Missing-person cases often must face hard truth

February 17, 2026

Watching Savannah Guthrie sit on a couch and look into a camera is nothing new. It is how many Americans start their day — with a cup of coffee and the “Today” show. But for two days this week, the usually upbeat host has not been interviewing others about their challenges. She has been holding the hands of her siblings and speaking about the disappearance of her mother. The attention is national. It is the kind of cultural moment people may one day recall the way they remember the white Bronco carrying O.J. Simpson down a California freeway or the rescue of nine trapped ...

You might be missing the love right in front of you

February 14, 2026

Valentine’s Day arrives every year with its cards, flowers, and expectations. It asks us, quietly and sometimes loudly, to measure love. Did you say the words? Did you buy the thing? Did you remember the date? For many people, that measuring stick is narrow. When love doesn’t show up in the form we expect, we’re tempted to believe it didn’t show up at all. That’s where we get it wrong. People express love in different ways, shaped by habit, upbringing, temperament, and experience. Some people are fluent with words. Others are not. Some say “I love you” easily and often. ...

US protection must not end at the border

February 13, 2026

On July 30, 2022, Marc Fogel’s name first appeared on this opinion page. It would not be the last. The Butler County native and Pittsburgh resident was a recurring topic in editorials for four years as TribLive did two things: We kept the story of his detention in a Russian prison in the headlines, and we kept advocacy for bringing him home. Today — nearly a year after Fogel came home — we return his name to the spotlight. Not to argue for his freedom, but to understand what his experience revealed. This editorial does something different. We do not advocate for Fogel this ...

Future of school funding needs to drive budget process

February 12, 2026

As we noted in Sunday’s editorial — and a year ago and before — the state and its budget have to contend with court rulings that funding public schools by district has led to unconstitutional imbalances. For decades, the primary source of funding for public schools in Pennsylvania has been property taxes, assessed by local school districts. One affect of this has been that schools in communities with higher property values are able to provide greater resources to their students. Another aspect is that officials would be in better fiscal positions to address property taxes — ...

Sunshine Act’s notice problem needs to be fixed

February 11, 2026

Since 1957, Pennsylvania has codified a responsibility to make public meetings accessible to the people. The state law also evolved, eventually becoming what is now known as the Sunshine Act. The earlier Open Meetings Law required only the most basic transparency. If a vote was taken, the meeting had to be open. That was all. That changed in 1987 with the sterilizing light of the Sunshine Act. The new law created a framework that established open meetings as the default. Instead of limiting access only to the most action-oriented gatherings, government entities were given a ...

Budget proposal once again starts process with fantasy

February 10, 2026

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s 2026-27 budget would spend about $53.2 billion. The proposed 2026-27 budget, like his initial proposal for the 2025-26 budget, relies on pulling deeply from reserve funding, set aside in past years by lawmakers to ensure the state was ready for future crises and on revenue from activities for which the legislature is still considerable distance from agreeing on regulatory frameworks — recreational marijuana and skills games. The 2025-26 budget, of course, was ultimately more than four months late to passage. State lawmakers already are echoing many of the ...