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KCSD approves 3.5% tax increase

LOCK HAVEN — Just days before the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s June 30 submission deadline, the Keystone Central School District Board of Directors approved a $94 million budget for the 2026-27 school year. The budget includes a 3.5 percent property tax increase for district residents. The board had recently rejected a $92 million budget in a 5-3 vote at its voting session last week, citing concerns over a proposed tax increase of that size. During that previous meeting, the board instructed Business Manager Joni MacIntyre to prepare a revised budget featuring a 1.8 ...

Shapiro wants to use incentives to push data centers to behave better; His own party wants to be more aggressive

HARRISBURG — As Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro attempts to thread a needle between attracting data center projects to Pennsylvania and satisfying their critics, members of his own party — and many Republicans — are backing a more aggressive regulatory approach. The split between the governor and other lawmakers could be seen this week in a pair of conflicting bills the Democratic-controlled state House passed. One was Shapiro’s own marquee data center proposal, which aims to incentivize developers to, among other things, be more transparent and reduce environmental impacts by ...

Women’s prison population, correctional costs projected to grow through 2035

It costs significantly more to incarcerate women than men, adding to the financial burden on state and local correctional systems, according to a new report from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice. The report estimates that imprisoning a woman costs between $87,000 and $122,000 a year, or roughly 25% to 75% more than the average annual cost of about $70,000 per incarcerated person, including both men and women. Women make up about 10% of the nation’s correctional population. Researchers attributed the higher costs to a combination of factors, including smaller ...