Pennsylvania category, Page 120
Pa. GOP strategist running for governor being investigated for fatal crash on Turnpike
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Gerow was involved in a crash on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Chester County this week...
Pa. health officials request $124 million in pandemic-related emergency contracts as GOP calls for oversight
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. Wolf administration officials doubled down this week on pursuing more than $100 million in new pandemic-related emergency contracts as they faced...
Killer says he regrets kidnapping Amish teen, fails to offer motive: ‘I knew better than this’
Justo Smoker said he drank two bottles of liquor the day before he snatched Linda Stoltzfoos in broad daylight off a road not far from her Lancaster County home. Just before the abduction, he had bought beer from Sheetz, his attorney said, who described his client as an alcoholic when...
Pa. Republicans criticize decision to decertify voting machines
HARRISBURG — Republican state lawmakers are criticizing the decision by Pennsylvania’s top election official to decertify the voting machines a sparsely populated county used in the 2020 presidential election. Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid decertified the machines after Fulton County disclosed it had agreed to requests by local Republican...
Pa. Supreme Court: Money from state-forest drilling cannot prop up state budget
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that state officials cannot transfer money from the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources’ Oil and Gas Fund — derived from natural gas drilling on state forest land — to the state’s general fund to help balance the annual budget. The PA Environmental Defense Foundation...
DOJ won’t investigate how Pennsylvania handled nursing homes
HARRISBURG — The Justice Department told Gov. Tom Wolf’s office on Thursday that it has decided not to open an investigation into whether Pennsylvania violated federal law by ordering nursing homes to accept residents who had been treated for covid-19 in a hospital. The letter comes 11 months after the...
Gov. Tom Wolf says his position on voter ID has not changed
LOGANVILLE — With talks on wider election-related legislation at a standstill, Gov. Tom Wolf said Thursday that his position on expanding Pennsylvania’s voter identification requirements has not changed, and that he is against anything that would “suppress the vote.” An expansion of Pennsylvania’s voter ID requirements became one of the...
Pennsylvania Supreme Court says leaving scene of triple fatal is 1 charge, not 3
HARRISBURG — A truck driver who killed three people on an interstate outside Harrisburg can’t be sentenced to three consecutive prison terms for leaving the scene of the crash he caused while driving drunk, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The high court unanimously overturned a county judge’s decision to...
Pennsylvania House Democrat Rep. Margo Davidson charged with theft, is resigning seat
HARRISBURG — A Democratic state representative from just outside Philadelphia issued a statement saying she’s resigning after being charged Thursday with theft and other offenses over her expense reimbursements. Delaware County state Rep. Margo Davidson, 58, was released on her own recognizance after appearing in a Harrisburg district court courtroom....
Nursing homes would provide more direct care to residents under proposed Pa. rule
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — The Wolf administration on Wednesday released a long-awaited update to Pennsylvania’s decades-old nursing home regulations, acknowledging it must raise...
Opioid settlement could funnel $1 billion to Pennsylvania drug prevention, treatment
Pennsylvania could be in line to collect up to $1 billion in two massive multi-state lawsuit settlements with four companies that distributed and/or manufactured prescription opioids. State Attorney General Josh Shapiro, one of the lead negotiators in the case, said the settlements call for three of the nation’s leading pharmaceutical...
Pennsylvania defends new, no-bid deal for contact tracing
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania health officials on Wednesday defended their decision to award another no-bid deal for covid-19 contact tracing after a serious data breach involving the state’s previous vendor, calling it an urgent priority with cases rising and schools preparing to reopen for fall. The Department of Health awarded a...
Pa. Republicans will reintroduce vetoed election bill now that Gov. Tom Wolf says he’s open to voter ID changes
PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania Republicans plan to reintroduce their election overhaul legislation — which Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed last month — now that Wolf has changed his public position to say he’s open to new voter ID requirements. Wolf had said that changes to the state’s voter ID rules were...
Pennsylvania decertifies Fulton County’s voting system after ‘audit’
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s top election official has decertified the voting machines of a small southern county that disclosed that it had agreed to requests by local Republican lawmakers and allowed a software firm to inspect the machines as part of an “audit” after the 2020 election. The action by Acting...
Pa. Supreme Court deals blow to outdated claims of child sexual abuse
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s high court on Wednesday dealt a blow to victims of child sexual abuse who had hoped to revive their otherwise outdated claims, throwing out a lawsuit by a woman whose lower court legal victory had given hope to similarly situated victims who sued in the wake of...
Medical experts not alarmed by recent rise in Pa. covid casesVideo
The number of new covid-19 cases is increasing in Pennsylvania, but the uptick — fueled by the highly contagious delta variant — is not yet cause for alarm among experts in the Pittsburgh region. In the past week, there have been 2,930 new cases of the virus reported by the...
Troopers shoot, kill Harrisburg gunman who fired toward them
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania state police shot and killed an armed man Tuesday morning near Harrisburg when he allegedly fired into two occupied homes and toward troopers who were called to the scene, an agency spokeswoman said. The police agency said 34-year-old Mitchell James Shuller of Harrisburg ignored demands to drop...
Pa. requested $340 million in emergency contracts in 2020 with little oversight
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Lawmakers this week will probe whether state agencies had too much leeway in securing emergency contracts during the pandemic,...
Pennsylvania election audit gets GOP campaign trail embrace
HARRISBURG — Former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election have been debunked by the courts, his own Justice Department and scores of recounts. But in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, where Trump lost by 80,000 votes eight months ago, they’re finding new signs of life. A Republican...
Tribe claims remains of kids who died at assimilation school in Pennsylvania
The remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania meant to assimilate them into white culture have been returned to their South Dakota tribe for burial on its reservation. The Rosebud Sioux planned to rebury the remains during...
Philadelphia backyard chickens are surging despite city law
A cooped-up flock of law-breaking Philadelphians continued to grow in number and prosper during the pandemic. Thousands of chickens are being raised citywide, according to one estimate, despite a 2004 ordinance designed to eliminate the practice. This particular urban farming trend is becoming more popular, as penned-up residents look to...
Pennsylvania jobless rate down slightly, payrolls up in June
HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate and labor force shrank slightly in June as payrolls crept up, according to state figures released Friday. Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate dropped one-tenth of a percentage point to 6.9% from May’s adjusted rate, the state Department of Labor and Industry said. May’s initial rate had been...
Wolf admin sat on 2017 probe of unemployment error but denies ‘cover-up’
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media. Sign up for our free newsletters. HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s top labor official said Thursday there was never an attempt within her department to deliberately conceal an error...
Another Pa. county raises objection to lawmaker’s election audit
HARRISBURG — Another Pennsylvania county targeted for an Arizona-style “forensic investigation” of the 2020 presidential election being pushed by former President Donald Trump is raising strong objections to a sweeping demand for access to its voting equipment and records. York County’s three commissioners — two Republican and one Democrat —...
‘I felt disrespected,’ Harrisburg woman who ran over and killed her boyfriend with her minivan tells jury
A Harrisburg woman testified Tuesday afternoon that she “felt disrespected” when she ran over and killed her boyfriend with her minivan at a busy city intersection nearly two years ago. “I was upset, frustrated. I felt disrespected and ignored,” Dolly Hendrickes said during the second day of her Dauphin County...
