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It’s that time of year, yet again: Here comes the budget

  • Emily Previti/PA Post
FILE PHOTO: Shown is the Pennsylvania Capitol building Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015, at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa.

 Matt Rourke / AP Photo

FILE PHOTO: Shown is the Pennsylvania Capitol building Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015, at the state Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa.

From The Context, PA Post’s weekday email newsletter:

Dave Davies is officially retired from WHYY’s newsroom. Dave’s encouragement and support for younger, less experienced broadcast journalists — including me and others who aren’t even in his newsroom — are beyond striking and appreciated, and will be missed. Also, he’s really, really good at his job while being genuine, thoughtful and humble about it. Max Marin’s sendoff piece for Billy Penn does it right. -Emily Previti, Newsletter Producer/Reporter

Budget talks about to begin

  • Lawmakers return to Harrisburg today, when budget season officially opens. Negotiations didn’t drag on last year and aren’t expected to this year either. While there won’t be too much action during week one, WITF’s Katie Meyer tells us what we can expect in this story.

  • I will be watching the issue of funding state police by charging towns that rely on the PSP for law enforcement. Will it happen? Or, at least be seriously considered during budget negotiations? Hasn’t happened before, according to my experience covering it during the current administration (the latest is that legislation now exists that would impose the fees) and archived stories published prior to that.

  • There’s also the matter of the state splitting the bill with counties for voting machine replacement. Gov. Tom Wolf has proposed that, but the legislature must agree before it’s official. My colleague Ed Mahon and I will be keeping tabs on that as part of our ongoing coverage of the issue. Story one — about counties’ progress and which companies are cashing in — is here.

Best of the rest

Panelists discussed potential solutions to the rural broadband crisis as a part of the Influencers Project hosted by the Centre Daily Times at the State Theatre.

Min Xian / WPSU

Panelists discussed potential solutions to the rural broadband crisis as a part of the Influencers Project hosted by the Centre Daily Times at the State Theatre on April 24, 2019.

  • The Center for Rural Pennsylvania is releasing a report on broadband access today. WPSU’s Min Xian will be covering. Catch up now on this issue with some of her previous reporting.

  • The weather has been super aggressive lately. PennLive’s Wallace McKelvey enlightens us on all the factors behind the recent succession of violent storms in this explainer.

  • StateImpact Pennsylvania, WESA and The Allegheny Front are heading to court to fight an order against publishing information in a document that’s part of a lawsuit against a natural gas driller. The paperwork was supposed to be filed under seal, but was inadvertently made public and obtained routinely through the Washington County prothonotary’s office. This post lays out the situation.


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