Dear Neighbor,

My office had a wonderfully busy May here in Chester County, and the start to June next week means that it’s back to budget month and extended House and Senate session in Harrisburg.

First up though, we re-opened St. Peters Road! Thanks to funding and prioritizing our project with PennDOT, St. Peters Village is again connected in a way that makes sense, with engineering to rebuild and prevent erosion damage going forward.

Thank you to all the community members who showed up for the official opening on May 18. You demonstrated exactly why this village and this road are such a treasure!

Later in the very same week, Rep. Bridget Kosierowski and I hosted an in-depth forum on the modern healthcare realities facing our region and Pennsylvania.

We brought together leaders in healthcare delivery, innovation, and policy and held our first Future of Healthcare summit in partnership with Penn Medicine and the University of Pennsylvania.

We chose to do this because healthcare in America is facing a crisis. Just last year, 149,000 Pennsylvanians exited their healthcare insurance plans on PENNIE. The crisis is due to larger issues with access and delivery, rising costs, federal cuts that hurt families, and a system that was simply not built for the world we live in now. In the face of this crisis, it’s essential that we in Pennsylvania reimagine healthcare, explore how we can innovate and invest, and then lead the way forward.

We chose to start the conversation. Now we must keep it going and act. Thank you to every presenter, attendee and partner who showed up, shared your insights, and will continue to play a critical role in the next steps. This is how change begins.

Finally, June is on the horizon. June is unofficially the “budget month” in Harrisburg because the General Assembly and governor’s office pick up negotiations over the many fiscal bills that make up Pennsylvania’s total public spending plan for 2026-27.

All of the budget and related bills are considered due with the governor’s signature by June 30, as the fiscal year starts July 1. Too often the process is not finished by June 30, but we stay in negotiations until it is.

This year the House has already passed this year’s budget bill to the Senate, where it awaits their consideration.

House Bill 2400, which is positioned to be this year’s General Appropriations bill, calls for a $53.3 billion budget that provides for affordable housing, investments in healthcare – including covering a portion of federal funding cuts to Medicaid – and education, safe communities and economic development opportunities to keep people, businesses and jobs in Pennsylvania.

Specifically for healthcare, it includes:

Rural hospital support, including $36.7M for supplemental payments to maintain direct financial support for rural hospitals across the commonwealth.
Medicaid Care Delivery, boosting the Department of Human Services’ budget, with a significant portion of the $1.36 billion state funding increase directed at covering Medicaid and expanding healthcare delivery.
Housing, health stability, connecting Pennsylvanians experiencing homelessness to housing and services to reduce hospital and ER use.

For education, it would provide:

$565 million increase to address adequacy and help kids, schools and taxpayers left behind for too long.
$50 million increase in basic education funding and $50 million increase in special education funding to ensure every school succeeds.
Saving school districts and taxpayers $75 million by returning payments sent to charter schools so they reflect actual costs to teach kids.

As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, I will remain a part of all discussions over the state budget next month and beyond, and I will keep you updated from the Capitol.

Sincerely,