🐫 Halfway Home Day. Still crazy hazy out there.

PA Weather
Johnstown | Haze, 72
Trout Run | Haze, 73
Kutztown | Haze, 75

PA Sports
Pirates (32-28) | Oakland 2-11 | Wed vs. Oakland
Phillies (29-32) | Detroit 1-0 | Wed vs. Detroit

What’s Happening
Both the House and the Senate convene at 11a.

What We’re Hearing
“I think we have some unresolved issues from last week. There are a lot of them.” – Rep. Scott Perry

Happy Birthday
Cake and candles for Congresswoman Susan Wild along with Reps. Tim Bonner and Kristine Howard

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Top Story

1. Report: PA Cyber Charter Schools Spent $16.8M On Advertising, Promotion In 2021-22

“As budget season in the Pennsylvania legislature turns its attention toward public school funding, a new report shows that the state’s cyber charter schools spent nearly $17 million in advertising and promotion alone in the last year.

Education Voters of PA, a project of the Keystone Research Center, filed Right to Know requests with Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools seeking all invoices for advertising, marketing, and promotions, including invoices for communications firms and third-party vendors contracted to do this work for the 2021-2022 school year. The group also asked for information about gift cards, cash payments, parties, and events.

What it found in nearly 3,000 pages of invoices and multiple spreadsheets of transactions was what it called a waste of more than $16.8 million in a single year on advertising and promotion.” (PoliticsPA)

Related

Shapiro Signs Order Creating Commission To Give Next Generation A Voice In State Government. “Gov. Josh Shapiro wants the next generation of Pennsylvanians to have a seat at the table in his administration to ensure their views are represented in state government.” (PennLive)

Got $1 To Spare? RNC Debate Rules Trigger A Mad Dash For Very Small Donors. “Under the new rules, candidates will be required to have at least 40,000 donors to make the Aug. 23 debate stage, including at least 200 from 20 distinct states. They will also have to garner at least 1 percent in three qualifying polls, two of them national, after July 1. And they must commit to supporting the eventual Republican nominee.” (POLITICO)

State

2. Khan Announces Run For 2024 PA Attorney General

“Former Bucks County Solicitor Joe Khan announced Wednesday that he will run in 2024 to be Pennsylvania’s attorney general.

Khan, a 47-year-old Democrat from Doylestown Borough, is a former prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He says he wants to tackle corporate and political corruption as the state’s top prosecutor.” (WHYY)

Related

PA House Passes Bill To Require Electronically Filed Campaign Finance Reports. “Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives approved legislation Tuesday to require candidates for a state office to file their campaign finance reports electronically, instead of on paper.” (AP)

Partisan Stalemate Keeps Child Sexual Abuse Window From Advancing In PA. “Child sexual abuse survivors pressed Pennsylvania lawmakers Monday to move ahead with opening a two-year window for them to file otherwise outdated lawsuits over their claims, but a partisan fight in the Legislature kept the proposal bottled up with no resolution in sight.” (WESA)

PA Democrats Push Workers’ Tax Credit Bills Into Position For Full House Vote. “With state budget negotiations in full swing, the Pennsylvania House Finance Committee on Tuesday passed a series of bills on party-line votes that would create major tax breaks targeted at working-class families.” (PennLive)

PA House Acts To Remove Prohibition On Dual Roles In Large Boroughs Despite Charge Of ‘Ultimate Patronage’  “The state House on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow the same person to serve as a borough’s employee and elected official — regardless of its population — triggering an impassioned critique from a lawmaker who named several Allegheny County boroughs as places that could end up having the “ultimate patronage position.”” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Advocates Push For Changes To PA Dog Law To Aid Struggling Enforcement Agency. “Plagued by budget woes, the agency charged with enforcing the state dog law says it cannot keep up its duties in Pennsylvania’s 67 counties — and they have numbers to back it up.” (PennLive)

• Dog Law Modernization Bill Unanimously Passes Senate Agriculture Committee. (Pennsylvania Capital-Star)

Around The Commonwealth

3. Allegheny County Council OKs Minimum Wage Increase For County Workers

“Allegheny County Council on Tuesday approved an increase in the minimum wage for county employees, beginning in 2024 — but county Executive Rich Fitzgerald has threatened to veto the proposal.

Council members voted 10-4 to increase the minimum wage for county employees to $18 an hour in 2024, $19 in 2025 and $20 in 2026.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Related

Ideas We Should Steal: Wage Boosts For Local Workers. “A first-of-its kind program in Scranton is using federal rescue money to help small businesses give their employees a pay raise. Could a similar plan help residents and businesses thrive in Philly?” (Philadelphia Citizen)

Can Increasing Belief In Mail Voting Help GOP ‘Win Again’? “It’s been said that politics makes strange bedfellows. Add Lisa Scheller and Dean Browning to the list.” (PoliticsPA)

Lancaster GOP Lawmakers Say Dems’ Gun Bill Could Be Unfair To County’s Plain Communities. “The bill, which passed 109-91 in the House at the end of May, would require a background check for private sales of all firearms — often called the gun show loophole. These checks are already required for the purchase of handguns in the state, but the bill would apply the law to long guns, often used by hunters, including members of the county’s Plain communities.” (LNP)

Parker Didn’t ‘Defund The Police’ Despite GOP Opponent David Oh’s Attempts To Tie Her To The Movement. “In late April, Cherelle Parker stood on a debate stage in the final weeks of the heated Democratic primary campaign for Philadelphia mayor and tried to separate herself on policing, saying that “when others wanted us to lead with slogans like ‘defund the police,’ I introduced a plan that people told me could get me canceled.”” (Philadelphia Inquirer)

A PA Town Seeks To Pause Consolidation With Its Scandal Ridden Neighbor City. “In an unusual legal filing, Sandy Township seeks to pause its voter-approved consolidation with the City of DuBois as a result of corruption allegations against the city’s suspended manager and alarming financial oversight issues.” (Spotlight PA)

Editorial

4. What They’re Saying

A glance around the Keystone State at editorials and opinions.

Editorial

• Career And Technical Education Should Be State Budget Priority. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
• Senate Needs To Follow House Example With Rent, Property Tax Rebate Bill. (Tribune-Review)
• Fair School Funding Still Low Priority. (Times-Tribune)
• It’s Not Time To Kill Off AM Radio Just Yet. (Uniontown Herald-Standard)

Opinion

• How High School Sports Coverage Can Save Democracy. (Steven Waldman)
• Debt Deal: Biden Miscalculates, McCarthy Wins. (David Winston)
• Nothing To Fear (From Conservatives) But Fear Itself. (Jerry Shenk)
• PA Must Withdraw From RGGI. (Michael Straw)
• Dave McCormick’s Book Is An Outline For PA And US. (Christian Nascimento)
• DHS Eliminates Medicaid Provider Application Backlog, Removing Barriers To Care. (Val Arkoosh, Cheri Rinehart)
• How To Maintain America’s Nutrition Safety Net. (Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson)

1 Smoky Thing

5. Oh, Canada  😷

Smoke from more Canadian wildfires is impacting air quality in our region again Wednesday and will likely remain through the week due to a persistent wind blowing down from the north.

Skies are hazy and air quality is reduced in Philadelphia, the surrounding suburbs, the Lehigh Valley and Delaware due to smoke from over 150 wildfires burning in the province of Quebec and around Ottawa, Canada.

The wildfire smoke was so widespread it’s visible from the International Space Station and we can track its path on radar. (CBS Philadelphia)

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