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US protection must not end at the border

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

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

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

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 ...

Dementia news is call to action for our future

The latest report on CTE is both enlightening and alarming. A groundbreaking study from Boston University researchers found that those with CTE have a much higher chance of being diagnosed with dementia. The largest study of its kind from the Boston University CTE Center reveals that the progressive brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy should be recognized as a new cause of dementia. Those with advanced CTE — who had been exposed to repetitive head impacts — had four times higher odds of having dementia. This is sobering news for current CTE sufferers, those who ...

What’s behind the wild new wealth tax proposals?

When government grows to dominate ever-larger shares of the economy, and when politicians refuse to be responsible about what they spend, there’s a predictable next move: Insist that the problem is “the rich” not paying enough. Never mind that high earners already shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden. Never mind that relying on a small and mobile group of people for the bulk of your revenue makes public finances more volatile, not more stable. No, once spending is treated as untouchable and restraint as politically impossible, it’s only a matter of time before ...