It may be that the most critical foreign relations problem facing President Donald Trump, at least in the short term, is not Russia or China. It is Pakistan, which for years has been enabling terrorist groups in Afghanistan and thus, the rest of the world. During testimony before the Senate ...
Gov. Tom Wolf’s resurrection of a proposal to tax municipalities that rely solely on state police protection faces a virtually impossible journey, just like other efforts to implement the idea over the past two decades failed. It is a hot-potato issue from which most lawmakers prefer to ...
The cheating epidemic at the Pennsylvania State Police Academy confirmed by a report made public Feb. 3 was disconcerting to people who up to then had unwavering faith and trust in the commonwealth’s main law enforcement department. In the months ahead, state police leaders must provide ...
Gov. Tom Wolf’s pursuit of a different strategy to extract Pennsylvania from its fiscal morass might in the end get more support than his two previous state budget proposals. However, the $32.3 billion 2017-18 budget plan Democrat Wolf unveiled on Tuesday still contains much that the ...
A law that took effect in mid-January authorizing municipalities to grant a local tax credit to volunteer emergency responders provides an opportunity consistent with current realities. This being a time when men and women increasingly are hard-pressed to find the hours needed for such ...
Although “$2 billion” has been used widely to describe Pennsylvania’s fiscal troubles, the Legislature’s nonpartisan Independent Fiscal Office in mid-December offered the “brighter” projection of a $1.7 billion shortfall for Fiscal Year 2017-18, which begins July 1. But now, only ...
Tyrone Borough Councilman Charles Mills wasn’t unreasonable when he voiced the opinion last month that the council should decide employee hirings and firings, not the borough manager. Although the municipality’s home rule charter grants that authority to the manager, it can’t be ...
Among the headlines President Donald Trump made last week was one citing his executive order to clear obstacles standing in the way of the proposed Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines. That is a good start. Now, let’s move on to accelerating federal action on natural gas pipelines ...
A company’s decision to drop plans for a natural gas power plant on part of the former Cresson State Prison property is a setback for Cambria County and adjacent Blair County, as well. That can’t be disputed. However, in the wake of that negative development, which ended the prospect ...
The Pennsylvania Legislature has too many members and costs too much to operate. That observation isn’t new; it’s been repeated over and over during the decades that lawmakers have been making feeble, unsuccessful attempts to reduce the General Assembly’s size as well as the expense ...
Anyone excited about the prospect of the Pennsylvania Legislature eliminating the school property tax this year needs to acknowledge the possibility of a big letdown. Replacing that tax is an issue much more complicated than most state residents realize. Meanwhile, taxpayers, rather than ...
Classified documents released by then-Army Pvt. Bradley Manning were found in Osama bin Laden’s hideout after a U.S. Navy SEAL team killed him. That alone is evidence of how badly Manning’s betrayal hurt our country. While working as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq during 2010, ...
When incumbent President Harry S. Truman held up a Nov. 3, 1948, edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, he had grounds for his bemusement over the large headline stretching across the top of the front page: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” The fact was that Truman actually had defeated his ...
Pennsylvania’s new attorney general and state treasurer were right in emphasizing integrity in government during their swearing-in ceremonies on Tuesday. Both individuals elected to head those offices in 2012 didn’t complete their terms because of criminal charges. Rob McCord, who was ...
Donald Trump’s presidency hopefully will mean good things for this region, Pennsylvania and the nation. Beyond that, it’s to be hoped that he can make positive inroads regarding America’s relations with other countries but, along the way, protect America’s best interests to the full ...
An Altoona decision years ago apparently is the chief culprit in the declining number of applicants for police department vacancies. But blame for the decline also must extend to Pennsylvania state government’s failure to address its own fiscal problems. Harrisburg’s “kick the can ...
It’s common for the Pennsylvania Auditor General’s Office to make recommendations after an audit. Some of the recommendations are for correcting deviations from accepted procedures by the entity audited, or merely to help in implementing efficiencies. Since entities that the Auditor ...
Individuals, families and businesses are expected to pay their bills. Governments at all levels should be held to that same responsible standard. Despite developments during the past week, people of this state still need to know more about the bill the commonwealth was asked to pay for ...
It’s estimated that a new name is added about every 10 minutes to this country’s organ waiting list. Lifesharing, a Donate Life organization, says about one-third of those needing organ transplants die waiting. According to Lifesharing, as of last July 9, 1,887 of the approximately ...
Republicans of the new 115th Congress were right in killing a plan to effectively strip the independent Office of Congressional Ethics of its power and put it under lawmakers’ control. It’s hard to fathom how the lawmakers responsible for the proposal could have been so out of touch with ...