PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/category/money-and-politics/)
The Rust Belt, in particular, is slowly seeing more and more interest in models that enable worker power without traditional union representation, which is especially true in gig economy and service and frontline industry sectors that are disproportionately made up of Black and Brown workers.
There are several big decisions to make. Pittsburgh is electing a mayor for another four-year term, and the Pittsburgh Public School board has a flurry of candidates that could reshape the district, which has had a controversial year. Additionally, there are nine open seats in the Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, which presents a paramount opportunity for criminal justice reform in the region.
With the impending May 18 primary, candidates running for school board see this moment as a chance to alchemize the educational system to ensure better outcomes for Pittsburgh youth, especially Black students, teachers and others involved in the district.
Pittsburgh has committed to investing billions of dollars in the coming decade to clean up its rivers and address persistent air quality challenges and increasingly heavy rains due to climate change. The next mayor of Pittsburgh could play an outsized role in determining how these problems are tackled, especially if Congress passes a new $2 trillion infrastructure package. To help our readers understand where exactly the mayoral candidates stand on issues affecting the environment, our lead environment and health reporter, Oliver Morrison, parsed through their answers from individual interviews to help readers see what their real differences are and what kind of policies they may pursue as mayor. You can read their answers or listen to the interviews in full, here or listen to a radio version of the piece produced with The Allegheny Front below. Allegheny Front · Where Pittsburgh's mayoral candidates stand on the environment
Mayor Bill Peduto
State Rep. Ed Gainey
Tony Moreno
Mike Thompson
Mayor Bill Peduto
Peduto enjoys the advantages and disadvantages of incumbency.
Will the City of Pittsburgh revoke its parks tax? Spend more on green infrastructure to confront flooding and climate change? And should the mayor of Pittsburgh take a stand on issues that go beyond city limits, like fracking and green energy? Although the first mayoral debates focused on issues like affordable housing and policing, the four candidates offer sharply different records and plans for the city’s environmental future. PublicSource asked how the candidates would address the many environmental challenges that one would face as mayor.
We asked the same questions to contrast their ideas and then edited down the answers to highlight their most substantial proposals and biggest areas of disagreement.
[If you want to hear the candidates’ full answers, listen to the wide-ranging interviews here.]
Listen to the interviews
Oliver Morrison is PublicSource’s environment and health reporter.
This story was originally published by NEXTpittsburgh, a news partner of PublicSource. NEXTPittsburgh is an online publication about the people advancing the region and the innovative and cool things happening here. Sign up to get NEXTpittsburgh free. The Covid pandemic disrupted all of our lives in 2020 and changed the business model into one of working from home for many people, but it turned out to be the second-best year in a decade for investment in Pittsburgh’s tech companies. So says a new report by Ernst & Young and Innovation Works that tracks investment in the technology sector from 2011-2020. The report finds that, in total, 171 companies raised $993 million last year.
A year after the COVID-19 pandemic changed the rules for landlords and tenants, the eviction capital of the county is deep in the suburbs, where tenants of one apartment complex are scrambling to avoid ejection.
The full-time, annual salary of a worker making $7.25 an hour is $14,500, about $1,700 above the poverty line for a single-person household and about $2,700 below the poverty line for a family of two. Because of racial and gender pay gaps, a $15 minimum wage increase would most benefit women and people of color.
Hours before Joseph R. Biden would be sworn in as America’s 46th president on Wednesday, thousands of flags swayed and fluttered in darkness on the National Mall. The flags dot the grounds in place of Americans who were unable to travel to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and increased security threats. It was an unusual start to mark a momentous shift in American leadership. Safety concerns have heightened in the days since pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 while lawmakers certified Biden's win in the November 2020 election.
This story was originally published by NEXTpittsburgh, a news partner of PublicSource. NEXTPittsburgh is an online publication about the people advancing the region and the innovative and cool things happening here. Sign up to get NEXTpittsburgh free. He couldn’t look more like Western Pennsylvania if he came with French fries and coleslaw. Yes, he’s 6 feet 8 inches tall, has arms full of tattoos, is built like a linebacker and is always ready for a scrap (on Twitter, at least). But at heart, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman (D), and former mayor of Braddock, is a Harvard-educated policy wonk, who has a tight command of the issues that he wants to address at the next level.
