In 2021, then-Gov. Tom Wolf announced that a Danish artificial turf recycler would be opening its first U.S. processing center in Pennsylvania, providing a new destination for ever-accumulating piles of discarded sports fields. The company, Re-Match, would receive Pennsylvania loans and grants totaling $1.85 million to open its recycling facility, which is expected to create around 40 new jobs in the commonwealth, officials said.

More than a year later, the processing center hasn’t opened. In fact, an official in Rush Township, Schuylkill County, where the future plant is expected to operate, said the company hasn’t yet gotten the municipal approvals needed for the project. Meanwhile, the artificial turf they one day hope to recycle has been waiting around, stacked in sagging piles in Pennsylvania fields and parking lots. And the very same company that is in line to capture nearly $2 million in state incentives is also getting notices that it’s violating the commonwealth’s environmental laws.

Over the last few years, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has identified infractions at three separate sites where Re-Match was storing the turf. DEP officials haven't yet imposed any fines on Re-Match for the violations and are working with the company on a plan to relocate the material to the location of its future processing center, an agency representative said.

Re-Match representatives acknowledged there have been delays in opening the Pennsylvania recycling facility, as they've been focusing first on launching another location in Holland. It would have been far cheaper and easier for them to discard the fields rather than storing them for years — but they say they couldn't do that.

"We don't want it to be landfilled or burned," Re-Match CEO and co-founder Nikolaj Magne Larsen said. "One of the worst things I can do, from a board perspective/owner's perspective, is to throw my materials away, even though it costs me more to store them."

HARRISBURG — The state agency overseeing Pennsylvania’s troubled mortgage relief program has leveled a slew of new accusations against the private contractor originally hired to run it as thousands of homeowners remain stuck in limbo and at risk of further financial harm. The allegations represent a stark reversal from the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. In January, the agency announced that it would end the contract March 31 and run the program itself, but pointedly avoided saying the company, Innovative Emergency Management, Inc., was at fault.

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In a scathing letter dated March 1, PHFA leveled a series of new criticisms at the company, and ended the contract even sooner than planned. The housing agency now says the company failed to deliver what it had promised since the beginning. More recently, IEM prematurely denied assistance to some homeowners in an effort to close applications quickly, PHFA said.

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The Pennsylvania contract, signed in October 2021, was supposed to last five years. In its March letter alleging serious problems with the company’s performance, PHFA noted a recent uptick in the number of homeowners denied assistance because IEM caseworkers deemed their mortgage or utility company unresponsive. The increase, which the agency said began after it first moved to end the contract, appears to represent an effort by IEM to close applications “prematurely,” the letter said.

PHFA spokesperson Scott Elliott said in a statement that it was not yet clear how many homeowners were affected and that PHFA would review those cases to ensure that no one was unfairly disqualified.

HARRISBURG — Commonwealth Court has ruled that workers’ compensation should cover the cost of medical marijuana for treatment of injuries suffered on the job.

The court on Friday handed down two decisions in cases brought by workers who were hurt on the job and were initially prescribed opioids for treatment. But in both cases, the workers sought to get their cost of medical marijuana covered by workers’ compensation, asserting that the marijuana has been more effective in treating their pain.

In Teresa L. Fegley, as Executrix of the Estate of Paul Sheetz v. Firestone Tire and Rubber (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board), Sheetz had been injured at work in 1977, according to the opinion written by Judge Anne Covey. He underwent two back surgeries and over the years, he treated the pain with opioid and narcotics.

In 2019, “at the recommendation of his doctor,” he began using medical marijuana to deal with his back pain in the “hope of eliminating the need for the opiates and narcotics he had been taking for approximately 30 years. Medical marijuana afforded Claimant pain relief and reduced his need for the opiates and narcotics,” according to Judge Covey’s opinion. She added that Sheetz also reported that taking medical marijuana apparently provided psychological benefits and in 2019, he began seeking to have the cost of his medical marijuana covered by workers’ comp.

Kunselman is based in Beaver County. She began her judicial career with an election to the county’s Court of Common Pleas in 2005, and won a seat on Superior Court in 2017.

She spent 13 years in private practice before that, working in civil litigation and family and employment law at several Pittsburgh-area law firms. During eight of those years, she also served as assistant solicitor and then chief solicitor for Beaver County.

Outside of her practice, Kunselman sometimes lectures about legal issues, volunteers as a religious education instructor, and annually serves as a judge at the Beaver County Mock Trial Competition.

She was rated “Highly Recommended” — the top designation — by the Pennsylvania Bar Association, which wrote that she has a “reputation for being a thoughtful appellate decision-maker, open to persuasion, and proceeding in each matter with integrity and high character.”

McCaffery, a Philadelphia native, was elected to Superior Court in 2019. A veteran of the U.S. Army, McCaffery began his legal career as an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, where he was assigned to the major trials unit. Following his stint in the DA’s office, McCaffery joined a private firm based in Montgomery County and spent 16 years there as a civil trial attorney.

Before being elected to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in 2013, McCaffery volunteered as legal counsel for the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee and was a member of the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee. McCaffery’s website notes that he has also worked on 50 campaigns as a manager, fundraiser, and canvasser.

McCaffery is the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate, and his website also lists endorsements from the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association, the Pennsylvania Conference of Teamsters, and the Pennsylvania State Building & Construction Trades Council.

He was rated “Highly Recommended” by the Pennsylvania Bar Association, which wrote that he has “sound knowledge of legal principles” and a history of “community involvement.”

The state’s primaries are closed, meaning only registered Democrats and Republicans can vote for candidates during these spring contests. (Unaffiliated and third-party voters can, however, vote on ballot questions, other referendums, and special elections during a primary.)

The seven-member court currently comprises four Democrats and two Republicans. One seat has been vacant since the death of former Chief Justice Max Baer, who occupied the bench for nearly two decades.

While the eventual winner of the race won’t change control of the court, a Republican victory could bring the party closer to retaking the majority it lost nearly a decade ago.

It’s The Big Bank Failure Story No One is Talking About

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) last week raises serious issues far more significant than the obvious ones cited by the financial press and a broad range of Washington politicians.

Chief among these are bank loans against dubious assets. That’s not getting much if any attention in the news or from Washington and is likely to soon be swept under the rug, allowing needlessly risky banking practices to continue. Before its collapse last week, SVB made loans against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

The question: why is any bank anywhere allowed to accept crypto as collateral for loans?

Bitcoin and its imitators are not money. They are not currency. They’re hardly used to buy and sell, an unsurprising fact given that by design the Bitcoin system can process only seven transactions per second compared to many thousands of transactions per second for credit cards.

Indeed, except for laundering proceeds from drug trafficking as well as hiding assets from creditors, estranged spouses, and the tax police, cryptocurrencies have no use.

When a state takeover of public schools in Houston — America’s fourth-largest city, and the biggest in Texas — was announced last week by state education officials under Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, the national media mostly treated it as a local story not worthy of much coverage in a nation now transfixed by the potential arrest of POTUS 45.

But what’s going down in Houston should be a much bigger deal, for two reasons.

First of all, the move is outrageous. Despite facing the same struggles as most large urban school districts around poverty and disinvestment, topped by the double whammy of COVID-19 and the natural disaster of Hurricane Harvey, Houston schools have been improving under metrics set by the state. Even the one “failing high school” cited by the Texas Education Agency for its takeover — which will allow the GOP administration to supersede the elected school board and appoint its own superintendent — has raised its grade to a passing “C.”

No wonder most local leaders in the Gulf Coast metropolis think this move by Abbott’s minions has little to do with what’s best for Houston’s 195,000 public schoolkids — 62% Latino and 22% Black — and everything to do with the grown-up politics of punishing a city now run by people of color who vote mostly Democratic, as well as giving Team Abbott a new venue to wage the GOP’s war on what they call “woke education.”

AMSTERDAM/KYIV, March 17 (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin, alleging Moscow's forcible deportation of Ukrainian children is a war crime, as the Kremlin reacted with outrage.

Russia has not concealed a programme under which it has brought thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia but presents it as a humanitarian campaign to protect orphans and children abandoned in the conflict zone.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the move would lead to "historic accountability", adding that the deportations constituted a policy of "state evil which starts precisely with the top official of this state."

The announcement provoked a furious response from Moscow. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia found the very questions raised by the ICC "outrageous and unacceptable", and that any decisions of the court were "null and void" with respect to Russia. Russia, like the United States and China, is not a member of the ICC.

When Ethan Imhoff told friends he was considering applying for the City of Johnstown manager position, they told him he was nuts — if he got it, he would be the 16th person to hold the job in 28 years, including a half dozen who served on an interim basis.

“Management stability was an issue here,” said Mr. Imhoff, a native of Madison, Wis. Crippled by a declining population, cratered economy and decades of bitter political infighting, Cambria County’s biggest city had been written off as dead by many. But where others saw headaches, Mr. Imhoff, then the executive director of the Cambria County Planning Commission, saw opportunity.

A year after taking the job as city manager in January 2022, Johnstown is poised for a rebirth after receiving a federal grant of $24.4 million in 2021 that will pay to fix the city’s broken iconic Johnstown Inclined Plane, rebuild an historic Amtrak train station and renew downtown’s central square and transit center.

For Johnstown, where more than one in three residents live in poverty, winning the competitively awarded grant was like hitting the lottery. The money was the biggest award for economic development the city has received in decades.

“Johnstown is having a moment,” the 46-year-old Mr. Imhoff said.

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — At a roundtable discussion, Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw emphasized the company’s commitment to “do the right thing” in the aftermath of a fiery Feb. 3 train derailment that upended the lives of many residents in both Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mr. Shaw hosted the roundtable Thursday afternoon at East Palestine’s Centenary United Methodist Church to shed light on the company’s response to the hazardous trail derailment just over the Pennsylvania border.

Mr. Shaw also discussed Norfolk Southern’s long-term community support plans, announced Tuesday, to address health, property value and water quality concerns. The company’s plans came after Ohio Attorney General David Yost filed a federal lawsuit to hold Norfolk accountable for its role in the derailment.

“I said at the very beginning that I want to do the right things today, tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now,” Mr. Shaw said. “So when we look back on this, the citizens of East Palestine know, and the surrounding communities know, that Norfolk Southern was here.”

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On Thursday in East Palestine, he said the community-support plan is a reflection of the feedback he and the company have received from locals. Part of the effort is creating a medical compensation fund, as well as protection for home sellers if their property loses value due to the derailment. Mr. Shaw did not specify which areas would be eligible for compensation, but said he is confident that it would cover “some parts of Pennsylvania.”

EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — At a roundtable discussion, Norfolk Southern President and CEO Alan Shaw emphasized the company’s commitment to “do the right thing” in the aftermath of a fiery Feb. 3 train derailment that upended the lives of many residents in both Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mr. Shaw hosted the roundtable Thursday afternoon at East Palestine’s Centenary United Methodist Church to shed light on the company’s response to the hazardous trail derailment just over the Pennsylvania border.

Mr. Shaw also discussed Norfolk Southern’s long-term community support plans, announced Tuesday, to address health, property value and water quality concerns. The company’s plans came after Ohio Attorney General David Yost filed a federal lawsuit to hold Norfolk accountable for its role in the derailment.

“I said at the very beginning that I want to do the right things today, tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now,” Mr. Shaw said. “So when we look back on this, the citizens of East Palestine know, and the surrounding communities know, that Norfolk Southern was here.”

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On Thursday in East Palestine, he said the community-support plan is a reflection of the feedback he and the company have received from locals. Part of the effort is creating a medical compensation fund, as well as protection for home sellers if their property loses value due to the derailment. Mr. Shaw did not specify which areas would be eligible for compensation, but said he is confident that it would cover “some parts of Pennsylvania.”