Month: July 2019

By just about every measurement you can make, Pennsylvania is particularly susceptible to gerrymandering.

At least, that was PA Post reporter Emily Previti’s conclusion after taking an extremely detailed look at the factors that lead to gerrymandering in various states.

Pennsylvania is one of the only states that doesn’t have standards like compactness or contiguity baked into its congressional reapportionment rules. Its campaign finance laws are opaque, it doesn’t allow open primaries, and it doesn’t let voters decide policy by ballot referendum.
Emily joins us this episode to explain why these factors, and many others, make the commonwealth vulnerable to partisan mapmaking.

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Pennsylvania is officially on track to take over the online marketplace that sells health insurance as part of the Affordable Care Act.

It’s a move that will give the commonwealth more control of the exchange, and the state is predicting lower premiums, too.

WITF health reporter Brett Sholtis joins us this episode to explain how it’s all going to work.

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Pennsylvania officially has a budget for the new fiscal year, and it was—mostly—signed into law two days ahead of deadline.

As far as budgets go in Harrisburg, it was a breeze—after all just four years ago, an impasse over funding dragged on for nine months.

But still, there were some hiccups this year.

An argument over whether to repeal a cash assistance program for the poor led to a rare shouting match on the Senate floor—an incident that has now gone fairly viral online.

The program’s ultimate repeal was a blow to Democrats, who also lost out on priorities like a minimum wage increase, boost to teacher salaries, and a fee for state police coverage.

But Democratic Governor Tom Wolf notes, he and his colleagues did manage to compromise with Republicans on an increase in K-12 education funding, more money for preschools and special education, funding for libraries, a transfer to the Rainy Day fund, and support for domestic violence, child welfare, and intellectual disability programs.

We’ll explain what is and isn’t in the budget, and how the process played out to get to a final deal.

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