Editorial: The cost of waiting to protect children
Pennsylvania has spent years trying to atone for child welfare failures. There were generations of abuse in churches. The Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal put the state under a national lens. There have been persistent questions about ChildLine hotline reports that went unanswered. There was also the moment nearly...
Editorial: The truth about a balanced budget
What is so hard about a balanced budget? The math is supposed to be simple. Know how much money is coming in. Don’t spend more than that. But let’s be honest. That can be a challenge for a family of four. It doesn’t get easier when you are talking about...
Laurels & lances: Exemption & effort
Laurel: To being acknowledged. Monroeville officials appear to have secured a tax exemption for the Monroeville Convention Center, reversing an earlier denial by Allegheny County. After purchasing the facility in 2024 for just over
$5 million, the municipality made the case that the center serves a public purpose — much...
Editorial: This isn’t gallows humor
Drive down Uschak Road in Derry Township, and a wooden shape can loom from a front lawn. It rises high and thin, with a dangling rope knotted in a loop. It isn’t a flagpole. It is a gallows. No one put it there as a threat. Bryan Piper put it...
Editorial: Teen suicide prevention requires early intervention
There are some injuries where you have to wait to respond. You can’t put a cast on a leg before it breaks. You can’t give chemotherapy before someone has cancer. Taking out an appendix proactively is not only useless, but it’s also wrong. Then there are the ones that require...
Editorial: Frictionless betting changes March Madness
There was a time when placing a bet took effort. That time is gone. What once required a trip to a casino or a call to a bookie now fits in a pocket. But the bigger change isn’t just how easy it is to place a bet. It’s how common...
Editorial: Should Pittsburgh Public Schools close for the NFL Draft?
Pittsburgh has had NFL Draft fever since the announcement that football’s second biggest day would take place in the Steel City. But does that mean that everything was considered when the plan was being made? Pittsburgh Public Schools revealed it will be shifting to remote learning April 22 to 24....
Editorial: Sharing information should be the default
Nothing would be easier than to look at a bar fight involving police officers as an opportunity to talk about bad behavior by law enforcement. But that story isn’t written yet. Charges have been filed against Pittsburgh Det. Richard L. Dilimone Jr., 36, of Adams Township, Butler County, in connection...
Laurels & lances: Safety & SATs
Laurel: To building on support. Pittsburgh Action Against Rape is closing its South Side office for about a month — not to pause its vital mission but to reinforce it. Thanks to a $137,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, the organization is implementing security and...
Editorial: AI regulation learns from social media mistakes
Twenty years ago, no one really knew where social media was going to go. Facebook had just dropped “The” from its name. It was not yet ubiquitous. It was only beginning to move beyond college campuses and into broader public use. By 2006, it opened the doors wide. There were...
Editorial: Opening primaries isn’t simple, but it deserves debate
Pennsylvanians are accustomed to a primary that might not reveal how they feel. After all, Pennsylvania may be a critical state in presidential elections, yet its primary falls late in the season. That means that by the time Democrats and Republicans head to the polls for a presidential primary every...
Editorial: The cure for congressional pork
Ham is pork cured in a brine of water, salt and sugar. The process was meant to preserve the meat and make it last longer. But it also made it taste better. What about a different kind of pork? “Pork barrel” spending takes its name from those same preserved provisions....
Editorial: Why do Americans think their neighbors are ‘bad’ people?
We Americans are a proud bunch. We are a nation founded on the principles of freedom and the rule of law, and our commitment to these values has propelled us to new heights and made us the leader of the free world. But in recent years, as our politics and...
Editorial: Hunger takes a bite out of college
There are things you think about a college student needing to pay for at school. The obvious cost is the tuition. The average cost of two semesters at a Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education school — the most affordable four-year institutions in the state — comes in at just...
Editorial: Pittsburgh’s math problems are transparency issues
All over the country, people are pulling their financial information together, assembling receipts and taking everything to a qualified professional who can help make sense of the expenses, the income, the deductions, the taxes paid and the taxes due. Tax season can be stressful, but it serves an important purpose....
Laurels & lances: Service & sacrifice
Laurel: To redding up. Fox Chapel senior Kabeer Chopra and the volunteers behind Green Bridge 412 are proving that cleaning up the environment can start with one person noticing a problem and doing something about it. What began after Chopra saw the amount of plastic waste generated during a summer...
Editorial: Why answers help communities heal
When the unexpected occurs, we want to know why. We want to know how it happened. And we want to know what can be done to stop it from happening again. On April 22, 2022, an explosion ripped through a home on Hialeah Drive in Plum, destroying the house and...
Editorial: Creative partnerships can support nonprofits and city needs
The old YWCA building on Downtown Pittsburgh’s Wood Street is not the kind of property that inspires civic pride. It is what Point Park University’s Ted Black described as “quite frankly a bit of an eyesore.” Few people walking through Downtown would disagree. Vacant buildings rarely improve with age. But...
Editorial: Punching the overtime clock adds up
Westmoreland County has an overtime problem. TribLive reporting shows regular reliance on overtime has pushed some employees’ earnings far beyond their base salaries. In 2025 alone, county workers made more than $7.2 million in overtime. The largest share went to the prison, where overtime exceeded $2.2 million. Dispatchers at the...
Editorial: What Texas tells us about the 2026 midterms
The early political signals emerging from Texas may offer a revealing preview of the national mood heading into the 2026 midterm elections. While one state rarely defines the entire political landscape, Texas often serves as an important barometer for the broader tensions shaping American politics today: polarization, ideological intensity and...
Editorial: War is never as far away as it seems
When we watch war unfold on television, there is fear and uncertainty. But there also can be the detachment of distance. It is not a comfort, but it can be insulating to know what is happening is so far away. That is not true for everyone. Even neighbors in Western...
Editorial: Hatred finds a microphone
Three things collided in Pittsburgh this week: hatred, technology and infrastructure. The result was antisemitic threats against Mayor Corey O’Connor broadcast over a public safety radio channel used by police and emergency responders. O’Connor comes from a diverse background. His late father was Catholic, his late mother Jewish. He has...
Laurels & lances: Raptors & rodents
Laurel: To flying high. The Tarentum Bridge carries about 36,000 vehicles a day across the Allegheny River. Soon it will also carry the weight of a $97.5 million rehabilitation project. But before construction begins in 2027, planners are making sure another set of residents is considered: the peregrine falcons nesting...
Editorial: How did Pittsburgh Regional Transit calculate CEO’s bonus?
On Friday, the board of Pittsburgh Regional Transit unanimously approved a $55,000 bonus for CEO Katharine Kelleman. The issue is not that the transportation authority came off a financially difficult year. It is not that $55,000 is a lot of money when the organization had to use $100 million in...
Editorial: The boundary around medical privacy
On Monday, Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon denied a Department of Justice request to force UPMC to turn over records for minor patients who received gender-affirming care. In doing so, she did not mince words about the federal government’s approach. “Left to its devices, the DOJ would trample states’...
