It works the same way: about $16.5M spent this year from the oldest balances, while new money keeps being added each year.
Together, the two accounts hold $132M out of a $399M surplus. They are controlled by caucus leaders. What do they pay for?

5. Other accounts look funded well beyond what they spend.

Legislative Data Processing Center: $37.8M appropriated this year, only $4.0M spent, and $28.5M left over from earlier years.
IT Modernization: $5.1M this year with $0 spent, plus $6.9M unspent from earlier years.
Lines with $0 spent this year:
- House Appropriations Committees: $3.6M each for Republicans and Democrats.
- Speaker's Office: $2.9M.
- Senate Employees of the Chief Clerk: $3.7M.
- Capitol Restoration: $3.2M.
- Independent Fiscal Office: $2.3M. This one could be a timing issue in how it gets paid.
Legislative Audit Advisory Commission: $285K appropriated, $7,500 spent. This is the body that oversees the audit of the legislature itself.

What’s hard to see

6. The biggest spending is the least explained. Caucus Operations is $254M of the $496M appropriated this year, just over half: House about $155M and Senate about $99M. These are lump sums, nearly all spent; neither this report nor any other we can find gives detail on what they buy.

7. Some expenses are being moved between years. Nine prior-year accounts show negative spending, about $3.6M in total. Examples are House Incidental Expenses at –$1.3M and Senate Appropriations (R) at –$0.6M. These are credits or costs re-coded from one fiscal year's account to another. They may be routine, but we think they make the year-by-year numbers harder to rely on.

A follower asks: where did an extra $4 million come from?

A Rock the Capital follower who has really done their homework sent us this question:

"How does an extra $4M of appropriations magically appear? From where and why? In the June status report, an extra $4M showed up in three House line items, above what was in the 2025-26 budget bill:

R Caucus: +$1.44M, from $72.98M in the budget bill to $74.42M
D Caucus: +$1.56M, from $79.06M to $80.62M
Speaker's Office: +$1.00M, from $1.91M to $2.91M

And while they were so noble as to not increase their allocations for 2026-27, those three line items got to keep their extra $4M."

Where it came from: it's a supplemental appropriation passed inside the 2026-27 budget bill itself. Page 1 of the June report says so: supplemental appropriations to 2025-26, "signed into law as part of the General Appropriation Act of 2026 on July 12, 2026, are reflected in the June 30, 2026, Status of Appropriations." That 2026 budget bill is HB 2400, signed July 12. This explains what she noticed:

Why only the June report shows it: the law was signed after the fiscal year ended on June 30, and the books for that year were held open until July 24.
Why there's no ESN memo or separate bill: the money is a section of the main budget act, HB 2400, in the part covering the July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026 fiscal year.
The Governor’s February proposal didn’t include the $4M; the enacted budget does, for both years.

The follower’s second question, why, is the zinger. Why did the House add $4M, after the year had ended, to accounts that didn't need it?

The House Republican caucus spent $67.1M of $74.4M, so it would have had $5.9M left even without the extra money.
The House Democratic caucus spent $74.8M of $80.6M, so it would have had $4.2M left.
The Speaker's Office spent $0 of this year's money and already had $4.4M unspent from earlier years.

And about that "noble" decision not to raise the 2026-27 budget: flat only means flat compared with the year they had just topped up. Compared with the original 2025-26 budget and the Governor's proposal, the House's 2026-27 money is up $4M. The add-on now carries forward into every future year.

Do they really need a $399M cushion (a.k.a. slush fund)?

First, a note on the numbers. The Budget Office closed the books before reconciliation was finished, so some adjustments will be posted in 2026-27 (page 1 of the report says so). And this report shows how much money is sitting there, not why.

The legislature’s standard defense is that it needs a reserve to stay independent of the governor during PA’s infamous budget impasses. Look at what that reserve actually does. When the budget is late, lawmakers and their staff keep getting paid, while schools, counties and nonprofits wait for their money. The people responsible for passing the budget are the only ones who never feel the pain of not passing it.

The legislature’s own history undercuts that defense:

The worst impasse didn’t come close. During the nine-month 2015-16 standoff, the longest in memory, the reserve still held $118.4 million. Today’s $399M is more than three times that.
Even its defenders called for a limit. In 2010, Sen. Pat Browne, who later chaired Senate Appropriations, argued that lawmakers should keep a few months of cash and that “most of that money besides that reserve should be returned to the general fund.” The legislature now holds about ten months.
Governor Shapiro wanted it gone in 2010. Then-Rep. Josh Shapiro chaired the commission that audits the legislature. He proposed eliminating the surplus entirely and giving legislative leaders emergency spending authority during a stalemate instead.

And the impasse argument doesn’t explain what’s actually in these accounts:

The pile keeps growing. It went from $388M to $399M this year. A cushion that only grows isn’t a cushion. It’s a habit.
Fifteen-year-old money is not an impasse fund. House leadership accounts still hold money appropriated in 2010-11 and never touched.
A $4M top-up with no emergency. The House added $4M to 2025-26 after the year ended, when there was no impasse to ride out.

If the legislature truly needs a reserve, it should say how large it needs to be and what it is for, write that limit into law, and return the rest to taxpayers. Bills to do exactly that were introduced in 2009 (HB 1058 and SB 10) and 2011 (SB 1000), and none passed. Sixteen years ago, Josh Shapiro had a plan to end this. Governor Shapiro could ask again.

What Rock the Capital is doing next

Our Right-to-Know requests have been denied by the Legislative Audit Advisory Commission, the body meant to oversee the legislature's audit. We will file Right-to-Know requests with the House and Senate, since the law directly covers the legislature's financial records. We will also ask why they needed the extra $4M after the year ended when it could be spent on improving Pennsylvania.

What you can do

Ask your state representative and senator: how big does the legislature’s reserve need to be, and will you take action to return the rest? Find your legislators HERE.

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