A mansion makeover with a lot of question marks

A pricey design firm has been hired to renovate Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro's official state residence in Harrisburg. But no one will say who is managing the project, raising money for it, or exactly who is paying for it, Spotlight PA's Angela Couloumbis reports.

Also this week, Spotlight PA and Pittsburgh public radio's WESA have teamed up to track how Pennsylvania counties are spending their shares of more than $100 million in opioid settlement money amid related disagreements and confusion.

Finally, Shapiro is proposing a Pennsylvania-based alternative to a cap-and-trade plan to fight climate change and boost renewable energy standards. The Democrat is seeking GOP support from a state Senate that has long resisted restricting the oil and gas industry.

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How we’re tracking more than $100M in opioid settlement money in Pa.

I’ve lived in Pennsylvania most of my life. But I’m still surprised at one thing: There are so many counties that start with the letter B or C!

Bedford and Butler, and Cameron and Cumberland, and on and on. There are 18 in all, out of 67.

That may not seem like a lot, but when you’re filing Right-to-Know requests with every county in the state, it can feel like you’re stuck in the Bs and Cs forever.

The reason I — along with Kate Giammarise of WESA — filed all these public records requests last week was to get new insight into how Pennsylvania counties decided to spend the more than $100 million they received in the first rounds of opioid settlement payments. 

As we’ve reported before, members of a state oversight board plan to review these spending reports in secret before making recommendations for the full board to consider. 

Board members have the power to withhold and ultimately cut funding from counties if they decide they spent money inappropriately. Tom VanKirk, chair of the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust, said in February that the board plans to make spending information public “when we’ve had a chance to vote on it.”

We thought the public deserved to know how counties spent the money before the trust votes on whether it was appropriate. Hence all the public records requests, and all the time spent thinking about Bradford and Berks, and Carbon and Centre, and all the rest.

We’re still analyzing the records, but in the initial days, we received about three dozen spending reports. We made them available online so that residents of those communities, other reporters, treatment and harm reduction advocates, and anyone else can review them.

“Smart use of Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law,” wrote Erik Arneson, a former executive director of the state’s Office of Open Records.

A few counties gave us an interesting reason for why they couldn’t provide the final spending reports: They didn’t have them. 

Wayne County open records officer Andrew Seder sent us the county’s draft report, but said that when the county submitted the final report to the trust, officials “weren’t able to print the PDF and have no copy of that submission in our possession.”

“If we are able to get that copy from the trust within the 30 days we will send your way,” Seder wrote to me.

We’ll be updating our database on a regular basis over the next few weeks. If you see anything interesting — or if you’ve visited every county that starts with the letter B or C — drop me a line at emahon@spotlightpa.org or 717-421-2518. —Ed Mahon, Spotlight PA 

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