A Recap of Legislation from Pennsylvania's General Assembly

In recent months, Deltek’s General Government Service team has been researching and recapping information on relevant legislation from selected state. To date, the team has researched the states of Washington, Illinois, Virginia, California, New York, Texas, and Florida. To continue, the team most recently looked at legislation from Pennsylvania’s General Assembly. Unlike the other states covered thus far, the Pennsylvania General Assembly meets throughout much of the year and is still in session.

Introduction

The Pennsylvania General Assembly is a bicameral body composed of the 50 seat Senate and 203 Member House of Representatives. The state legislature convenes on the first Tuesday of January each year. As mentioned, the General Assembly has a nearly year-long session, and the last meeting day of the year will be November 13, 2018.

Relevant Legislation

There has been a fairly large amount of legislation introduced in this session for the General Assembly thus far, with the House having 2579 bills introduced and the Senate with 1227. At this point, a number of bills in both houses are still pending that may have an impact on companies interested in doing business with the Commonwealth. Additionally, there are bills that, should they pass, may affect firms working in technology more generally.

Senate Bill SB 914, if it is passed, would establish the Office of Information Technology and create the Information Technology Fund. This stems from issues the Commonwealth has had keeping IT costs under control, and would reduce these costs through the consolidation of IT functions and resources. The bill would also establish the Information Technology Fund, which would be managed by the Office specifically for IT needs.

There are also some bills still pending that could affect various administrative aspects of procurement and contracting with Pennsylvania. HB 1167 could impact small and disadvantaged businesses working in the state, as well as HB 1760, which addresses diverse and disadvantaged business participation in the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program.

SB 387 introduces some changes that would limit the political contributions of contractors interested in working with the State. Vendors that bid for a contract would be required to submit information on political contributions made to an elected official holding a state office. HB 1969 was introduced that would prohibit Commonwealth agencies from entering into contracts with persons who engage in boycotts against or divestment from Israel.

As noted, Pennsylvania is the only of the states covered that is still in session for 2018. Although much of this legislation referenced above has not yet been passed into new law, it remains to be seen how the session will conclude and if any of these pieces of legislation are enacted, as well as what that will bring for companies doing business with the state.

Source: Pennsylvania General Assembly