News & Brews October 6, 2025
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With budget not done, Shapiro heads to Canada
What’s a governor to do with the state budget unfinished and no end in sight? Head to Canada of course—on taxpayers’ dime. Spotlight PA’s Stephen Caruso posted yesterday, “Gov. Josh Shapiro is in Quebec City today for a conference of Great Lakes governors and premiers. Per a spokesperson, the trip was paid for with taxpayer money.” Caruso added, “This follows a trip to Ireland by Shapiro administration officials and lawmakers (covered by a mix of public, private, and personal funds) last weekend that overlapped with a Steelers game in Dublin.”
New Jersey gets it wrong
I’m a Jersey native and escaped in 2013, and I spent years working in Jersey politics, which is notoriously a mess. So when I saw a POLITICO story about Jersey’s GOP gubernatorial nominee, Jack Ciattarelli pointing to Pennsylvania as an example of things going right, it just further underscored how bad Jersey is. Ciattarelli said of us, “They don’t have a property tax crisis, they don’t have a business climate crisis, they don’t have an energy crisis. [If] another state’s doing something way better than we are, we should [do it] too.” First, when you’re paying upwards of $12,000 per year in property taxes for a modest townhome (true Jersey story), any state looks better. Second, when you rank dead last in business tax climate, any state looks better (Pa. is 31st.) And on energy, who wants to tell him? Look, we may be better than NJ, but you can come to your own conclusions on whether that’s a good bar to set.
Garrity expands budget impasse loan program
The progressive Pennsylvania Capital-Star reports that state Treasurer Stacy Garrity is extending a program that she announced last month that “would provide $500 million in low-interest loans to county governments and head start providers affected by the [budget] impasse.” Under the extension, the program will include “organizations that contract with county governments to provide services for rape survivors and pre-k children, as well as domestic violence prevention support.” In a statement, Garrity said, “The response to Treasury’s short-term funding solution has been positive, and I’m pleased to be able to expand this program….”
When capping enrollment means ‘removing hope’
Traditional public schools generally dislike competition because it often exposes their own shortcomings in educating students (and it weakens teachers’ unions’ grip on education). So we shouldn’t really be surprised by anti-school choice efforts to limit opportunities for children to attend Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools (which of course are public schools, but just privately run). PennLive looks at the debate over limiting how many students can access the educational opportunity afforded by cyber charters.
Lawmakers propose data center legislation
The Center Square reports, “Legislation in the drafting stage would increase transparency and ensure local officials have the data they need to make better land use decisions and evaluate a [data center] project’s long-term viability.” The early drafts of the bill, sponsored by GOP Sens. Rosemary Brown (Lackawanna, Monroe, & Wayne counties) and Dave Argall (Schuylkill, Carbon, & Luzerne counties), “would require a pre-application meeting between developers and local officials before data center projects are formally submitted for municipal review.”