Too obvious, and it’ll be covered by insurance anyway.

Take a shit in the water cooler instead.

Someone in a wheelchair would have to go all the way from curb cut to curb cut to get around this truck, which likely cannot be done quickly enough to ensure they won’t encounter traffic on the roadway.

My bet is on a dust explosion. Look up Imperial Sugar to see how devastating those kind of explosions can be. The root cause is typically poor housekeeping and process engineering, creating an environment where airborne dust reaches a combustible concentration in a closed space and finds an ignition source.

She may qualify for reduced utility rates. Contact everyone who bills her for water, gas, or electric and see if they have a customer assistance program in place. Most providers do, and at her income level she should qualify.

Yeah that’s not a PUC issue. The legislature and governor Corbett deregulated energy providers and the hellscape of shady energy providers now is the legacy of that, enshrined in statute. The PUC can’t regulate that market beyond what their mandate is, which at this point is basically nonexistent.

Not sure why this is downvoted, it’s completely accurate.

To add to this, PSP is solely responsible for all policing over 75% of PA geographic area (and around 50% of the state’s population). That’s a lot of traffic enforcement cost. I’m spitballing here, but given the compensation package the troopers enjoy, it’s not out of the question that payroll costs alone could be north of $200k per trooper annually, plus vehicles, maintenance, technology, overhead, etc. I believe the state police now have to actually prove enforcement costs to receive MLF dollars. While some creative accounting on their part is not out of the question, the costs they incur enforcing traffic rules for a full 3/4 of the state could certainly be in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

To add to this, PA has more miles of waterways than any state other than Alaska, so we have a shit ton of tiny bridges that drive road costs through the goddamn roof. Seriously, the number of small creeks and streams in this state is staggering.

Also worth noting that PA does not put general fund dollars into transportation infrastructure, so every dollar that goes into roads, bridges, etc. comes from the gas tax and other transportation-related fees that go to the motor license fund and grant programs.

Total state and local tax burden in PA is comparable to other states in our region, but road users get hit harder at the pump and notice. If that funding came from an extra .5% of income tax instead of gas taxes, people wouldn’t bitch as much.

The turnpike and PennDOT are separate entities, and neither of them are funded by PA’s general fund, which is what has the surplus.

There is a difference between the Turnpike, PennDOT, and the state budget. PTC is a separate entity from the state, with its own budget and funding stream.

This plan is essentially to refund tolls to PA drivers out of the state budget without reducing PTC’s income.

This would be great for the people that have small amount in unclaimed property for whom filing a formal claim is either not worth the effort or basically impossible. Comcast owes me like $300 from some kind of settlement from a decade or so ago, but I can’t get the money because I don’t have a copy of my lease from back then. This bill would allow me to get that $$$.

I’m not sure that’s true. Lamb would have been a solid candidate, but Fetterman had the best name recognition statewide, especially once the primary was complete. The margin was slim enough in that race that a candidate change between the primary and general could have made the difference.

That said, the guy you’re replying to seems to think Fetterman had no agency as the duly nominated candidate for US Senate. If he was being pushed to run just to secure a seat and not because of any personal ambition or sense of service, wouldn’t he have already retired and allowed the governor to choose a replacement?

Also depression is a common symptom in stroke victims as they go through the recovery process. No matter if he won or lost, it sounds like he’d be dealing with clinical depression in the aftermath of the stroke.

PA has no private state prisons. I think the only private correctional facility in the state is Delco’s county lockup, and there the commissioners are trying to make that facility public.

HIPAA* only applies to medical providers like doctors offices, not the government or most other entities (except in the instances where the government is a medical provider, like the VA).

The executive branch doesn’t have the ability to establish a policy for legislative staffers. Also worth noting that the $500 threshold isn’t a limit on receiving gifts, it’s the threshold for having to report receiving a gift.

I like Shapiro, voted for him, and think he will be an excellent governor. That said, politicians are people and not inerrant. In this case, I’m uncomfortable with Shapiro and his staff accepting tens of thousands of dollars in perks from an organization that receives state money and routinely is compensated for their consulting work by the executive branch in PA.

Even if legal (if he and his staff disclose these gifts per the provisions of the State Ethics Act), it still seems fairly clear that this violates at least the spirit of the executive branch policy on gifts.

To add to this, Spotlight PA has produced the most rigorous, thorough, and honestly critical investigative journalism in the state out of any news group dealing with state and local issues since their organization came into being. They tend to lean left if anything, but are not afraid to take up any issue if they sense something amiss is going on, regardless of what parenthetical letter comes behind the names of those involved.

I consume a lot of their content because it’s syndicated in a digital newspaper I subscribe to, and I can confidently say this is a Ben Shapiro vs Andrew Neil thing for the commenter you’re replying to.

It’s a violation of executive branch policy most likely (I’m not sure I see much of a distinction between grant recipient and organization with a contractual agreement with the state as the organization argues in this article), but it is only a violation of the state ethics act if Shapiro and his staff don’t report it in a disclosure.

I worked for an organization for a while that had various events involving state officials to discuss state business. They couldn’t even accept a cup of coffee or bottle of water without requesting an invoice from us when Wolf’s gift ban went into effect.

I understand disclosure and limiting even small gifts that have the potential to corrupt, but having to charge an executive branch agency because one of their staff members grabbed a donut at a breakfast event seemed excessive.

That said, Shapiro’s acceptance of the Super Bowl trip for himself and others is concerning. And I say this as someone who met him on many occasions, worked with his office (while Montco commissioner), and supports and voted for him.

You are mostly correct here, but your comment about kicking out IEP kids is somewhat inaccurate. Charters actually thrive on admitting low-need IEP kids because they receive the funding boost that comes with them.

Generally low-level IEP students are less costly to host for charters than the average IEP kid across all classifications, and charters get the funding for the IEP average kid in a given district when they bring them in. So a charter is taking low need kids and getting more in funding from the public school than what it actually costs to educate them, meaning the public schools are getting crushed on higher level IEP students when the lower level ones go to the charters.

You should get information from L&I on your job search requirements in the mail shortly after you file the first week in which you are eligible for benefits, and also receive notifications on the PA UC claims portal when logged in.

It’s been more than a few years since I worked in that space, so if you are really concerned I’d reach out to your state rep or senator’s district office and ask this exact question. That contact information is available on the PA legislative website if you use the find my legislator tool and search by home address.

Best of luck.

Out of curiosity, what industry did you work in?

Given hotter and wetter weather, existing animal populations face fragmented habitats as those habitats migrate due to those factors. Essentially animal populations are being pushed towards existing man-made obstacles.

You also have to remember that as people migrate from rural to urban areas, the suburbs expand outward into rural land as development to accommodate those new people takes place. This presents a huge issue regarding the cost to preserve open space as developers gobble up parcels.

It’s not like rural development is a non-issue, either, as warehousing and distribution centers have exploded in recent years in rural PA due to cheap land and relatively easy access to highways.

Do you subscribe to any regional/local papers of record? They tend to have a decent amount of these types of articles, but rarely get much play on aggregators and social media channels generally for several reasons. I’m a Philadelphia Inquirer subscriber, and they routinely call attention to these kinds of beneficial efforts by good people.

As you mentioned, you’re less likely to see much of that on the local TV news, where the “if it bleeds it leads” moniker is a real thing to drive ratings.

I’ve gone on rants about how reporting costs money, and the pay per click ad model broke that understanding in the public, and how that’s harmed our democracy immensely, but yeah.

Btw the people that report for patch and similar outlets make horrible wages and should be celebrated their sacrifices and passion.

So it’s technically a different company now (AdvanSix), but to your point they spilled 2,000 gallons of phenol last year, some of which possibly entered the city sewer system.

AdvanSix just doesn’t have the same ring to it.