The state’s independent economic forecasters are predicting General Fund deficits over the next five years, even while job and wage growth are both expected to increase in the short term. 

Matthew Knittel, the executive director of the state’s Independent Fiscal Office, said on Thursday that the state’s projected revenues are expected to increase along with expenditures, continuing a structural imbalance through Fiscal Year 2024-25.

Philadelphia City Council passed and amended a series of bills Thursday. Notable were new guidelines to provide Gun Violence Protection Orders and the establishment of city-funded defendant lawyers for those facing eviction.
 
With the vote, Philadelphia becomes the fifth major city to subsidize defense for low-income renters facing legal proceedings towards eviction. The bill was sponsored by Councilmember Helen Gym (D-At Large) and co-sponsored by six other councilmembers.

Tom Petty wrote that the waiting is the hardest part, something that Erie County community leaders can attest to in their decades-long push for a community college system in the commonwealth’s 14th largest county.

That wait was supposed to end Thursday, with officials from the county’s political, business and education communities descending on Harrisburg for a State Board of Education vote on whether to establish a community college in the state’s far northwest.