“Unlike what we hear in the Capitol, Pennsylvania is not the highest-taxed state or the highest spending state,” said Sharon Ward, director of the left-leaning think tank. “In fact, we are in the lower half of the country. We rank 32nd [highest] on taxes and 30th on government spending, as a share of personal income.”

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Wagner’s agency released an audit finding that from the three-year period ending in mid-2006, “25 state agencies filled 569 civil service employment positions without considering eligible veterans.”

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“We’d be very open to working to reform the special education funding system, but is our system broken? No,” said John Tommasini, director of the state’s Bureau of Special Education.

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Rhoades, who had been in the state Senate since 1981, was reelected on Nov. 4 after a fatal car crash in October while he was on his way to a high school sporting event.

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After dying in a car crash in October, Rhoades was posthumously reelected with 63 percent of the vote on Election Day. He defeated Democrat Peter “P.J.” Symons, the Schuylkill County prothonotary, who received 35 percent, and independent candidate Dennis Baylor, who received 2 percent of the vote.

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The plan will step up requirements for students seeking teaching certifications and for the teachers who train them. Instead of the current system of one certification for all teachers of kindergarten through sixth grade, the new guidelines offer separate certifications for teachers of pre-kindergarten through fourth grade and fifth through eighth grade. The guidelines also require that all teachers receive special education training.

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Kenneth Melani and Joseph Frick, president and CEO of Highmark and Independence, respectively, said a merger would allow their companies to eliminate inefficiencies and generate cost savings for consumers in turn.

But numerous critics said the merger would result in less competition among insurers and higher premiums for Pennsylvanians.

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A 2006 bill set the regulatory process in motion when it became law. The proposed regulations would have required individuals to register with the state as soon as they received at least $2,500 for lobbying services, even if they had not lobbied.

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Piccola beat Hirsh in Dauphin County by 2,576 votes, with all 135 precincts reporting. He earned 57,875 votes in total compared to Hirsh’s 55,299.

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Responses varied from expressions of disinterest to pledges to vote for her opponent to jubilation over seeing a face that has blanketed television ads in the past month and a half.

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