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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 ...

State needs to tackle fraud

It took the threat of federal penalties to push Gov. Josh Shapiro into taking seriously the issue of SNAP errors in Pennsylvania. In our opinion the state has a bigger issue with Medicaid fraud – and it shouldn’t take the threat of federal action to get the state to take the fraud ...

What other newspapers are saying: Free speech must be preserved

Tufts University PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk had her student visa revoked and was snatched off the streets of Somerville by immigration agents last March because of speech. If there were any lingering questions about whether Öztürk committed any wrongdoing, they were put to rest by documents unsealed last week in US District Court in Boston. Her sole offense, the documents reveal, was to commit free speech — in a country with a constitutional right to free speech enshrined in the First Amendment. It’s the latest travesty by a Trump administration that’s shown blatant ...

Budget proposal once again starts process with fantasy

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s 2026-27 budget would spend about $53.2 billion. The proposed 2026-27 budget, like his initial proposal for the 2025-26 budget, relies on pulling deeply from reserve funding, set aside in past years by lawmakers to ensure the state was ready for future crises and on revenue from activities for which the legislature is still considerable distance from agreeing on regulatory frameworks — recreational marijuana and skills games. The 2025-26 budget, of course, was ultimately more than four months late to passage. State lawmakers already are echoing many of the ...