Pennsylvania's Legislature is beating the heat today with a special voting session on the last day of the state government's fiscal year.The Pennsylvania Legislature is in the midst of a busy and unusual voting session today, the last day of the fiscal year.
Here are some highlights of what they did so far:
Welfare Benefits:
The House of Representatives gave final approval to a bill that would add work or tougher work-search requirements for poor adults to qualify for state-subsidized health care. The same bill will delay the elimination of a Depression-era cash benefit by one month until Aug. 1 for adults temporarily unable to work.
Gov. Tom Corbett failed to win support for a plan to absorb seven different pots of aid for county-administered social services — for the homeless, mentally ill and disabled, neglected or abused children and those addicted to drugs and alcohol — into one block grant program. So he settled for a "pilot" program that could involve up to 20 volunteer counties, and the House gave final approval to that today.
Teacher Evaluation:
The House gave final approval to a bill that would replace the current performance evaluations for public school teachers now based solely on classroom observations by superiors. The new system would rely on those observations for half of the rating and the other half would be based on multiple measures of student achievement, including standardized test scores, classroom activities and quiz scores. Critics said the measure excused charter school teachers from the same standards.