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Pa. court tells governor’s office to reveal more details about why it hired private law firms

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Pa. court tells governor’s office to reveal more details about why it hired private law firms


The case has a long and complicated history.

Spotlight PA and LNP first submitted a request for legal records in January 2022, when Wolf was governor. The request was filed with the Office of General Counsel, which often handles legal matters specific to the governor’s office and state agencies. The news organizations asked for invoices and other financial documents for spending on outside law firms from 2019 through 2021.

In response, the general counsel’s office provided copies of 45 invoices submitted by six outside firms that totaled $367,538.

But in every invoice, officials redacted the subject line, making it impossible to understand why they were spending taxpayer money. They also blacked out portions of the invoices describing the work conducted by the private lawyers.

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In hiding those critical details, the general counsel’s office argued the information was exempt from disclosure due to, among other things, attorney-client privilege. During oral argument before Commonwealth Court last September, the office also asserted that two of the legal invoices sought by the news organizations included details that would “reveal the institution, progress, or result of investigations.”

One of its lawyers also suggested the two invoices were “protected by an order of the court,” according to the ruling, and urged Commonwealth Court to review them privately.

Leadbetter said the court had done so, and concluded the redacted information did not meet the threshold of revealing the progress or result of an investigation. She also noted that there was no evidence of a court order prohibiting its release.

The senior judge also revealed details about the subject lines in the two invoices. One law firm represented witnesses in two separate grand jury investigations — one run by the state, the other by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania’s Middle District — as well as an investigation by the State Ethics Commission.

The ruling does not provide any further detail.

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Leadbetter directed that those subject lines be unredacted. She also directed the Office of Open Records, which had previously sided with the Office of General Counsel in the case, to review in private all remaining subject lines that the administration redacted to determine whether those too have to be disclosed.

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.



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Pennsylvania

Multiple Reports Of Fireball Sighting In Eastern PA Skies

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Multiple Reports Of Fireball Sighting In Eastern PA Skies


Multiple people in the Philadelphia region reported seeing a fireball in the sky Tuesday.

The American Meteor Society listed the event in its meteor sighting database, saying it had received nearly 150 reports from across the region, including in Eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut about the fireball.

According to the database, reports of the fireball came in from Doylestown, Lansdale, Willow Grove, King of Prussia and more.

Nick Brucato of Whiting shared video of it in The Pine Barrens group on Facebook and with Patch. “Took this video as fast as I could today in Whiting at 2:34 PM. Heard the loud boom minutes later,” he said.

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“We were out on our deck and my wife saw it,” a Waretown resident said on the Tri-County Scanner News post. “She said it was bright white ball and then it broke apart into several pieces and then it was gone. Then the sonic boom hit!”

A meteor is the flash of moving light that becomes visible when a meteoroid — a chunk of an asteroid or a comet — hits the Earth’s atmosphere, according to the American Meteor Society.

In mid-March another meteor was the likely cause of a large boom that was felt over parts of Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio.

The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said it received reports from numerous people across Western Pennsylvania of the tremendous noise and a fireball in the sky on March 17.

A weather service employee caught the cause of the boom and the weather service posted it. MORE: Meteor Causes Tremendous Boom Over Parts Of PA

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With reporting by Karen Wall





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Pa. data centers: How lawmakers are responding, from electricity and water use to tax breaks

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Pa. data centers: How lawmakers are responding, from electricity and water use to tax breaks


What data centers think of Matzie’s bill

The Data Center Coalition is watching bills like Matzie’s closely. The coalition represents companies including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, CoreWeave and OpenAI.

Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy with the group, said the coalition is open to special utility rates for large electricity users that force these customers to pay for any grid upgrades their operations require while insulating other ratepayers from these costs. But the group opposes bills like Matzie’s that apply specifically to data centers, rather than to all electricity users over a certain size.

“If it’s a transmission line or if it’s a substation, if it’s a generating asset, of course, data centers should pay for that and will pay for that,” Diorio said.

But “no specific end user should be singled out for disparate treatment,” he said.

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The coalition also opposes mandating data centers to curtail energy use during times of peak demand or bring their own new, clean power, preferring instead incentives that reward data centers for voluntarily doing so, Diorio said.

“Things like having to take interruptible service … you could see projects move across to a different state line where they didn’t have that requirement, while doing nothing to solve the ultimate shortfall within [the regional grid],” he said.

Pennsylvania lobbying records show the Data Center Coalition spent $19,632 on lobbying at the state level on the topic of “energy, information technology and utilities” during the last three months of 2025.

“Pennsylvania is a very strong, growing and important market for the data center industry,” Diorio said. “We understand concerns, and we want to be an engaged stakeholder to address those concerns, but also keep the state strong for development. And I think we can do that — I think we can find a good middle ground.”

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Parents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo

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Parents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo




Parents charged after toddler injured by wolf at Pennsylvania zoo – CBS News

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The parents of a 17-month-old child are facing endangerment charges after the toddler stuck his hand under the fence of a wolf enclosure at a Pennsylvania zoo. Tom Hanson reports.

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