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Fiscal recklessness will have consequences

An analysis by Truth in Accounting on which The Center Square reported in the Feb. 10 edition of the Sun-Gazette finds that Philadelphia will overspend in the 2025/26 budget year by about $17,000 per taxpayer. As we note that this sort of budgeting is unsustainable, we do not want to single out Pennsylvania’s largest city. The budget proposal by Gov. Josh Shapiro, as we’ve repeatedly criticized in editorials the past two weeks, uses assumptions about future laws and the state’s “rainy day fund” to ramp up government spending — despite our Legislature’s clear and ...

City’s lack of cost estimates unacceptable

Williamsport’s government, as the Sun-Gazette reported in its Feb. 17 edition, has heard a recommendation for its condemned City Hall on West Fourth Street. As we have expressed many times over the past four and a half years, we remain concerned. We have not seen either the leadership or ...

What other newspapers are saying: Survivors deserve full transparency

“The more Epstein documents get released, the more we see how he had so many powerful friends, and that’s ultimately what helped him,” commented the US lawyer Lisa Bloom in an interview with the Guardian this week. As Ms Bloom, who represents 11 of Jeffrey Epstein’s dogged and brave victims, drily notes: “That’s not the way the justice system is supposed to work.” From the outset, the Epstein affair has offered a textbook example of the ability of the influential and well-connected to avoid scrutiny and intimidate those who would exert it. A ruthless pursuit of ...

Budget process should not be bogged down with other debates

Over the past year or so we’ve noted that the decision to tie the status of marijuana and skills games to the budget was unfair and counterproductive. The concerns we editorialized about were simple: These issues need thorough debate, on their own terms, with lawmakers considering the drawbacks and disadvantages, especially for either legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana. Concerns about how driving under the influence will be investigated and prosecuted, about the impact on workplaces and employers and how to mitigate unwanted effects, about what legal or decriminalized marijuana ...

What other newspapers are saying: Filling city hub more than empty gesture

When hundreds of thousands of people descend on Pittsburgh for the NFL Draft in April, they should be greeted by a spruced-up Steel City. The landmark fountain at Point State Park has recently undergone a $3.4 million upgrade. Market Square is in the midst of a $15 million face-lift. And Acrisure Stadium, home of the Steelers, is getting improvements of its own. In downtown Pittsburgh, eyes are turning to empty storefronts. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, a nonprofit focused on community and economic development, is stepping up efforts to fill vacant retail spaces. It would ...

No one can be certain about future

One of several points raised in our Sunday editorial is that the so-called “rainy day fund” that the Shapiro administration proposes raiding to cover the difference between what he wants to spend and how much the state reasonably predicts the state will get in tax revenues exists so ...