New year, new laws on the books

Property owners, pick up some purple paint

• Ed Mahon
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Ed Mahon comes to Spotlight PA from PA Post, where he covered state politics and policy, produced radio stories that were broadcast on public media stations throughout the state and on NPR’s national newscasts, and co-wrote a weekday newsletter. Prior to joining PA Post, Ed worked for six years as an investigative and political reporter for the York Daily Record, part of the USA Today Network. His reporting on failures in Pennsylvania’s system for protecting domestic abuse victims was a finalist in the national 2018 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists in the local reporting category. He was also part of a team whose coverage of the criminal justice system, including the aggressive use of civil asset forfeiture by York County prosecutors, received the 2018 G. Richard Dew Award for Journalistic Service from the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Before joining the York Daily Record, Ed covered K-12 education at the Centre Daily Times in State College and worked as a stringer for suburban sections of The Philadelphia Inquirer. He grew up in Delaware County, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signs legislation into law at Muhlenberg High School in Reading, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2019. Wolf approved legislation Tuesday to give future victims of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signs legislation into law at Muhlenberg High School in Reading, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2019. Wolf approved legislation Tuesday to give future victims of child sexual abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

• PennLive’s Jan Murphy looks at 15 significant bills that Gov. Tom Wolf signed into law in 2019, including some that take effect with the arrival of 2020.

• Among the changes: Voters will be able to choose mail-in voting for the April 28 primary. (And, by the way, all counties have selected new voting machines with a paper trail for the 2020 election.)

• Beginning later this month, property owners will now be able to mark their boundary with purple paint instead of “no trespassing” signs. (This law reminds me of Woody Guthrie’s legendary song, “This Land Is Your Land,” and the “no trespassing” part. And now is as good a time as any to listen to this NPR deep look at Guthrie and the song.)

• A law expanding Sunday hunting takes effect in February.

• Of course, now is a pretty good time to look at the laws that could have been. In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney ended 2019 by killing six pieces of legislation, The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Laura McCrystal reports. “The bills that Kenney rejected had no connecting theme,” McCrystal writes. “They would have required developers to give back to the communities where they build, lowered taxes for homeowners and low-income workers, banned food trucks from one block of University City, and changed development regulations in Society Hill.”

• On Tuesday, I published a story that looked at the four bills Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf stopped from becoming law in 2019. He vetoed a bill that would have banned pregnant women from obtaining an abortion based on a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis, and he also vetoed a bill that would have exempted trucks carrying milk from certain travel restrictions during bad weather. For his two other vetoes, he later compromised with the GOP-controlled legislature.

• Also, ABC News looks at new laws taking effect across the country, including minimum wage increases, recreational marijuana legalization and new gun regulations.

Best of the rest

Brett Sholtis / WITF

PA Post reporter Joseph Darius Jaafari started the New Year by plunging into the Susquehanna River. Dressed as luchadore wrestler El Con Queso Dore, Joseph swam because readers like you helped us hit our NewsMatch fundraising goal. (Brett Sholtis / WITF)

• Big props to our colleague Joseph Darius Jaafari, who plunged into the mighty Susquehanna River on New Year’s Day to fulfill a pledge and thank the many people who contributed to PA Post’s NewsMatch campaign. Joseph says the Penguin Plunge “was terrifyingly cold, but a great time.” Thank you to the many Context readers who contributed. We hit our goal — $20,000. A triple match makes that $80,000. We’ll put that money to good use doing more of the journalism you’ve come to expect from our team.

• PennLive covered the annual plunge event with this delightful lede: “First the good news: There was no ice on top of the river surface.” Also, I love the photo of the man with the viking helmet, and Joseph makes an appearance in PennLive’s picture gallery.

• I’ve written a few articles (which have since disappeared from the internet) about the first local baby born in the new year. But I never followed up with any. Maybe I should have. Tom Wilk, a former copy editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer, was a Jan. 1 baby, and he writes about the pros, cons and unexpected Social Security benefits.

• And, of course, New Year’s Day brings the Mummers to Broad Street in Philly. Ahead of the parade, BillyPenn’s Michaela Winberg reported on the advice that parade judges receive: Be kinder, don’t give out zeros and don’t make fun of minorities.