A momentous, rancorous week in Pa.’s capitol

Budget bill passes as partisan tensions boild over in Pa. House

• Russ Walker
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  Russ Walker joined PA Post in 2019 as executive editor. He previously worked at KING 5 News, the NBC-affiliated TV station serving Seattle and Western Washington. At KING, Russ oversaw the award-winning investigative unit and managed the newsroom’s daily operations. His background includes stints as an editor for POLITICO, washingtonpost.com, FreedomChannel.com, American Health Line and U.N. Wire. He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University. Russ and his wife, journalist and cookbook author Kim O’Donnel, live in Lancaster.

 Gov. Tom Wolf / Flickr

The Pennsylvania Capitol building in Harrisburg.

Gov. Tom Wolf / Flickr

The Pennsylvania Capitol building in Harrisburg. (Via Gov. Tom Wolf’s Flickr page)

Whew! Who’s ready for the weekend? The first three days of this shortened work week were extremely eventful inside the Pennsylvania Capitol. Here’s a quick rundown to catch you up:

• The budget: Legislators passed a short-term budget bill, giving themselves more time to see how coronavirus closures will affect state revenues. Spotlight PA notes that lawmakers passed a full-year budget for the Department of Education, though that budget keeps state education spending flat. And that could mean tax increases at the local level. “Some school districts will need to [raise taxes], some won’t. Some will use their reserves, some school districts don’t have reserves. Some will have to furlough and make program cuts. It is just all dependent on your local circumstances,” said John Callahan, the chief advocacy officer for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

• The checks and balances: Late Thursday evening, the House passed a resolution that would overturn Gov. Tom Wolf’s emergency order that has kept much of the state shut down for the past two-plus months. “It was a debate marked by heckling, parliamentary wrangling, and an accusation that a Republican lawmaker called a Democratic colleague a ‘little girl,” write Ben Pontz and Ed Mahon for PA Post.

• The background music: The debate over reversing the emergency order was so tense, in part, because of news from a day earlier — that a House Republican lawmaker had tested positive for coronavirus, but GOP leadership didn’t inform Democrats, whose outrage spilled over into Thursday’s debate. Even The New York Times took notice.

• The color code: The first counties to enter the least restrictive phase of Gov. Wolf’s reopening process go “green” today: Bradford, Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Crawford, Elk, Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean, Montour, Northumberland, Potter, Snyder, Sullivan, Tioga, Venango and Warren. Going green isn’t all that great, according to local chamber of commerce leaders across the state. They say the green phase is still too restrictive:  “Yellow is the new red,” Frank Facchiano, the Lehigh Valley chamber’s chief operating officer, told The Morning Call.

• Yellow: Eight counties shift into the “yellow” phase. They are: Dauphin, Franklin, Huntington, Lebanon, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike and Schuylkill. In Franklin County, doctors are warning that the health care system is already being stretched and worry that its premature to relax restrictions. WHYY’s Laura Benshoff has the story.

• Red: Last week, Wolf said he expected every county would be in the yellow or green phase as of June 5. Is this the last full week of “red” counties? The remaining ones are: Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lehigh, Northampton, Montgomery, and Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that Philadelphia and its collar counties don’t meet the benchmarks laid out by Wolf last month, and that’s left leaders in the state’s largest city to begin drafting their own plan for what “going yellow” will mean next Friday.

• The count: Pennsylvania’s coronavirus case count topped 70,000 on Thursday.

Best of the rest

Anthony Orozco / PA Post

English and Spanish displays at Fine Fare Supermarket in Reading encourage customers to take part in the 2020 U.S. Census. Berks County’s Complete Count Committee recently distributed the signs to stores across Reading. (Anthony Orozco / PA Post)

• Local census leaders are struggling to reach hard-to-count households as coronavirus effectively cancels door-to-door canvassing. The problem is particularly acute in Reading, thanks to language issues and a suspicion of government among the city’s Latino population. Anthony Orozco, PA Post’s Report for America fellow, has the story.

• PA Post’s Joseph Darius Jaafari teamed up with Vicky Taylor of the Franklin County Free Press to tell the story of how coronavirus concerns prompted inmates to stage a hunger strike at the county prison. Rolling Stone published their story yesterday.

• When it comes to coronavirus relief funding, UPMC is the big winner in Pennsylvania. Working with Spotlight PA, Brett Sholtis writes that the $228 million sent to UPMC is “nearly twice the federal stimulus aid of its closest competitors, new numbers show, despite the fact that many of its hospitals are in parts of the state that were not among the hardest hit by the coronavirus. The enormous handout to the state’s largest hospital chain is the result of a federal formula that rewarded companies based on revenue and medical claims, while not taking into account their financial reserves or how badly their businesses were damaged by the pandemic.” Read his story.

• The short-term budget deal is bad news for agencies like the Department of Environmental Protection. DEP was expecting enough additional funding to add 25 new staff members, a big boost for an agency that lost 25 percent of its staff over a 15-year period starting in 2003. StateImpact Pennsylvania’s Rachel McDevitt has more here.

• An interesting court order will make it easier for visually impaired Pennsylvanians to vote from home. Emily Previti explains in this story. Meanwhile, Bucks County filed an emergency petition in county court seeking more time for voters to return absentee ballots. The issue is that the huge demand for mail-in ballots is overwhelming some county election offices, shortening the time a voter has to receive, fill out, and return their ballot. More here from The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Lai.

• Two to three days. That’s how long it could take counties to tabulate all the votes in next week’s primary election, according to Dauphin County Commissioner Mike Pries. PennLive’s headline says it all: “A Pennsylvania Election Day like never before: Mail-in balloting, new voting machines, multi-day counts.” Here’s our guide to voting.

Science desk:

• Axios: The mystery of coronavirus superspreaders

• Kaiser Health News: Antibody Tests Were Hailed As Way To End Lockdowns. Instead, They Cause Confusion

• Wall Street Journal: Antibody Tests and Accuracy Issues Leave Some Americans With More Questions Than Answers (subscription required)

• The Washington Post: VA says it has ‘ratcheted down’ use of hydroxychloroquine to treat veterans

• New York Times: The World Is Still Far From Herd Immunity for Coronavirus

• StatNews: Wastewater testing gains traction as a Covid-19 early warning system