HARRISBURG – PennLive is reporting… The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Tuesday passed — for the fourth time this year — a measure that would open up a window in the commonwealth’s statute of limitations in order to allow survivors of childhood sexual abuse a two-year legal window to file suit. House Bill 1 — which would create a ballot measure by which voters could approve an amendment to the state constitution allowing for the limitations window — was given final passage by a bipartisan vote of 147-54.
All of the chamber’s Democrats, and roughly half of its Republicans, voted in favor. The measure now faces likely inaction in the Senate, where GOP leadership has said that the limitations window will not be entertained unless packaged with two other constitutional amendments that have a sharp partisan divide. The House last month passed House Bill 2 by a 134-67 vote, which would establish the limitations window by simple statute, without amending the constitution; HB1 is intended as a backstop against critics who have said the limitations window would otherwise be unconstitutional.
“Today we pass House Bill 1, sending the fourth piece of legislation over to the Senate to give victims what they’ve always wanted,” Rep. Mark Rozzi, D-Berks, the bill’s prime sponsor, said during floor remarks Tuesday. This is “truth and justice, but most of all they want to expose their perpetrators to protect your children, your grandchildren,” Rozzi continued. Rozzi – who served as House speaker earlier this year as a consensus nominee between Democrats and Republican leadership — has been open in discussing his own abuse as a teen by a Catholic priest.
Limitations window legislation has been sought in Harrisburg for years, largely on the heels of the abuse scandal in the Catholic church. The state’s landmark 2018 grand jury report documented over 1,000 cases of abuse by 300 Catholic priests in the commonwealth, and accused the church of shuffling priests between churches to conceal the problem. Previous iterations of the legislation have been stymied either by political brinksmanship or, in 2020, a publication error by the Pennsylvania Department of State that kept the referendum off the ballot.
Pennsylvania statutes regarding the filing of civil cases have limitations which vary based on the type of incident, when it occurred, and the age of the victim — thus generating the call for a clean, unrestricted window to file cases in light of the broad scope of abuse in the Catholic church. During meetings earlier this year, some House Republicans voiced objections to the measure on its face, questioning the wisdom of permitting cases where evidence may be decades old, and raising concerns about the financial impact.
Democrats have broadly rejected these arguments, as Rozzi did Tuesday, saying that in many cases “victims are getting pennies on the dollar. It’s never going to put their life back together.” Rather, according to many proponents, the primary value is in allowing victims a chance to seek closure through an adjudicated process. “There’s many days I say I wish I could take a putty knife and scrape it out of my head,” Rozzi said of his own memories of abuse.
STEELTON – WHTM is reporting… The Steelton-Highspire School District is acting as a model for Pennsylvania lawmakers for how schools can transition to solar power. The school district finished a solar panel field about a year ago and now uses exclusively solar power. State Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler (D) is proposing a “solar for schools” grant program to help other school districts follow in Steelton-Highspire’s path. “It’s really to help bring back federal dollars from D.C. to help schools afford to be able to put in solar panels, and then the schools, the local municipalities, get to reap all the financial benefits, the huge savings that we heard about today,” said Fiedler.
The solar field in Steelton is already saving the school district more than $13,000 annually. “As an underfunded, urban school district, the Steelton-Highspire School District supports innovative ways to offset expenditures that will directly support our students,” said Steelton-Highspire School District Superintendent Mick Iskric. “Our solar energy project directly offsets 100% of the district’s electric energy use. Utilizing solar to support our Clean School Bus initiative of seven electric school buses will continue the school districts mission to reduce our carbon footprint as well as continue to offset daily expenditures.”
