Nine candidates, including Rep. Russ Diamond (R-Lebanon) and Lebanon County District Attorney Dave Arnold, are confirmed to be seeking the GOP nomination for the central Pennsylvania Senate seat vacated by the resignation of former Sen. Mike Folmer last month.

Diamond announced his candidacy Wednesday morning and an additional four candidates have been confirmed as of this morning, Lebanon County Republican Party Chair Casey Arnold said. 

With a packed crowd necessitating an overflow room in the Capitol, the first House hearing on redistricting reform in some time drew no shortage of interest Wednesday as lawmakers look to determine the optimal way to draw district lines, although a tangible compromise remains some distance out.

Interest in redistricting was virtually non-existent in the House State Government Committee under its previous chair, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler). But that appears to be shifting under new leader Rep. Garth Everett (R-Lycoming), who convened the hearing to give members a sense of the landscape.

A perfect storm of grievances sunk the final remaining piece of the state budget Thursday evening, as the House voted down the School Code bill over what Democrats called broken promises, while Republicans expressed concern over a provision to alter the compulsory school.

By a vote of 77-121, a bipartisan group of lawmakers voted against the bill, which was unveiled in the Senate late last night.

Lawmakers are at odds over the best path to reforming judicial elections, even as they voted to move two competing bills out of committee Tuesday.

The House Judiciary Committee voted to approve the two bills, one authored by Rep. Paul Schemel (R-Franklin), the other by Rep. Russ Diamond (R-Lebanon). 

A fight has been reignited in the Capitol over whether the state should end making general assistance cash payments to poor Pennsylvanians, after the program was reinstated in 2018 because of a technicality found by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
 

House Republicans are seeking to once again end the cash assistance program, which pays out monthly stipends of approximately $205 to Pennsylvania citizens who have under $250 in countable resources. The program was eliminated in a 2012 bill signed into law by then Gov. Tom Corbett, but was reinstated when the state Supreme Court ruled that the law violated the Pennsylvania Constitution's single-subject rule.