“As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, it is my responsibility to not only assess the budgetary needs of various state agencies but also to hold those agency heads accountable for their actions,” Owlett said. “To be frank, I am frustrated by many of the responses we have gotten, especially as it relates to the handling of COVID patients in nursing homes and the vaccine rollout. We will continue to push for answers on these fronts.”
Following are some of the highlights of Owlett’s exchanges with agency officials, as well as some notable lines of questioning from fellow legislators:
Owlett
questioned Department of Community and Economic Development Secretary
Dennis Davin about the agency’s handling of its business waiver program
during the initial business shutdown. Specifically, he and others were
trying to get answers on the criteria used to determine who got waivers
and who didn’t. Watch it here: https://s3.us-east-2.
Owlett
questioned Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam about the
administration’s misleading claims earlier this week about having
completed vaccinations in all the state's nursing homes, when in fact
they had not. Watch it here: https://s3.us-east-2.
Owlett
also questioned Beam about the governor’s glaring omission of vaccine
deployment from his 2021-22 state budget address, as well as the need
for a nursing home death investigation and more information about how
and where vaccines are being distributed in counties across the state.
Watch it here: https://s3.us-east-2.
Also
during the hearing with the Department of Health, Rep. Natalie Mihalek
of Allegheny County pressed for answers about the administration’s
policy that required nursing homes to admit COVID-positive patients.
Watch it here: https://s3.us-east-2.
Rep.
Meghan Schroeder of Bucks County asked for an explanation of the
administration’s expansion of Phase 1A vaccine eligibility when they
knew the state had nowhere near the supply needed to meet the demand.
Watch it here. https://s3.us-east-2.
Other issues addressed by Owlett during the week’s hearings:
Asked
Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding to help get politics OUT of
the ag budget and posed some pointed questions about the agency’s
enforcement of COVID-19 restrictions on the state's struggling
restaurant owners: https://s3.us-east-2.
Asked
General Services Secretary Curt Topper about his agency’s handling of
the state’s stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE): https://s3.us-east-2.
Questioned Secretary of Transportation Yassmin Gramian about the ongoing difficulty with obtaining documents from PennDOT: https://s3.us-east-2.
Questioned Gramian about an ATV pilot project with which PennDOT is being uncooperative and throwing up roadblocks: https://s3.us-east-2.
Questioned
Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Patrick McDonnell
about the impacts of the administration’s plans to enter the state into
the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) without legislative
approval: https://s3.us-east-2.
The budget hearings will wrap up next week with the departments of Education, Labor and Industry, and Human Services, as well as the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges and the governor’s budget office.
For video of completed hearings and a schedule of the upcoming sessions, as well as live streams of upcoming hearings, visit www.PAHouseGOP.com.
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