WAYNE & PIKE COUNTIES, PA — As September rolls into October, municipalities across Pennsylvania are faced with a looming specter. This ghost isn’t made of construction paper, or carved from a Halloween pumpkin—it’s the threatened impact of a delayed PA state budget. 

Pennsylvania’s state legislators have a deadline of June 30 to deliver a state budget—but like the villain of any number of long-running slasher series, the budget negotiations just keep going, past any effort to bring them to a close. 

The continuing delay has implications for services across the commonwealth. Until a budget is passed, PA will not distribute state funding, leaving organizations that rely on that funding planning for cutbacks or suspended services.

Bookworm worries 

Libraries in Wayne County are already having to make tough choices, according to Brandt Ensor, system administrator with the Wayne Library Alliance (WLA). The WLA coordinates between Wayne County’s seven independent libraries. 

Starting November 1, Wayne County’s libraries will lose access to Hoopla, a service that allows patrons to check out digital resources such as audiobooks and movies. 

The WLA had access to Hoopla through the Northeast Library District, which provides resources and support to libraries in a five-county area across Northeast PA. According to Ensor, Pennsylvania’s library districts usually get their funding in October, and so were the first to feel the impacts of the delayed state budget. 

“It’s really a popular thing for libraries to have, because it really has everything under the sun in it,” Ensor told the River Reporter, speaking about Hoopla. However, he said, that popularity made it more expensive for libraries, as it operated on a pay-per-use model, in which the more patrons used it, the more it cost to provide. 

While Hoopla proved an early casualty of PA’s budget stalemate, Wayne County libraries won’t see direct impacts to their own budgets until later in the year. 

Libraries usually get their direct state funding in January, said Ensor. However, he added, it takes six to eight weeks for funding to be authorized even after the budget gets passed. 

There will be some service disruptions if the state budget isn’t passed within the next month or two, said Ensor. 

“WLA is just starting to formulate a plan now of what that means if we don’t get [funding] in January,” he said. “Depending on how long [the delay] goes on, it could be catastrophic.” 

Ensor said that without funding, libraries will have to figure out where and how to cut services and stay open. Possibilities include cutting hours, laying people off or even entire libraries closing for the duration of the delay. 

Roughly 25 percent of the WLA libraries’ budget comes from the state, according to Ensor. Around 50 percent comes from the county and the remaining 25 percent comes from private donors. 

However, he said, because the county also gets its own funding from the state, a prolonged state-level delay could affect the WLA’s county support as well. 

Warning calls

As the delay continues, local representatives have raised their voices calling upon the state to act. 

The Wayne County Commissioners passed a resolution on August 28 talking about the consequences of delayed budgets and calling upon the state to take action. The resolution came originally from the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP). 

Speaking on the budget, commissioner Brian Smith said the commissioners, through CCAP, have taken a unified front to contact state representatives and let them know “the anxiety levels we’re all suffering” because of the delay. 

Smith said the county takes its responsibility to deliver an on-time budget every year very seriously. “For us to deliver a budget with fragile funding that, quite frankly, becomes jeopardized by inaction and the inability to create a budget at the state level gives us a lot of heartburn.”

Wayne County Chief Clerk Andrew Seder told the River Reporter that, as of October 8, the county has seen no specific impacts to its operations from the delayed budget. The one exception is that human services contracts have been signed on a six-month basis, or on a month-to-month basis, instead of annually, he said. 

The Pike County Commissioners issued a resolution of their own on September 17, calling on the state to finalize a budget without further delay. 

In the resolution, the commissioners said that delays have cost county taxpayers (as counties have had to borrow money to make ends meet, the cost of which doesn’t get reimbursed by the state) and risks raising county property taxes in 2026. 

Commissioner Christa L. Caceres called the delay “unacceptable,” adding, “Without a finalized budget, we cannot prepare to provide vital services for our residents with our already thin resources.”