SEPTA is staring down the barrel of a serious financial crisis if state lawmakers don’t come through with the $213 million the transit agency needs to keep running most of its current operations, with painful service cuts and fare increases in store for riders if negotiations fail.
That should be a unifying point for Philly-area legislators, Republican and Democrat alike, as SEPTA is a lifeline for many businesses, residents and schools in the area. But so far, at least, just two local elected officials have publicly made funding SEPTA a requirement for voting yes on Governor Shapiro’s proposed FY2026 budget.
Senator Tim Kearney of Delaware County, the Southeast Delegation chair for the Dems, is the only Democrat to say he’d vote against a budget that didn’t fund transit, during recent remarks at a rally at the Chester Transportation Center.
Meanwhile, Northeast Philly Republican and SEPTA Board member Representative Martina White at a recent transit funding rally called on her colleagues to reject any budget that doesn’t adequately fund SEPTA. As reported by NBC10:
Republican state Rep. Martina White from Northeast Philadelphia was the lone Republican lawmaker to speak at the rally — making it clear she backed SEPTA funding and urging colleagues to do the same, saying the government had to work together.
“I urge every member that is standing here today to not support a state budget unless there is SEPTA funding in it,” said White.
These kinds of public statements from Republican members matter because there are a few different layers to the politics.
With the state budget deadline fast approaching on June 30, PA House Democrats have advanced a transit funding bill with their one-seat majority in the General Assembly, and the attention has now shifted to the state Senate, where Republicans hold a two-seat majority. If all Senate Democrats can manage to hang together on this, they’ll still need to find at least three Republican votes to get to a majority.
Bipartisanship … for SEPTA?
Four Republican Senators are considered more gettable than others because SEPTA or Pittsburgh Area Transit’s service areas touch their districts. That group includes Senator Frank Farry of Bucks County, Senator Joe Picozzi of Northeast Philly, Senator Tracy Pennycuick of Montgomery County, and Senator Devlin Robinson of suburban Pittsburgh. Farry and Pennycuick are both up for reelection in 2026.
Senator Farry has already gone public with his support for transit funding, even going on a transit tour with Governor Shapiro last year to highlight the funding issue. Farry has been pushing for expanded games of chance legislation as a potential legislative trade. As Levittown Now reported:
State Sen. Frank Farry, a Republican from Langhorne Borough, said he knows the importance of “robust public transit” and expressed his interest in seeing how his fellow lawmakers would lay out funding SEPTA during budget negotiations.
In the final act, transit funding will need to win a majority vote in both Chambers of the state legislature. But before that, Senate Republican leaders Kim Ward, the President Pro Tempore, and Joe Pittman, the Majority Leader, will need to be persuaded to let a bill move forward at all.
The more individual Republican senators who go on the record publicly in support of transit funding, the clearer it will become that the votes are there to pass something, shifting more of the pressure onto Republican leadership to act.
Just what do these Senators need to get to level up to Rep. White’s level of public support? It is hard to understand the influential people shrinking away from playing a more decisive role in this moment.
Joe Picozzi for the win?
According to attendees of some recent legislative office visits in Harrisburg, organized by the Transit for All PA campaign, newly elected 29-year-old Northeast Philadelphian Picozzi has been an effective communicator and determined advocate for transit funding behind the scenes with members of his caucus.
While that’s encouraging to hear, Picozzi also hasn’t yet uttered the magic words “I’m voting yes on transit funding” anywhere in the media or in his public appearances. And he also hasn’t joined White in pleading with their Southeastern PA colleagues to vote against a budget that leaves out SEPTA. The more that senators like Farry, Picozzi and Pennycuick can follow White’s lead on this, the clearer it will be that the votes exist to pass something.
I guess not everyone is this type of freak, but if I were in Picozzi’s shoes, sitting near the veto point of critical must-pass legislation like this, I would be living my best life. I would be thinking about a clear, ambitious, but achievable list of asks for what it would take to get my vote. I would be going on TV, writing op-eds, and making speeches about how I will be a yes vote for the bill under these conditions. This is a time when you can get something you want. But just what do these senators need to get to level up to White’s level of public support? It is hard to understand the influential people shrinking away from playing a more decisive role in this moment.
Right after getting elected, Picozzi went on NBC10 and talked about how he wants to see more frequent Regional Rail service in his district and elsewhere with every 15-minute service. And at a SEPTA hearing earlier this year, he asked about what SEPTA is doing with their real estate to diversify their finances and grow ridership. All of this could be on the table. Or maybe there are other service asks, or safety-related asks, or efficiency ideas not yet covered in the extensive efficiency initiative already underway at SEPTA.
Listening to the comments from Republican elected officials from other regions of the state can be maddening, since a lot of the rhetoric gestures vaguely toward waste and malgovernance at SEPTA. Meanwhile, pound-for-pound, SEPTA is arguably the most efficient large transit agency in the United States, doing more with fewer dollars than any of its peer agencies. SEPTA’s Efficiency and Accountability Program announced another $91 million in savings from ongoing efficiency initiatives just last week. Sometimes the problem really is mostly money, but this is something most state-level Republicans are primed to disbelieve.
There are any number of reasonable things to ask for from a Republican perspective that might not be my first choice, but senators near the veto point for transit funding should actually make some asks, and then publicly commit to voting yes if SEPTA can do what they want.
White is treating this issue with an appropriate ethic of responsibility because she’s on the SEPTA Board and she knows all this stuff, and we should expect the Philly region’s other Republican representatives to act with similar urgency and responsibility.
Where are the Democrats on transit?
On that note, there seems to be something strange going on with PA House Democrats’ messaging on transit funding. Several House Democrats have been all over social media sounding the alarm about transit funding, attending rallies and events about it, and doing their part to help raise awareness of how important this is.
That’s all important work and has been helpful for raising the priority status of this issue compared to last year. But, to my knowledge, no House Democrat has publicly gone as far as White has in saying she would vote no on a budget that doesn’t fund transit. Meanwhile, as Senator Kearney of Delaware County, said at the Chester rally:
SEPTA supports the economic health of our entire Commonwealth, but the brunt of these proposed service cuts and fare hikes would fall directly on the families, workers, and communities who rely on it every day. We’re standing up to protect the riders who keep this system moving, and to demand the investment our region and Commonwealth deserves. We will not vote for a budget that does not fully fund public transit.
With a one-seat majority, a handful of Democratic defectors could sink the budget if it ends up passing on a party-line vote.
The trouble may lie with the House Democratic majority’s priorities and the reality of where transit funding sits in their priority stack, as demonstrated by their revealed preferences.
Last year, transit funding was left out of the regular budget to be dealt with separately in a special session in the fall. That effort failed, and Shapiro ended up flexing highway funds to transit, using his executive authority and the cooperation of the federal government — something we probably can’t count on again this year with the Trump administration in power.
Senate Republicans took a lot of the public blame for the failed negotiations last fall, and rightfully so. But a statement from Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward responding to Shapiro’s flex move touched on a real dynamic with the Democratic caucus’s priorities.
Gov. Shapiro and House Democrats prioritized education over mass transit by approving the largest budget increase ever for a traditional education system that continues to trap Philadelphia’s kids in failing schools. The bottom line is this: Pennsylvanians – especially those in the southeast – are losing out, not because of divided government, but because Pennsylvania Democrats have chosen to focus their priorities and spending on one area alone.
Without endorsing the tasteless diss on Philly schools, Ward does have a point that House Democrats chose to spend most of their political capital on a big increase in education spending last year. And I’m not here to say that was the wrong choice, per se. But the grim reality of divided government between the House and the Senate means that Democrats are very limited in how many big spending requests they can make each year, and last year their priority was education and not transit funding, despite the emergency nature of the transit issue.
This year, transit seems to be a higher priority than it was in 2024 and has certainly attracted a lot more attention from elected officials after the scary brush with disaster last fall. But it’s an open question as to how far Southeastern House Democrats are willing to go based on their collective reluctance to threaten a no vote on the budget.
Pound-for-pound, SEPTA is arguably the most efficient large transit agency in the United States, doing more with fewer dollars than any of its peer agencies.
Let the negotiations begin
Sources with House Dem members say transit supporters shouldn’t read too much into this, and that issuing a public ultimatum in this way could be counter-productive to getting a deal done. While the June 30 deadline seems very close to casual observers, Harrisburg watchers say the negotiations are really just starting, and they are delicate.
Budget gamesmanship over transit is also potentially harmful to Democratic Party unity on the budget, since all the members have individual priorities for bills, grants, and other considerations beyond transit, and a show of force from the Southeast Delegation could alienate their colleagues from around the state. This could force party leaders to chart another path to a majority vote for the budget that works around the pro-transit holdouts instead of accommodating their demands.
State-level political professionals certainly have more insights into the ways of Harrisburg than I do, but the failure to deliver a win on transit funding two years in a row has me worried. I’ll take effective backroom politicking over expressive politics every day of the week if that’s what gives us the best shot at winning, but I worry about trusting the Democratic caucus on this when we’ve seen how transit has lost out to other caucus priorities in the past.
And this is more emotional than rational, but it drives me insane that even with Speaker of the House Joanna McClinton and Majority Leader Matt Bradford hailing from the Philly region, major Southeastern priorities like the transit funding emergency still aren’t able to pull rank.
The broader Philly region has the political heft to get a funding deal done, at least in theory, but whether they can pull it off depends on everyone with a stake in this making it a true priority, and spending political capital to match.
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