Heads Up: Morning headlines for Jan. 23 | Blogh

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Heads Up: Morning headlines for Jan. 23

Posted By on Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 9:04 AM

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald is demanding that non-profits start accounting for themselves -- or at least for their non-profit status. Meanwhile, the city is pressing on with its own look at raising more revenue from non-profits. And a spokesman for them wants you to know that non profits already give us so much, and it would be unfair to try to balance the city's books on the backs of local universities, hospitals and suchlike.

It's starting to look a little uncomfortable for Pittsburgh Police Chief Nate Harper. Even the Post-Gazette -- maybe the last media outlet to use the words "grand jury" to refer to an investigation of his potential involvement with a city contract -- is now reporting on proceedings. Both it and the Tribune-Review are now tracking witnesses making appearances ... and one of them, it seems, is businessman Arthur Bedway, the Harper friend who is at the center of this matter. The Trib surmises that Bedway may have cut a deal in exchange for his testimony. Which could also be a not-great development for Harper.

In other news, there are more concerns being raised about how the police handled a 9-1-1 call made before Ka'Sandra Wade's death. The city's police review board is on the case ... though they couldn't make quorum last night. Sigh.

Apparently, there's still something preventing home health-care workers from getting paid as they should be. Or so reports WTAE-TV, which has been on this story now since last August. Once again: Behold the miracle of public-private partnerships!

Some folks suspect that Gov. Tom Corbett is mounting a campaign to be re-elected for governor by ... actually governing. At the same time, as we predicted here before, conservatives are getting riled up by Corbett's apparent plan to raise a gasoline tax on fuel distributors. Translation: Grover's pissed. Actually, this may sum up Corbett's biggest challenge as governor, and the reason his poll numbers lag: As much as we lefties denounce the guy, the ideologues in his party aren't happy with him either. There's a sort of neither-fish-nor-fowl quality to the guy, and unlike neighboring NJ Governor Chris Christie, say, he doesn't really have an outsized personality. So he doesn't exactly fire up his base, while his policies aggravate the base of the other party.

Want to see the competing visions for the former Schenley High School? They are all online, and submitted for your perusal (though fair warning: The file sizes are big). Proposals range from luxury apartments to a school for dyslexic kids and an Andy Warhol-inspired school for the arts, designed to appeal to high-school kids interested in game development, animation and so on.