State Government

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A bill to loosen pandemic restrictions on bars and restaurants is on its way to the Pennsylvania governor, who has threatened to veto it. Lawmakers on Wednesday passed the measure, which would end a requirement that customers buy food when they purchase alcohol. It would allow people to be served drinks at bars.  The bill would also permit taverns and restaurants to operate at 50% capacity, or more if they can meet state and federal social distancing standards or erect appropriate barriers.

Gov. Tom Wolf has vetoed a bill that would give school districts the sole ability to make decisions on sports, including whether and how many spectators to allow. Lawmakers are planning to vote to try to override Wolf's veto. Legislation that cleared the House and Senate would have empower schools to make their own rules about the number of spectators permitted at games. Wolf says his gathering limits of no more than 25 people indoors and 250 people outdoors should apply to youth sports to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania will pay the cost of postage for voters to mail-in ballots in November’s general election. Officials said Friday that Gov. Tom Wolf's administration plans to use money from federal emergency coronavirus aid to foot the bill. It could run several million dollars to cover 55 cents for millions of ballots. Wolf has made paying for postage a priority as the coronavirus pandemic has unexpectedly fueled high interest in voting by mail.

Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati tells The Associated Press he will not seek re-election. Scarnati made the announcement Wednesday night. The 58-year-old is a fifth-term Republican senator from Jefferson County in northwestern Pennsylvania. He says he wrestled with the decision but thought it was the right time to step down after 14 years in a job steering a Republican majority through turbulent elections and fights in the Capitol. Scarnati rose quickly, becoming Senate president in 2007 with the endorsement of his predecessor after just six years in the chamber.

(Harrisburg) -- Pennsylvania’s auditor general, Eugene DePasqule, is attempting to quantify what climate change will cost Pennsylvania.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf is now in favor of legalizing marijuana for recreational use, saying Wednesday that most of the state's residents support it and that the state has a wealth of knowledge from the experience in other states to guide it.
Wolf, a second-term Democrat, packaged his announcement with a call to the Republican-controlled Legislature to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana and allow the expungement of past convictions of nonviolent and small marijuana-related crimes.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's House of Representatives passed the main bill in a just-unveiled $34 billion compromise budget plan on Tuesday, despite hard criticism by rank-and-file Democrats that included a floor fight over whether they could criticize the package for lacking a minimum wage increase.
Democrats also bitterly protested the bill's defunding of a Depression-era cash assistance program for the poor, a Republican demand that Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf also opposes in a budget package that he otherwise supports.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania's Republican Party chairman is stepping down following a published report that he had traded sexually charged text messages with a Philadelphia City Council candidate and also sent her an explicit photo of himself.
Val DiGiorgio's resignation was announced Tuesday by the state GOP.
In a letter to party officials, the 51-year-old DiGiorgio says the report by The Philadelphia Inquirer contains "gross mischaracterizations" of what he said were "mutual consensual communications."

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Fresh from a victory in Pennsylvania last fall, anti-gun violence advocates are turning their attention to legislation to empower family members or police to seek the immediate, if temporary, seizure of someone's firearms.
Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America went to the state Capitol on Monday to press the case for the bill, sometimes called a "red flag" bill in other states.
Under it, someone who is deemed to represent a danger of suicide or a serious threat to another person could be the subject of an "extreme risk protection order."

MT. LEBANON, Pa. (AP) — Democrats claimed victory Tuesday after a two-month campaign for a vacant state Senate seat in politically divided suburban Pittsburgh where the sides tested some national themes ahead of 2020's presidential election in a critical battleground state narrowly won by President Donald Trump.
The seat had been largely controlled by Republicans the past half-century, but the district is viewed as increasingly friendly to Democrats in territory that party strategists now view as something of a bellwether.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania is joining 19 other states in a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's move to restrict taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from referring women for abortions.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro joined the lawsuit filed Tuesday in an Oregon federal court challenging what critics call the "gag rule."
Shapiro, a Democrat, says it imposes unlawful and unethical restrictions on health care professionals. The state of California sued separately, as did the American Medical Association and Planned Parenthood.

HARRISBURG (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf rolled out a second-term proposal Wednesday to vault Pennsylvania's minimum wage to one of the highest in the nation after similar first-term proposals by the Democrat fell flat in the Republican-controlled Legislature.
Wolf wants to take the hourly minimum to $12 this year, putting Pennsylvania in line with the highest state minimum wages, according to federal data. Pennsylvania also would join a handful of states by eliminating its tipped wage minimum, now $2.83, under legislation being introduced with Wolf's support.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Gov. Tom Wolf, who introduced himself at his first inauguration as an unconventional governor and then unveiled an ambitious blueprint to transform Pennsylvania's tax structure, is returning for a second term with big plans, although with perhaps a more sober view of what is possible.
Wolf, a Democrat, faced huge Republican legislative majorities throughout his first term, and will again face substantial Republican majorities as he hopes to nail down second-term achievements, including on stalled first-term priorities.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — For the Pennsylvania Senate, the election didn't necessarily end at 8:00 p.m. on November 6.
The chamber's Republican majority is questioning the residency qualifications of a newly elected Democrat who flipped a Republican-held Pittsburgh-area seat by a mere 793 votes, injecting tension into a normally quiet December between legislative sessions.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A former elected Pennsylvania state treasurer was sentenced Tuesday to 2½ years in federal prison for trying to squeeze campaign cash from a law firm and a property management firm during his failed 2014 bid for governor.