Lancaster County commissioners hint at property tax increase in call for state budget

• By Tom Lisi/LNP | LancasterOnline

Lancaster County commissioners may break a 12-year streak of not raising property taxes next year, according to language in a resolution they’re set to approve today, and they’re directing blame to the governor and state lawmakers.

All three county commissioners said at a Tuesday work session that they hope a symbolic resolution they plan to pass today will help pressure Gov. Josh Shapiro and the General Assembly to end the state budget stalemate as soon as possible.

With no budget in place since July 1, counties have gone two months without state funding for a host of human services required by law. The services include child protection, mental health and drug addiction treatment services, from counseling to physical therapy to residential programs.

The freeze forces counties to choose whether to continue funding the services out of their own pockets, a move that could risk hurting their long-term financial health.

“Severe (state budget) delays in the past have threatened to increase property taxes for county residents, with the potential for this to occur again in 2026,” the resolution up for approval today reads.

The resolution comes a few weeks before county commissioners begin public discussions about next year’s budget. The commissioners typically kick off those discussions in late September or October, when they conduct hearings for organizations that receive annual grants from the county.

But the specter of the county raising taxes for the first time since 2013 was looming before state officials failed to pass an on-time budget. Internal projections obtained by LNP | LancasterOnline last year showed the county was on track for a $30 million budget gap in 2026.

For 2025, the commissioners used several stopgap measures to cover growing personnel costs. That included instituting a four-month hiring freeze, taking 317 job positions unfilled at the time off the payroll and using $5.4 million in cash reserves.

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READ: More Pennsylvania counties step up to keep social services afloat during budget impasse

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Tough decisions

During the state budget impasse, Parsons said at the Tuesday work session, the county has continued to pay providers from its own reserves to ensure services continue.

Counties and school districts, which also have been hit hard by the delay in state funding, have taken different approaches to the crisis depending on their size and financial health.

Some counties, such as York, Lebanon and Cumberland, have pledged to fund services with cash reserves until officials in Harrisburg cut a deal or they run out of cash. Others, including Berks, have said they’re not going to risk the financial pain in most cases. The onus to keep services going then rests with the contracted organizations that deliver the services — many of them small nonprofit agencies.

Lancaster County Chief Clerk Larry George and Budget Director Paul Landers said at the Tuesday work session that they are exploring options to present to the commissioners on how long, and to what extent, the county could continue to cover for the missed state payments. The county agencies that rely most on those funds are Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, Children & Youth Services, the Drug & Alcohol Commission and the Office of Aging.

Those options touch on existing contracts already approved by the commissioners, so they do not need to be discussed publicly, Michael Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the commissioners office, wrote in an email Tuesday.

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READ: Lancaster County officials brace for early effects of state budget impasse

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Tough words

The county commissioners Tuesday were bipartisan in their ire toward state officials, who, they pointed out, have routinely missed their deadline to pass a budget — at least 12 times in the last 25 years, according to the resolution up for approval today.

“A lot of other counties really are in dire straits right now compared to where we are,” Democratic Commissioner Alice Yoder said. “This is a serious issue, and we need a serious resolution.”

Republicans Parsons and D’Agostino said the blame for the two-month stalemate can go around, but the buck stops with the Democratic governor.

“What the governor’s been doing recently has been pointing the finger at someone else,” D’Agostino said. “That doesn’t cut it.”

Parsons used a common slogan of Shapiro’s to criticize him.

“You can’t say you’re the governor who ‘gets stuff done’ if you can’t get a budget done,” Parsons said.