HARRISBURG — The head of Pennsylvania’s Treasury Department said her agency does not have the legal authority to pay the more than $1 million in recent security upgrades at Gov. Josh Shapiro’s privately-owned family home in Montgomery County, saying state rules bar her from using taxpayer dollars to settle those bills.

Treasurer Stacy Garrity — a Republican who will likely be Shapiro’s opponent in the fall general election — told reporters Thursday that state procurement rules do not permit public money to be used for construction work on a non-state-owned property like Shapiro’s house. That work — carried out last year following an attack at the state-owned governor’s mansion in Harrisburg — included a new security system, and landscaping and other maintenance work on the home’s exterior grounds.

“Over the course of nearly four months, we conducted an exhaustive review to be absolutely certain that every aspect was considered and no detail was overlooked,” said Garrity, an independently elected row officer whose office oversees payments of state revenue to employees, contractors, and others.

“It is clear,” she said, “that there is no legal authorization that allows for the use of taxpayer money for upgrades or improvement to the governor’s personal home.”

Garrity said that while the attack on Shapiro was “shocking and deeply troubling” — and that "everyone deserves to feel protected” — the administration’s ask for public dollars to cover the upgrades was unprecedented, and does not adhere to the state’s “fiscal and purchasing requirements that are in place to protect taxpayers.”