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1. Two former employees accuse Pennsylvania Game Commission of toxic, retaliatory work culture

By Todd Shepherd

Two former employees of the Pennsylvania Game Commission say the commission’s Harrisburg headquarters fostered a toxic work environment in which the human relations department felt emboldened to target employees with harassment while upper management looked the other way. The commission called the claims “disingenuous.”

Both women say once health issues became part of their work lives — whether through disclosure, accommodation requests, or related discussions — they were met with escalating criticism and discipline. One quit, one was fired.

Why It Matters. Adding a twist is the PGC’s unique position in the commonwealth. It is not a cabinet-level “department” such as the state health department or department of education. Instead, the PGC operates independently of the General Assembly’s day-to-day control. Its nine commission members are appointed by the governor and approved by the state senate. It does not rely exclusively on legislative appropriations because it is largely sustained by hunting and fishing licenses and other related fees. This does not make accountability obscure, but does give the commission extra distance from the kind of oversight other departments in the commonwealth might consider routine. 

Everyone who spoke to this outlet about their story, or what they witnessed, all said the same thing about the PGC: It is largely a commission staffed with good people of good conscience who are extremely talented and devoted to the commission’s mission. The caveat, they allege, is that there is a small core of people who have had free reign to isolate and attack certain employees they don’t like, and that the commission’s upper reaches of management sat idly by.

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2. Who can afford to live here anymore?

By Wally Nunn

People talk endlessly about the cost of buying a home — interest rates, bidding wars, low inventory. But that’s not what really determines affordability. For most families, the question is much simpler:

“Can we afford this house month after month?”

That’s where affordability lives or dies. And when you run the numbers in Delaware County — especially in working-class towns like Upper Darby — the answer is increasingly: No, we cannot.

Why It Matters. The math plays out across the state, in Norristown, Coatesville, Pottstown, Bristol Township, Reading, York, and parts of Pittsburgh. Any place where you combine modest home values with high real estate taxes, families face housing burdens of 32 to 40 percent of their household income.

This is not just mismanagement by one township or school district, though there is plenty of that. This is a structural flaw in how Pennsylvania funds local government and — especially — how it funds public education.

Property taxes were never designed to carry this load. They do not adjust when wages stagnate. They punish seniors. They hit working families hardest. And they make it nearly impossible for first-time buyers to get a foothold in communities that were once affordable.

This is what a systemic failure looks like.

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3. Lightning Round

4. What we're reading

We at Broad + Liberty are a Pennsylvania-focused publication but, like much of the country, we’ve kept one eye on Minnesota this past month. We asked last week whether this might not be a good time to chill out and now, we are hopeful that calmer heads are indeed prevailing. Ashleigh Fields writes in The Hill this week that Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Border Czar Tom Homan are in communication about how to step back from the edge of civil unrest in Minneapolis.

It’s a welcome sign. Federal and state governments need to work together to enforce the laws while not provoking riots. Is it possible? We hope so.