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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