Putting cows on the front page since 1885.
Putting cows on the front page since 1885.
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Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said Sept. 15 that his administration will fight a legal ruling last week that rejected some of the restrictions imposed on state residents and businesses in the fight against COVID-19. Speaking a day after a federal judge threw out restrictions on the number of people who can gather at events and rejected the administration’s power to unilaterally shut down businesses, Wolf cited the fact that two other judges had supported his position. “There’s no sense debating a ruling that will be appealed,” he said in a news...
For Pennsylvania lawmakers who see the state’s rising property taxes as an intolerable burden on the state’s fixed-income residents, Feb. 3 was a day to try to rally support for repealing the taxes. It was also a day to lament the previous efforts that have failed to bear fruit. A number of state senators and representatives took part in a rally Monday on the Capitol rotunda steps calling on their colleagues to pass legislation that would do away with property taxes in the state and find alternate sources to fund education. Several methods hav...
Pity the commuter or trucker who must steer his or her vehicle onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike to get to work each day – the toll rates that critics say are already exorbitant are about to get even worse. Reeling under massive debt payments that were supposed to be covered by tolls on Interstate 80, the ailing turnpike administration is set to roll out even higher toll rates starting Sunday, Jan. 5. For a passenger vehicle traveling from the westernmost toll plaza in Warrendale, just outside Pittsburgh, all the way across the state to the e...
Less than 24 hours after the historic impeachment vote sharply split Pennsylvania’s U.S. congressional delegation, the very same lawmakers were virtually united in praise for the passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The new treaty, if it passes in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, will take the place of the 1990s-era North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and will govern trade relations between the three countries going forward. The U.S. Senate had passed the USMCA last year, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held off b...
A group of state lawmakers meeting with first responders in Indiana, Pa., is seeking to have a conversation on how the state can bolster its ranks of volunteer firefighters and emergency medical technicians and how helping with higher education costs can accomplish that. According to the Pennsylvania Fire and Emergency Services Institute, the state’s community fire districts are down to about 50,000 volunteers, compared to 300,000 in the 1970s. The state House Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee heard testimony late last w...
Pennsylvania’s proposed Taxpayer Protection Act took another step June 3 in what promises to be a long and arduous road to passage. In the first week of June, the Senate Finance Committee advanced the proposed constitutional amendment, over Democratic opposition, that would restrict how much state spending could grow in any given year based on certain economic indicators. “This amendment would limit state appropriation increases to the average percentage change in personal income in the Commonwealth for the prior three years, or to the ave...
For years, Pennsylvania state Rep. David Maloney said, he’s been questioned by state residents in the hunting community wondering how the state Game Commission spends the money they fork over for licenses. “Many of the sportsmen statewide have been concerned for several years as to the direction of wildlife habitat, the capacity of wildlife, what has changed, especially in the northern tier of Pennsylvania,” Maloney, R-Boyertown, said at a news conference Thursday, May 30. At the same time, Maloney said, the commission has been looking to th...
When Pennsylvania state Sen. Mike Folmer unveiled a package of election reforms that he and his Senate colleagues were rolling out for the new legislative session, what he emphasized repeatedly was not the fact that the proposals had bipartisan backing, but that they had emerged from conversations with local officials all over the state. “In my first meeting with the county election officials, I was shocked by their comment that no state officials had worked closely with them about possible changes to the Pennsylvania election laws,” Fol...
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has accused healthcare provider UPMC of violating its obligations to patients as a charity organization and is suing to force the nonprofit to come to an agreement with rival Highmark. Highmark, traditionally a health insurance company, found itself at odds with UPMC several years ago after it purchased a hospital group, turning the two nonprofits into competitors. After the medical groups began to turn away patients using one another’s health insurance, the administration of former Republican Gov. T...
In the face of protestations that raising the state minimum wage in Pennsylvania would have negative effects on employment and the economy, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf claims that exactly the opposite is true. “When one million Pennsylvanians finally get a wage increase as a result of this proposal, it will help families, and again, it's going to help our customers and all of our business, because they're going to have more money to spend in the businesses that are out there,” Wolf said. “It's good for the economy. It's good for all of us....
When public-sector employees in Pennsylvania commit crimes related to their work, there are laws in place to ensure that they won’t collect their pension benefits after they serve their sentence. The problem arises when there’s some dispute as to whether a given crime meets the criteria for the forfeiture of a pension. In the case of former Democratic state Sen. Bob Mellow, for instance, there was an outcry in 2017 when the board of the State Employees' Retirement System determined that he could collect his $245,000 annual pension despite hav...
Pennsylvania has seen some modest population growth in the past year, but at a far slower rate than the rest of the country. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics released Dec. 19, Pennsylvania's estimated population count as of July 1 stood at 12,807,060. That's up 17,159 from the same date in 2017, an increase of just 0.12 percent. At the same time, the total U.S. population increased by 0.6 percent, led by Nevada and Idaho's 2.1 percent population spike in a single year's time. Nine...
Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale seemed to relish the fact that, for once, he was approaching a lectern to praise rather than criticize a governmental entity. “As the auditor general, I know, most of the times, I am having a press conference about some problem that we have found somewhere in Pennsylvania,” he said. “But today [Dec. 18], it's much better news – that one of our audits, along with good work at [the Department of Community & Economic Development] and the governor's office, I think, has led to tremendous progres...
