today’s news and information gleanings from here and there! Today’s Weather!   Today in History!

Quote for today… “There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart.”  – Celia Thaxter

• Schools can still hike taxes for special-ed, pension costs – “I hope that legislators are using the exception-reporting data to formulate better ways of providing state funding to properly spread the costs rather than burden the local communities,” said Laura Cowburn, Columbia School District‘s assistant to the superintendent for business. “Until there is a stabilization of the way funds flow from the state to the local school district, effective change to improve education will be a challenge.” (Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era)

• Cobra in waiting … CCFD Carnival starts tonight! :

• “The secrecy urge: A House bill is an affront to our right to know. Time and again, the first tendency of public officials is to keep public information secret. Any excuse will do. Before they went on their summer break, Pennsylvania lawmakersadvanced a bill that would carve out an exemption to the state’s 2009 Right to Know Law concerning the identification of callers to 911 emergency centers.

  “House Bill 1174 would make callers’ names, phone numbers, addresses and locations confidential unless a court determined that the public interest outweighed “the interest in nondisclosure.” But in a state that really embraces full disclosure, there is no interest in knee-jerk secrecy that merely panders to theoretical fears. Once you start down that road, government business becomes lost in the fog.

  “HB 1174 passed the House unanimously June 26. Is there no lawmaker who understands that this is about the public’s right to know, not the legislators’ urge to keep the public in the dark? We shall see when the Senate comes back in September.” (Editorial: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

• Remember the abused dog from York? She is improving. (York Dispatch)