Pennsylvania
A group of Pa. lawmakers didn’t take pay during the budget impasse. A bill would force all to abstain
All 12 have since received all the pay they were due during the nearly six-month impasse.
Burns, Jones, Miller, Rossi, and Sappey did not reply to requests for comment. Those who did respond to Spotlight PA had different definitions of when the impasse ended which influenced how many checks they declined.
Hogan worked for former U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.), who believed in not taking pay during periods of budget impasse. He declined only his July paycheck after speaking with leadership, who he said told him he could consider the budget finished after that month.
“I thought I had done what I was supposed to do with it,” Hogan told Spotlight PA.
Shusterman, a small business owner, said she and her colleagues went back and forth over how to define the relatively unusual impasse. For instance, she noted that one last budget item, funding for the University of Pennsylvania’s Veterinary School, is still in limbo.
Her bar for defining an impasse was a lack of any measure that would “prevent the commonwealth from running,” she said.
Cooper said she declined pay under the terms of her proposed bill. Under her proposal, pay would be suspended if the legislature fails to pass a main appropriations bill by the June 30 deadline. Lawmakers would be retroactively paid when that bill passes; Cooper’s legislation does not require the passage of accompanying code bills to resume pay.
In October, with the appropriations bill passed but code bills still in limbo, Cooper said she decided to take her pay “to show other legislators that I was following my bill” and rally support for her proposal.
Warren told Spotlight PA that he initially considered the impasse to be over after the state House passed the main budget bill in early July, which was why he deposited that paycheck a few weeks later.
However, on second thought, Warren, an attorney, decided to withhold his pay due to the lack of code bills.
“If service organizations and entities that are supported by state funds are in a position that they have to wait for funding, I can too,” he told Spotlight PA.
In an email, Brennan, also an attorney, told Spotlight PA he picked up his checks but did not deposit them until the day after Shapiro signed the last code bill in December.
“In the Brennan house, there was much rejoicing,” he said. “It’s not the same as what the community colleges, nonprofits, and so many others felt, but there is a cost to having things grind to a halt for that long — interest, carrying costs, opportunity costs, frustration, stress, etc.”
“It definitely put things in perspective and gave a greater sense of urgency,” he added.
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds the powerful to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania
Bill to ensure access to contraception advances in Pennsylvania, aided by dozens of GOP House votes
Planned Parenthood PA Advocates executive director Signe Espinoza called the proposal “an enormous shift toward control over our bodies.”
“We must have control over if and when we decide to start our families, but Pennsylvania has for too long allowed loopholes, exemptions and oversights to stand between us and our autonomy,” Espinoza said in a statement.
Rep. Krueger said in an interview Monday that she also was concerned about Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court decision on abortion access two years ago. Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” including cases that found married people have the right to obtain contraceptives, people can engage in private, consensual sex acts and the right to same-sex marriage.
A state law could help people obtain contraceptives if federal law changes, Krueger said.
“We have seen that access to reproductive health care, including contraception, is coming down to a state’s rights issue,” Krueger said.
In other states, contraception has been a politically contentious issue. A review earlier this month by the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates for abortion access, found several states have proposed or enacted laws to reduce access to contraception this year.
KFF, a nonprofit that studies health care issues, said in May that 14 states have legal or constitutional protections for the right to contraception, with six states and Washington, D.C., enacting them since the high court’s decision on abortion in June 2022.
Pennsylvania
Pa. woman who drowned after being swept over waterfall in Glacier National Park is ID’d
A 26-year-old Pennsylvania woman drowned after being swept over a waterfall on the east side of Glacier National Park in Montana, park officials said.
National Park Service officials on Tuesday identified the victim as Gillian Tones from North Apollo in western Pennsylvania’s Armstrong County. She was remembered as caring and kind, triblive.com reported.
Tones fell into the water above St. Mary Falls at around 5:20 p.m. Sunday. She was washed over the 35-foot (11-meter) tall waterfall and trapped under water for several minutes, the park said in a statement.
Bystanders pulled Tones from the water and administered CPR until emergency responders arrived. She was declared dead at 7 p.m., park officials said.
The death is under investigation, and an autopsy was planned.
Her name was initially withheld until family members could be notified.
Drowning is one of the leading causes of death in Glacier National Park, according to the National Park Service.
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RADNOR TOWNSHIP, PA — Conestoga Road in Radnor Township will have a weekday closure due to Aqua Pennsylvania work for about two months, PennDOT said.
According to PennDOT, a weekday closure is scheduled on Conestoga Road between Lowrys Lane and Glenbrook Avenue in Radnor.
The closure will be in place weekdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. from Monday, July 1 to Friday, Aug. 30,
During the closure, drivers will be detoured, using Sproul Road/Route 320, Lancaster Avenue/U.S. 30, and County Line Road.
Local access will be maintained up to the work zone.
Drivers are advised to allow extra time when traveling through or near the work area because backups and delays will occur.
All scheduled activities are weather dependent.
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