Mar. 02, 2022
HARRISBURG – Today the House Appropriations Committee held its sixth day of budget hearings. The committee heard from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture (PDA) and the Department of Labor & Industry (L&I):
Dept of Ag
Attendance at this year’s Farm Show was down 44%:
This could be a result of Secretary Russel Redding
telling the public, “we do want anybody who considers coming to the farm show to ask themselves is this the year to go? Is that a risk I want to assume?”
The governor’s vaccine cash giveaway cost PDA $440,000:
Redding said the cost will be paid out from the General Fund and other funds.
The governor’s budget eliminates $2 million that was added by the General Assembly to provide more operational capacity for the Animal Health and Diagnostic Commission:
Specifically, the funding supported additional capacity at the Penn State and Penn Vet laboratories to test for avian flu, African swine fever, and other threats to our meat and poultry supplies.
Reps. John Lawrence (R-Chester) and Jesse Topper (R-Bedford/Fulton) shared their concerns with the governor’s proposal to eliminate this funding and the threats to our food supply.
Listen to their comments here.
Dept. of Labor & Industry
One year ago, the halls of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
echoed with the busy signal from Rep. Natalie Mihalek’s (R-Allegheny) cell phone as she attempted to reach the Unemployment Compensation (UC) call center.
One year later, Rep. Mihalek told L&I Secretary Jennifer Berrier that nothing has changed in the last year. She went on to ask what L&I has been doing for the last 365 days other than providing lip service. When Berrier tried to dismiss her remarks as “perception,” Mihalek quickly corrected her.
See the full exchange here.
UC administration has always been funded with federal funding:
While House Democrats attempted to shift the narrative by accusing the General Assembly of underfunding UC administration, even Berrier felt the need to eventually correct them and point out that UC administration is 100% federally funded. The governor’s budget does not propose using state funds to supplement federal funds.
Watch it here.
Fraud runs rampant through the UC system.
Berrier said that there are currently 47,000 open fraud investigations in Pennsylvania.
From the second quarter of 2020 through the third quarter of 2021, Pennsylvania paid out $570 million in fraudulent regular UC benefits.
Over the same period, Pennsylvania paid out $5.4 billion in fraudulent federal UC benefits.
When Rep. Ryan Warner (R-Fayette/Westmoreland) tried to find out whether citizens are notified of potential fraud in their name, the secretary seemed unable or unwilling to answer.
You can see the exchange here.
Rep. Stan Saylor, Chairman
House Appropriations Committee
Pennsylvania House of Representatives