David Spett

HARRISBURG (Oct. 31) – Next week’s election ballot will feature a question over whether the state should borrow $400 million for water and sewer upgrades.

Some critics say the state’s expected revenue shortfalls – which could total as much as $3 billion, depending on who is estimating – make now the worst time for the state to borrow money.

But others, including the governor, say a slowing economy is even more reason to invest in antiquated infrastructure. They said the borrowing would create jobs and stimulate the economy.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 30) – Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson has denied Republicans’ motion for a preliminary injunction in their case against ACORN and the Department of State.

Republicans failed to meet the burden for such an injunction, Simpson wrote.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 29) – The community organizing group ACORN is disputing a New York Times report that it “vastly overstated” the number of new voters it registered.

The Times reported Friday that ACORN had only registered 450,000, not 1.3 million, new voters this election cycle. But ACORN said it still had reason to claim 1.3 million registrants.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 29) – A Philadelphia representative said he’s outraged over Gov. Ed Rendell’s surprise veto of a land transfer bill that passed both chambers on the last day of the legislative session this month.

The bill, Senate Bill 740, would have transferred about 17 acres of Delaware River riparian rights and 305 acres of adjacent land from the state to the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority to develop a container-shipping terminal called Southport.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 29) – A top Philadelphia elections official said Wednesday that ACORN, a community organizing group that says it’s helped 140,000 voters in the state register to vote, did a “not very good” job of screening the registrations they collected.

“Some that they’ve flagged [as suspicious] are actually good,” said Fred Voigt, deputy city commissioner of Philadelphia, where ACORN says it helped to register 85,000 voters.

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 27) – Despite some improvement in recent years, women are still concentrated in the state’s lowest-paying occupations, according to a Keystone Research Center study released Friday.

“Compared to 1980, men and women today are still likely to be concentrated in a set of occupations where their coworkers are likely to be of the same sex,” said Mark Price, a KRC labor economist and the primary author of the study, titled “The State of Women in the Pennsylvania Workforce 2008.”

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 23) – Republicans have no standing to sue ACORN, a community organizing group that says it registered 140,000 low-income Pennsylvanians to vote, a lawyer for the group argued at a Commonwealth Court hearing Thursday.

“Article III of the Constitution says a plaintiff must have suffered an injury” to have standing to sue, said Kathryn Simpson, a Harrisburg attorney representing ACORN. “There is no voter fraud. There has been no election. … And until there is voter fraud, there is no injury. That injury must be concrete, not conjectural or hypothetical.”

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 23) – Albert Masland, chief counsel for the Department of State and a GOP state representative from 1992 to 2000, rebuked leaders of his party on Thursday who said the results of next month’s presidential election cannot be trusted.

“As a registered Republican, I bemoan the tone of this petition,” Masland said of the lawsuit Republicans filed against the Department of State. “I bemoan the tone of the press conferences that have been waged unfairly and untruthfully.”

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HARRISBURG (Oct. 21) – Four parolees represented by law professors at the University of Pennsylvania and Widener sued Gov. Ed Rendell Tuesday, alleging that the parole moratorium he announced in September and partially lifted Monday night is unlawful.

“What we’re alleging is that he’s got no authority to even tell the parole board what to do, or to tell the Department of Corrections not to release people,” said David Rudovsky, a senior fellow at Penn’s law school.

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DERRY TWP. (Oct. 20) – In a packed municipal building Monday night, the major-party candidates for state Senate in the 15th district, Sen. Jeffrey Piccola, R-Dauphin, and Judy Hirsh, held a wide-ranging debate, criticizing each other for negative campaigning.

“I want to make sure that when I get into office, someone can’t send out mail that is so misleading and false,” Hirsh said, holding up a Piccola mailer that said, “Judy’s friends pull the strings.” Hirsh called the mailer “unconscionable.”

The advertisement connects Hirsh to the 12 Democrats implicated in the Bonusgate probe. It also criticizes them and other Democrats for stalling reform efforts and for supporting a 50 percent pension raise for legislators, a measure Piccola supported as well.

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