Harrisburg Still Owes Us $855,837,937.

Severe funding cuts from 5 years ago affected every school district and student across Pennsylvania with the already beleaguered and overburdened Philadelphia School District and its 130,000 students bearing the brunt of the cuts. And so the fight began and by the end we had in our grasp a bipartisan deal that would restore much of the cuts and adopt a new funding formula. Enter the stopgap measure.

Here’s a look at the five counties of our region, looking at how much was allocated in the bipartisan deal, how much the stopgap delivered, and how much Harrisburg still owes us:

Delaware County
Amount Due: $208,868,160
Released: $99,758,355
Still Owed: $109,109,805

Chester Country
Amount Due: $106,993,383
Released: $51,749,607
Still Owed: $55,243,776

Bucks County
Amount Due: $139,174,646
Released: $66,046,549
Still Owed: $73,128,097

Montgomery County
Amount Due: $116,905,068
Released: $56,006,275
Still Owed: $60,898,793

Philadelphia County
Amount Due: $1,075,659,255
Released: $518,201,789
Still Owed: $557,457,466

That’s more than $855 million in school funding across all five counties we are still owed. If you’re imagining what the region could accomplish with that education funding, stop for a moment and consider what we will do without it.

In what could be a shocking example of defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory for all Pennsylvanians, these wins could suddenly feel like losses unless our legislators return to Harrisburg, do their jobs and pass a full 12 month budget. The fight continues.

At the same time…

don’t we owe it to ourselves to find a way to end this perpetual cycle of dysfunction? Standard & Poor just downgraded the state’s credit rating which will cost us millions in financing fees alone. Lehigh Representative Dan McNeill recently introduced a bill that seems to have struck a chord with voters: stop paying politicians when they blow the budget deadline.

“As legislators and members of the executive branch, it is our basic fiduciary duty and a core function of state government to carry out this obligation. In order to move the budget process forward to timely completion, my bill would incentivize all involved by removing any pay or per diem after the deadline until a budget is passed,” Rep. McNeill said in a released statement.

Help the politicians get their work done on time AND make them more accountable? Could be the win-win we’ve been waiting for.