Friday, the Senate Education Committee scheduled a Tuesday vote on Senate Bill 2, controversial legislation providing for Education Savings Accounts, which some have likened to previous iterations of private school voucher law efforts.

 

However, since the meeting’s sunshining on Friday, an interesting wrinkle has given hope to a bill that was not able to advance out of committee when last considered due to a voting error: the potential that a current member of the committee who previously voted in the negative on the legislation might have their committee assignment changed.

Gov. Tom Wolf this week announced new rules for spending state grants in light of an audit that showed little accountability for the spending of public money.

Standard and Poor’s announced on Wednesday morning that they are downgrading Pennsylvania’s bond rating amid the ongoing budget stalemate, the failure of lawmakers to fix Pennsylvania’s chronic structural imbalance, and weakening liquidity.

Gov. Tom Wolf made two Pittsburgh-area radio appearances Tuesday morning during which the top topic of interest was progress being made on reaching agreement to balance the state budget.

The Pennsylvania Senate reconvened Monday for the first time since July and their top order of business was a review of the budget-balancing plan the House passed last week.