Criticizing a politician doesn't make an outlet conservative. I love Shapiro and I'm a bleeding heart liberal but I also respect Spotlight for being a hard working "good journalism" outlet. They're essentially a consortium of investigative journalists from various respected PA news outlets like PBS affiliates and the Philadelphia Inquirer (ie as far from conservative outlets as they come).

Obviously as an investigative outlet about state politics a lot of their focus is on Shapiro right now given he's the top dog. But look at their investigations and you'll see plenty of pieces about the general bureaucracy or GOP legislators.

I highly recommend you actually familiarize yourself with something before you criticize it just because you don't like a headline.

Why? Spotlight is a legit bastion of investigative journalism. They're not some biased right wing outlet.

His attorney general instincts are kicking in.

The lore says Phil is immortal. You can never get rid of him!

You want to give any examples of what you mean in the case of the PUC? I'm not coming at you, I just think it's lazy and cynical to automatically dismiss something unless you have evidence to back it up. Admittedly I don't know much about the PUC so if there really is an example of a conflict of interest in action I'd be interested in knowing.

Unless I'm mistaken, PUC is a completely separate regulatory body, I'm not sure why you would say they're investigating themselves.

Why not both? Also the PUC just announced an investigation into this yesterday. Hopefully something comes of it.

Yesterday the PA Public Utilities Commission announced a full investigation into this BS, for whatever that's worth.

Cool. Bye!

Lol "I've been called on my bullshit so I'm just gonna move the goalposts." Love it.

Pensions? Ok, how about how Governor Shapiro wants to dramatically cut costs by switching from expensive money managers to high performing index funds?

Oh wait, I forgot he's a Democrat and they can't do anything right, according to you.

But hey, I'm sure a genius like you has a bunch of great solutions to honor people's pension obligations that they worked for as the population ages and the state has to pay out, so I'm all ears!

Wrong. This is outdated. We have a rainy day fund of $5B.

https://www.abc27.com/local-news/pennsylvanias-rainy-day-fund-reaches-record-high/amp/

Go to the rural parts of California and you'll find the same thing. Red all over. This is not a PA specific problem and it kinda bugs me when people think we're some kind of redneck shithole.

Yep the Trib's ed board is pretty conservative, so I wouldn't put much stock in it alone, but Spotlight is legit. They're a bastion of good investigative journalism regarding state govt.

Why don't you vote for someone who isn't on "both sides" then? Cast a write-in ballot for someone you like. Sticking your head in the sand won't make anything better.

Well, a huge reason why the bankruptcy was declared was to remove as much debt as possible. That sounds like a good thing, but like a regular person declaring bankruptcy, it destroys their credit - so their ability to get things like bond financing for economic or community development is essentially impossible now. They're likely going to be reliant on state government for all of their money going forward. Hopefully some of the federal infrastructure money can be used for expensive road, water, electric, etc infrastructure repairs and maintenance, but that isn't going to be enough to keep their head above water.

Anyway, the fact that there's basically nothing positive about Chester's future outlook means that even the speculators don't care to invest any money there. So it seems to be spiraling downward with no real hope for things improving without an extremely long and painful period of despondency.

Chester is in horrendous financial shape and recently declared bankruptcy, which I believe only happened with one other municipality in PA history. It has tons of debt and not nearly enough revenue coming in. It actually has a special Governor-appointed "receiver" who is solely there to work with the city get its finances in shape. In addition to all the factors you mentioned, Chester also suffered from corruption and ballooning police pension obligations that ran rampant for decades. I believe the receiver and the state govt has been working to sell the city's assets for a while, which is where the giant controversy about selling its water system to Aqua came from.

The only thing that Chester has going for it is the soccer stadium. Money has been dumped into that place like crazy and it's great, but there's only so far a single asset like that can take a place.

I'm not sure as it would be my dad's email, but I literally just Googled "why is ppl bill so high" a week or two ago and news articles came up about it so that's how I learned more about it. Then I looked at my dad's bill again and saw it had "estimated" on the usage and the bill amount.

https://www.wgal.com/amp/article/ppl-customers-in-shock-over-higher-electric-bills/42399667

Also a PSA for PPL users: apparently last month a "technical error" caused them to not be able to assess accurate usage for many people's bills, so they came up with a super aggressive "estimated use" that was almost certainly massively more than the actual use, and they billed accordingly. They say they're going to issue a credit this month to make up any difference, but I help my elderly father with his bills and was stunned to see an astronomical electric bill from PPL.

A lot of people don't have the means to just get up and move, but if you want to screw over impoverished people, having this attitude is a great way to do it.

Because you get a quality, reputable, consistent product from a known quantity without the hassle of going through the whole PA MMJ hoopla and getting a doctor signoff when they don't actually have medical reasons.

They're in Philly, so yeah, literally right on the border. I'm not saying people drive from Erie to NJ...

Thank goodness I'll save 35 cents every time I fill up my gas tank now. Watch out, Warren Buffett!!

Realistically this would cause huge problems for communities. Small and financially distressed communities wouldn't be able to pay for it and jacking up tax rates would be a huge burden on people and/or incentivize them to leave.

You could counter that with an even stronger emphasis on regionalizing police departments, which I suspect is what would happen should the state police have to downsize.

Wow, I was going to reply and be like "the gas tax is used for road maintenance" but then I looked it up and you're right, a big portion goes to state police. Wtf?

Bro, nearly everyone I know who smokes weed gets it the old fashioned way, they don't bother with the ridiculous hoop jumping of the MMJ program. I also have friends who get stuff over in NJ and bring it back. There's no question PA is missing out on a giant revenue stream.