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1. Chester County keeps choosing excuses over accountability 

By Beth Ann Rosica

The Chester County Board of Elections’ meeting on Friday to certify the election went down exactly how I expected — lots of emotional public comments, an acknowledgement of the “serious error”, deflected by a statement that voter services staff are “fallible human beings”, culminating in a certification of the election along partisan lines with Democratic Commissioners Josh Maxwell and Marian Moskowitz voting yes and Republican Commissioner Eric Roe voting no.

Yet, just because it was what I anticipated does not mean I was happy about it — quite the contrary.

Why It Matters. Chester County pretends it wants to operate similar to a corporation. It is the only county of its size that employs a Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer, and Chief Experience Officer (CXO). The CXO was just added this year at an annual cost of over $200,000 to taxpayers — and one of her responsibilities is to supervise voter services!

None of these expensive “corporate” positions apparently did anything to prevent such a monumental error. Worse yet, these costly “executives” have not responded in a way consistent with corporate America.

A corporation has a board of directors and executives answer to them directly. When a massive mistake is made in a corporation, heads will roll — as they should.

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2. Delaware County Council encourages economic apartheid 

By Wally Nunn

Upper Darby and Radnor sit just a few miles apart in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. One is working-class. The other is one of the wealthiest communities in America. Yet the family in Upper Darby pays roughly twice the effective property-tax rate of their neighbor in Radnor — despite earning less than half as much.

That single fact exposes the quiet cruelty baked into how Pennsylvania funds schools and local government.

Why It Matters.  For many Upper Darby families earning $50,000 or less, the property tax bill consumes fifteen to twenty percent (or more) of their entire income before utilities, insurance, or groceries. In Radnor, the typical homeowner pays under nine percent of household income in property taxes.

And the final insult? Despite shouldering a far heavier burden, Upper Darby School District spent $14,728 per student in 2022. Radnor spent $25,264 — 70 percent more.

The system doesn’t just fail to be progressive. It is aggressively regressive. Lower property values trigger higher effective tax rates, which forces working-class towns to tax their residents harder just to deliver basic services. Wealthier towns tax heavily, hoard commercial ratables, and lavish their schools with resources.

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3. Lightning Round

4. What we're reading. 

5. Correction