Deb Erdley stories, Page 30

In an experiment being watched across the country, Pennsylvania court officials began scrubbing more than 3 million old, nonviolent criminal charges from the public docket over the weekend. They are scheduled to repeat that feat every month for the next year under the provisions of the state’s Clean Slate law....

As student debt approaches $1.6 trillion nationally, presidential candidates are test-driving a raft of proposals to deal with what many consider a major problem. Everything from tuition-free public college to debt forgiveness was on the agenda when 20 Democratic presidential contenders took the debate stage last week. They aren’t alone...

While the top 20 Democratic presidential contenders prepared for last week’s debates, retired Navy admiral and former two-term Pennsylvania congressman Joe Sestak traveled the road less taken as a long-shot presidential hopeful. This time, it was a series of meet-and-greet events in Iowa. It’s not the first time the maverick...

The University of Pittsburgh Board of Trustees named a new chair-elect Friday, who will take over next year after the fifth and final term of incumbent Chair Eva Tansky Blum, who board members reelected Friday. A Pitt spokesman said Thomas E. Richards, a long-serving Pitt trustee and executive chair of...

Officials at Excela Health said they eliminated 15 positions at its three hospitals this week as part of a fiscal year-end assessment that scrutinized workplace efficiency and duplication of resources. “The result is a modest change in staffing in non-clinical areas,” Excela spokeswoman Robin Jennings said. The health system, which...

Once again, Pennsylvania is ranked No. 1 — only of a list no one wants to top: college costs. The state’s public universities are among the priciest in the nation and landed Pennsylvania at the top of a list that calculated how many hours a week a student would have...

Richard A. Mellon, a grandson of Richard King Mellon, has been named to lead the foundations that bear his grandfather’s name. He was unanimously appointed as chairman and CEO by the boards of both the Richard King Mellon Foundation and the R.K. Mellon Family Foundation, marking the beginning of the...

More than two years after the February 2017 death of Timothy Piazza, a Penn State student who died of injuries he sustained during an alcohol-fueled fraternity pledge event, the lawsuits just keep coming. The Associated Press is reporting the fraternity corporation that owns the shuttered Beta Theta Pi fraternity house...

John Sphon, acting CEO of Excela Health, said the Westmoreland County health system is poised to reach profitability in fiscal 2020, following two years of multimillion- dollar operating losses. “We look at this coming year as a year of transition,” Sphon said Monday at Excela’s annual meeting at Saint Vincent...

At 84, Dale Yates can still swing with the best of them. The Hempfield retiree never takes to the dance floor. Instead, he’s on stage with the band, providing a deep resonant tone on the upright bass he has been playing since 1953. “It keeps getting heavier every year, but...

Mona Pappafava-Ray, president and CEO of Hempfield-based General Carbide Corp., is a finalist for the national Entrepreneur of the Year Award after being named East Central Entrepreneur of the Year last week. Now in its 33rd year, the competition recognizes entrepreneurs and leaders of high-growth companies who excel in areas...

Officials at Saint Vincent College said there was little question who should lead the Benedictine college into the future when Br. Norman W. Hipps announced his pending retirement as president this year. J. Christopher Donahue, chairman of the Saint Vincent board of directors and president and CEO of Federated Investors...

The meter is ticking as administrators for compensation funds in Catholic dioceses across the state process payments to survivors who experienced child sexual abuse at the hands of trusted priests. Church officials have released interim statements showing the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Diocese of Scranton have paid nearly $21.8...

Students at the Community College of Allegheny County will have to dig a little deeper this fall to cover tuition and fees after CCAC trustees voted to increase full time, in-county tuition from $1,695 to $1,740 a semester. County residents attending part time will be charged $116 per credit hour....

On a sunny June afternoon, a group of about 60 people gathered in the 300 block of Sixth Street in Jeannette amid two dozen tidy, new two-story homes that occupy a street once dominated by crumbling row houses. They came to celebrate the resurrection of a neighborhood of homeowners. They...

Lawyers for clergy sexual abuse survivors say a Pennsylvania Superior Court ruling handed down Tuesday could open a path for many old claims previously timed out to go to a jury. Writing in a 38-page opinion, a three-judge panel overturned a Blair County judge’s decision to dismiss a clergy sexual...

In a move that could foreshadow a hotly contested legislative race in 2020, Democrat Tay Waltenbaugh — who recently retired after 29 years at the helm of Westmoreland Community Action — on Wednesday plans to formally announce that he is running for election in the state Senate’s 39th District. The...

Students who graduate with an associate’s degree in nursing from the Community College of Allegheny County will have a new online option to pursue a bachelor of science degree in the future. CCAC officials and administrators from Ohio University are scheduled to sign an articulation agreement Thursday that would formalize...

Look for the signs soon. A pair of signs designating a portion of Route 30 from North Greengate Road to East Pittsburgh Street as the J. Edward “Hutch” Hutchinson Memorial Bypass should be going up no later than this fall. State Sen. Kim Ward, R-Hempfield, said the bill she introduced creating...

The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency is reinventing itself as a private lender to fill in the gaps for students who have maxed out on grants and federal loans this year, but still can’t cover the cost of college or approved trade schools. Officials at PHEAA, the embattled agency that...

Pennsylvania ranked 20th in the nation for complaints per nursing home last year, according to a new study that analyzed federal data for all 50 states. The report by The Senior List found nursing homes in Pennsylvania averaged 8.42 deficiency complaints per facility last year. Washington state topped the list...

Kathy Coll still has trouble processing how the Catholic Church responded two years ago when she reported she had been raped in 2016 by a Nigerian priest who was studying at Duquesne University and assisting in her North Hills parish. Coll, a retired high school English teacher and Eucharistic minister...

The federal government will release an updated list of the nation’s most troubled nursing homes monthly, officials with the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said. CMS previously kept a list of about 400 of nursing homes with serious patterns of poor care under wraps from the public, even...

What regulators called a “persistent record of poor care” landed two Westmoreland County nursing homes and a third in Allegheny County on a waiting list as candidates for special government oversight reserved for the nation’s worst skilled care centers. The Special Focus Facility program, which scrutinizes some of the nation’s...