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Arts funding from the state of Pennsylvania is changing, which could make some artists and arts organizations ineligible for grant funding.

The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is rebranding its granting operation as a new entity called Pennsylvania Creative Industries. The new granting guidelines are in line with a new strategic plan that leans more heavily into creative entrepreneurship and economic development.

“We identified five key areas that we would be investing in, including asset development, workforce development, community development, visibility and policy,” said Karl Blischke, executive director of Pennsylvania Creative Industries.

“We’re looking at those areas as a way to raise the impact of the creative sector in Pennsylvania, and to support all the participants in it as they look to grow and be impactful for Pennsylvania,” he said.

Pennsylvania Creative Industries will distribute $9.59 million in arts grants this year, according to the state budget.

Many stakeholders across the state say the changes will remove state support for most organizations. In the Philadelphia region, about 60% of small arts organizations that had benefitted from small state grants will no longer be eligible, according to the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. In York County, that number rises to 80%.

Alliance President and CEO Patricia Aden Wilson is “gravely concerned.”

“Our smaller arts organizations are those organizations that very often define our neighborhoods,” Wilson said. “Those are those programs that are in church basements and community rec centers and are often volunteer-led. They are the touch point for arts and culture for so many people across the state. We are very concerned that these changes will eliminate or diminish the capacity of these organizations that are the life blood of our creative sector.”

Wilson said the lobbying efforts by the alliance and other arts groups across the state contributed to the Pennsylvania Creative Industries budget, which increased 12.5% over last year. But the new funding guidelines were drafted without consulting local arts leaders.

“As we lobby for their funding, where’s the transparency in how they’re going to use that funding?” Wilson said. “Where’s the accountability to their stated mission of empowering the arts and culture community?”

A “quiet” Pennsylvania father allegedly stabbed his baby son and tossed his tiny, injured body into the snow last week as part of a “sacrifice,” prosecutors chillingly revealed Thursday.

Michael Phillips, 44, was arrested after police responded to a call about a stabbing on Wednesday at an apartment complex in Coatesville just before 11:40 a.m., according to the Chester County District Attorney’s Office.

After arriving at the home, police discovered that Phillips had allegedly stabbed his 3-month-old son in the abdomen after the infant’s mother said he made comments about “having to sacrifice the baby” and had come at her with a knife, the DA said.

Philips allegedly tried to stab his baby son several times, but only managed to strike him once, the mother told police.

After the father launched the alleged freak assault, the terrified mother grabbed the injured child and her 9-year-old son to flee the residence, prosecutors added.

As the older son ran to get help, Philips allegedly followed the mother outside, grabbed the baby from her arms, and “threw the infant in the snow.”

The mother heroically “used her body to shield her child from further harm” until first responders arrived at the scene.

Officers quickly got the infant medical attention and flew him to a local hospital in “very serious condition,” according to the Coatesville police department.

As of Thursday, the baby boy was listed in critical but stable condition, police said.

One of Phillips’ neighbors, Edward Rivers, told NBC10 that he saw the father with his baby and older son around 8 a.m. on the day of the stabbing.

“He’s always been a quiet, nice guy,” Rivers told the outlet.

“Every time I see him, he says, ‘What’s up?’ This morning I saw him. He walked outside with his son and I saw him. He smiled to me, said goodbye like normal and walked out. To me, it was surprising because he seemed like a really nice guy. He was really a good neighbor.”

Phillips had been charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault, possessing an instrument of crime, and recklessly endangering another person, the DA’s office said.

He is currently being held without bond at Chester County Prison.

“Coatesville Police and local EMS heroically worked to give this infant a chance to survive. Our thoughts go to the family during this incredibly difficult time,” Coatesville District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe said in a statement.

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The cost of health insurance is rising across the board, even among people who get their coverage through an employer, new data shows.

Workers in states like Pennsylvania are spending a higher percentage of their paychecks for employer-sponsored health insurance than in previous years, according to a new report published Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund.

A Pennsylvania resident with single-person coverage paid on average more than $4,000 total in premium contributions and annual deductible costs in 2024, the data shows, which represented about 9.5% of the state’s annual median household income.

“If you just think about it, one out of every $10 that you have in your pocket today could potentially be going to health care over the course of the year,” said David Radley, senior scientist at The Commonwealth Fund’s Tracking Health System Performance initiative.

Those costs were up 27% from the prior year and an increase from where costs were several years ago in 2020, according to the report.

For families, the amount they paid in premiums and deductibles for their employer-sponsored health insurance plans was even greater, reaching more than $10,000 a year.

“At that level, for some families, [it] forces them to make tough decisions,” Radley said. “Even if they have health insurance coverage, they may be thinking twice, ‘Should I really go to the doctor if I’m not feeling well? Should I get this particular test? You know, should I fill this prescription?’”

Experts say rising insurance costs for businesses and their employees is a consequence of growing health care spending trends nationally, which involve how often people use services and how much they pay for them.

All of that, Radley said, can be driven by hospital consolidation that increases prices for medical services, ongoing health care labor shortages, inflation in the cost of supplies, high utilization of pricey medications like GLP-1 drugs and more.

“Ultimately, I think you have to tackle both price and utilization if we want to sort of rein in overall spending,” he said. “And that’s really hard to do, because we don’t want to be in a position where we limit access to things that are really beneficial for people. We don’t want to have to ration care in that way. That’s not what our system is about.”