Commonwealth Financing Authority of Pennsylvania

The CFA was initially capitalized with a portion of Pennsylvania's Tobacco Settlement Fund revenues under Act 133 of 2004. It also issues bonds and manages revolving loan programs that recycle repaid principal into new deployments. It does not rely on annual General Fund appropriations, which provides a degree of fiscal independence relative to other state economic-development entities.

The seven-member board includes the Secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development (currently Rick Siger, who chairs), the Secretary of the Office of the Budget (Uri Monson), and five members appointed by legislative leadership — one each from the Senate and House majority and minority caucuses, plus a gubernatorial appointee. Current members include private-sector operators like Michael Karp of University City Housing Company and Matt Smith of the Allegheny Conference.

Business in Our Sites provides loans and grants for speculative industrial and commercial site preparation — clearing titles, remediating brownfields, extending utilities, and grading pad-ready parcels. The program targets sites that private developers will not carry without public de-risking, with repaid loan principal recycled into future BOS allocations. It is one of the CFA's highest-volume deployment channels.

No. All seven CFA programs are restricted to projects within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Multimodal Transportation Fund can support freight-rail and port infrastructure with interstate connectivity benefits, but the physical asset must be located in Pennsylvania. The authority covers all 67 counties with explicit rural and Appalachian weighting in programs like Building PA.

The Multimodal Transportation Fund distributes grants and loans for freight-rail spurs, port improvements, aviation cargo facilities, and transit-oriented development. Eligible applicants include municipalities, councils of government, businesses, and economic-development organizations. The program is designed to fill gaps that PennDOT's formula-driven highway funding does not address, particularly in rural freight corridors.

The CFA administers the Clean and Green Energy Program and the Solar for Schools Program, both of which fund renewable-energy installations on municipal and academic properties. The Pipeline Investment Program extends natural-gas distribution to unserved industrial parks and business parks, making it a dual-use infrastructure authority active in both fossil-fuel access and renewable generation.

Both. Programs like Business in Our Sites and Building PA structure their assistance as loans, grants, or loan-grant blends depending on the applicant's financial capacity and the project's public benefit. The loan components are revolving, meaning repaid principal returns to the program for redeployment. Other programs, like the Multimodal Transportation Fund, are primarily grant-based.