What to watch for in Harrisburg in 2025

With both the 2024 election and the 2023-24 legislative session in their rearview mirror, state lawmakers will turn their focus not to politics, but to policy, as the commonwealth has no shortage of issues to address heading into the 2025-26 legislative session. Lawmakers will be formally sworn in on Tuesday, Jan. 7, and the session will begin in earnest when Shapiro delivers his third budget address as Pennsylvania’s chief executive – a speech that will outline some of the governor’s major policy priorities for the year. 

As Harrisburg kicks back into gear, City & State has identified 10 areas of focus to keep an eye on in 2025:

Shapiro’s budget

Gov. Josh Shapiro pitched a $48.3 billion spending plan in 2024 – and the enacted state budget ended up including investments for education spending, economic development programs and various other uses. 

Some items on Shapiro’s 2024 wishlist – like legalizing cannabis for adult recreational use, taxing currently unregulated skill game machines and eliminating medical debt for low-income Pennsylvanians – could carry into his 2025 executive budget proposal.

Shapiro will give his 2025 budget address in the beginning of February at the state Capitol.

Deficit decisions

While it’s not necessarily breaking news that Pennsylvania is facing a budgetary operating deficit over the next several years – with expenditures expected to drastically outpace the revenue the state brings in – a recent report from the state’s Independent Fiscal Office could create a new sense of urgency when it comes to addressing Pennsylvania’s budget challenges. 

In its five-year economic and budget outlook report, published in November, the IFO noted that the state is facing a $3.4 billion operating deficit in the 2024-25 fiscal year, a figure that is expected to grow through 2030. IFO projections suggest that the structural deficit would grow to $6.65 billion by the 2029-30 fiscal year.

“Increased demand for long-term care and phased-in policy changes explain most of the increase in the structural deficit over the five-year window,” according to the report, which also notes that the state Rainy Day Fund’s $10.1 billion balance is “sufficient to offset projected budget deficits through FY 2026-27 if used for that purpose.”

A growing budgetary hole could force lawmakers to examine some new revenue options in 2025, like tax revenue from skill games or recreational marijuana.

What the tech?

Lawmakers have started seeking co-sponsors on various bills and proposals, including on a slate of technology-related bills that seek to regulate the ever-evolving tech industry and its products. 

Codifying consumer privacy rights appears to remain a bipartisan priority heading into the 2025-26 session. Democratic state Rep. Ed Neilson and GOP state Rep. Stephenie Scialabba have once again partnered on legislation that would establish a set of rights for consumers regarding their digital data – including the option to confirm whether a business is processing or accessing their data, the ability to correct inaccuracies in their personal data and the option to delete personal data. 

GOP state Rep. Robert Leadbeter, the chair of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, also plans to introduce his own personal data privacy bill that would limit the collection and storage of personal data by state and local governments while also requiring transparency from businesses about how they collect and share data. In the state Senate, Democrats Maria Collett and Lisa Boscola have introduced a bill that would allow consumers to know what personal information is being collected and prevent the sale of their data and information.

Artificial intelligence regulations could be another policy focus for lawmakers. Democratic state Rep. Chris Pielli has indicated he will re-introduce two AI-focused bills, including one that would create a first-degree misdemeanor penalty for sharing AI-generated content of another person without their consent, as well as another bill that would require disclosure on all AI-generated content – including images, video, text and audio – that is used to sell consumer goods.

On the hunt

Whether to expand hunting on Sundays across the commonwealth has been a hotly contested debate for years – and at least one lawmaker hopes to eliminate the state’s Sunday hunting prohibition in the next session. Republican state Sen. Dan Laughlin has circulated a co-sponsorship memo for a bill that would completely repeal the state’s ban on hunting and trapping on Sundays. 

In the memo, Laughling argues that repealing the Sunday hunting ban will increase opportunities for hunters and trappers in the state, increase hunting license revenue, and boost local economies. 

In the state House, GOP state Rep. Brian Smith plans to introduce legislation that would change the opening day of antlered deer rifle season in Pennsylvania. Opening day used to be on the Monday after Thanksgiving, but was changed in 2019, with the season now beginning on the Saturday after the holiday. 

According to a report from Spotlight PA, the change has irked some rural businesses, which claim that the scheduling shift has changed longtime hunting traditions and, in turn, negatively impacted their operations. Whether lawmakers will change course and buck the 2019 decision from the Pennsylvania Game Commission remains to be seen.

Voting, elections and campaign finance reform

When it comes to election laws, lawmakers haven’t agreed on much since passing a bipartisan bill in 2019 that brought universal mail-in voting to the state for the first time. But that hasn’t stopped them from floating a range of ideas for the 2025-26 legislative session. 

State Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa plans to re-introduce a sweeping campaign finance reform proposal that would set campaign contribution limits in Pennsylvania, seek to curb foreign influence in Pennsylvania elections and require campaigns to attach campaign credit card statements to campaign finance reports. Costa’s Republican colleague, state Sen. Lisa Baker, has also introduced a campaign finance reform proposal that would require people and organizations that make independent expenditures to disclose their top five contributors. 

In the state House, some Republicans want to press pause on mail-in voting, with state Rep. Russ Diamond planning to introduce a constitutional amendment to repeal mail-in voting and House State Government Committee Republican Chair Brad Roae suggesting the state suspend mail-in voting for the next three years. 

Democrats, meanwhile, are seeking co-sponsors for bills that would open up primary elections to unaffiliated voters and create a 30-day period for early voting.

Infrastructure & mass transit 

Infrastructure and mass transit are destined to be top issues in 2025. With the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority facing financial hardship and a $240 million annual budget deficit, Shapiro took action in late 2024,  federal highway funds to help the struggling agency in the short term. 

State Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman said earlier this year that he would like to see the legislature address roadway infrastructure and mass transit together, as a package – with skill game tax revenue potentially being a way to do so – but it’s unclear how Shapiro’s decision to flex federal highway funds could impact the Republican-controlled chamber’s appetite for action on transit and infrastructure. 

Affordable Care Act protections

A set of bills that would have codified patient protections from the federal Affordable Care Act into state law failed to gain consideration from the state Senate to cap off 2024. However, with Republicans in Washington expressing a desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act – former President Barack Obama’s signature health care law – expect House Democrats to make this a priority again in the next session. 

The three bills passed by House lawmakers in October would have enshrined several of the ACA’s protections into Pennsylvania law, including: a prohibition preventing insurers from setting annual or lifetime limits on the cost of care; language allowing adult children to remain on a parent’s private health plan up to age 26; and language preventing insurers from denying or excluding coverage due to preexisting conditions. 

Because those bills died at the end of the last legislative session, House lawmakers will have to move those bills through committee before another floor vote can be held.

Debate over gender policies

Conversations about gender identity, health care for transgender individuals and transgender athletes have become some of the most divisive and personal policy battles in modern-day politics, and several state lawmakers want to take action in Harrisburg. 

In the state Senate, Republican lawmakers plan to re-introduce the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” which would prevent transgender women from participating on women’s sports teams. In the state House, meanwhile, Roae has indicated that he will introduce a bill that would ban sex reassignment surgeries and treatments involving puberty blockers for people under the age of 18. 

Financial relief

Voters frequently said the economy and personal finances were their top issues in the 2024 general election cycle, and state lawmakers will have a chance to deliver in those areas with a new legislative session in Harrisburg. 

Several lawmakers have already pitched some ideas on how to address economic anxieties and put more money in the pockets of Pennsylvania residents. 

GOP state Sen. Greg Rothman has circulated a memo for legislation that would eliminate the state’s Personal Income Tax – which, he writes, could help attract more workers to Pennsylvania and lead to economic growth.

Other lawmakers are eyeing several property tax relief measures, including a statewide property tax freeze for senior citizens, as well as a measure that would create a property tax deduction for homesteads and farmsteads – both of which are sponsored by Boscola. 

Cannabis in the commonwealth

Could 2025 be the year the commonwealth comes around to legal cannabis? With nearly all of the state's neighbors legalizing the drug for recreational use, the pressure is on Pennsylvania to legalize the drug and potentially find a new source of tax revenue at a time when the state faces a looming budget deficit. 

Several legalization proposals have been introduced in recent years, but no major action has been taken on a legalization bill, despite Shapiro including cannabis legalization in his 2024 budget proposal.

There appears to be at least some bipartisan support in the state Senate for decriminalizing cannabis, however, as state Sens. Sharif Street and Camera Bartolotta have joined forces on a bill that would reduce the grading of minor possession crimes from a misdemeanor to a summary offense. 

Meanwhile, Street also wants to update the state’s medical marijuana program to allow medical marijuana patients to grow a limited number of cannabis plants for their own use, which he and co-sponsor Laughlin say “can help ease the cost and accessibility burdens for this important medicine.”