Funding

The housing market's continuing struggles have upset the retirement plans of millions of Americans, keeping more of them in their current homes, waiting for diminished equity to reappear. Others plan to move, but they appear to be demanding something much different from what they wanted before the real estate boom turned to bust: smaller, less expensive retirement houses they can afford with their reduced means. At the start of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008, economists weren't anticipating that the long-term trend toward retirement living would be derailed.

With family ties to Camden dating back six generations, Jonathan Latko was determined to rebuild a corner of his impoverished city by developing 124 apartments on a block along Market Street between the waterfront and downtown. Looking for money during the recession in 2009, Latko and some similarly civic-minded friends turned to Remington Financial Group, a firm that boasted of arranging multimillion-dollar funding for huge projects. Remington demanded - and got - a $12,500 up-front fee to arrange the financing, but it never materialized.

AS A union representative for SEPTA's locomotive engineers, I applaud the Daily News editorial support for full dedicated funding for SEPTA. Although dedicated funding enjoys strong bipartisan support from legislators in this five-county region, yes votes will also be necessary from those who are not normally sympathetic to the needs of Philadelphia or SEPTA. In order to win their support, several pervasive SEPTA "myths" need to be aggressively countered with the facts. SEPTA is not a bloated bureaucracy that would misspend any dedicated funding increases.

The debate was heated, the stakes high, the question agonizingly familiar: Would SEPTA raise fares? When a majority of the SEPTA board voted yes recently, the decision was predicated on an expectation that next year, things would be different. Next year, state politicians would set aside a predictable and secure funding base for SEPTA, so it could avoid the further decay of its system or the frustrating budget dilemmas of this spring. Only one problem with that expectation: Some of the state's leading politicians have yet to promise they will try to make it come true.

Panic threatened for a time last week when members of the Northeast Philadelphia Cultural Council learned that no money had been allocated in the state's capital budget for work on the Furey Ellis Building, one of the newer structures on the grounds of the now-closed Philadelphia State Hospital. Their concerns were heightened when spokesmen for the Department of General Services, the state agency responsible for the hospital's buildings and grounds, reported that funding for Furey Ellis had been removed from the budget.

If the local business community comes through with funding, the more than 3,000 school-age children in Voorhees Township may get a new playground. The Voorhees Township Committee last Monday agreed to provide the Osage Parent Faculty group with $5,000 toward the purchase of the playground, which would be next door to the Osage Elementary School on Burnt Mill Road. The design of the playground would be similar to one constructed at the Clara Barton school in Cherry Hill last year, according Linda Nichols, a member of the parent-teacher group.

Under the threat of losing their baseball team, Allegheny County officials are close to completing a plan to provide public funding for new stadiums for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers. The plan, which could be announced as early as next week, would not only provide a local contribution for the two stadium-starved teams; it would trigger a promise by Gov. Ridge to kick in the state's portion of the funding and provide a blueprint to a solution for the Phillies and Eagles. Only the state's contribution would be left to complete the financing mix of local, state and private sources that a governor's task force has said would be necessary to fund stadium construction in Pennsylvania.

A settlement was worked out last night under which the state will resume funding the beleaguered HealthPass program for 82,000 Medicaid patients in South and West Philadelphia. A tangle of lawsuits and bureaucratic battles over the $750.5 million contract ended in a compromise after more than a week of negotiations among more than a dozen lawyers. The negotiations have been supervised by U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois since last Friday. "It's a shame. This same agreement could have been worked out by reasonable men working together in a reasonable manner outside of court," said Anthony Welters, board chairman of Healthcare Management Alternatives, the firm that operates HealthPass.

Linda Redden's hopes for her son, Leslie, are similar to those of any other parent. She wants him to be the best he can be and derive self-esteem from accomplishments. She took steps to make sure her son achieved that goal when she moved from Philadelphia to Abington Township two years ago, so that Leslie, 11, could attend the RydalBrook school for special education students. Redden, along with other parents and local school officials, said she was relieved that $99 million in special education funds owed to school districts throughout the state was appropriated in the state budget passed July 1. "Certainly, I'm relieved that the funding is in and that there won't be a fight," said Redden, 38. "But every year it seems like there is some type of dilemma.

A senior citizens' apartment complex proposed for Barrington cleared a major hurdle yesterday when the Camden County freeholders voted, 6-0, to guarantee $8.5 million in public financing. For weeks, the freeholders had debated whether to support the project, which would consist of four 71-unit buildings to be developed by Joseph Rodi, John Gasparre and John Stern. While Republicans backed the proposal, some Democrats seemed hesitant. The election of Republican Millard Wilkinson Jr. to an unexpired freeholder term two weeks ago and his swearing-in last week appeared to provide the project with the deciding favorable vote.

The Vanguard Group closed its high-yield corporate bond fund to most new investors to curtail a flood of money from investors seeking the relatively high returns of its non-investment-grade bonds. In the last six months, investors had poured $2 billion into the fund, bringing its total assets to $16.9 billion, Vanguard said. "In this prolonged low-rate environment, we continue to see investors turn to high-yielding alternatives — including money market fund holders moving to bond funds, U.S. Treasury bond fund holders moving to high-yield corporate funds, and bond fund holders moving to dividend-paying stock funds.

Relax, Philadelphia! Gov. Corbett's got this. Sure, those dire headlines and the protests in the street might lead you to think city schools are careering down a seemingly endless fiscal mine shaft. But thanks to an update this week on Corbett's Twitter feed, we now know otherwise: "the number one priority in the #pabudget is education. " The most remarkable thing about this statement is that, technically, it's true. Corbett's otherwise parsimonious budget does include a minuscule increase in K-12 funding (higher ed, not so much)

HARRISBURG — Even as some Republicans try to steer policy initiatives toward bread-and-butter economic issues in advance of the November elections, a small band of GOP lawmakers in Harrisburg tacked rightward Wednesday, introducing a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania. The legislation, similar to antiabortion bills crafted in other states, would bar all federal and state funding to the nonprofit, which provides abortions along with an array of other women's health services.

TRENTON — The Christie administration backtracked Wednesday on its plan to borrow less in 2013 to pay for transportation infrastructure improvements. It hopes to shift $260 million originally intended for transportation spending into the state's general fund, which would help facilitate Gov. Christie's top priority in the coming fiscal year: implementing a 10 percent income-tax cut. The state would then borrow $260 million to replace that cash in the annual $1.6 billion transportation capital fund, a practice Christie previously criticized, State Treasurer Andrew P. Sidamon-Eristoff said Wednesday.

The fund that pays Pennsylvania's unemployment benefits is running in the red, and lawmakers are grappling with how to remedy that. Compounding matters is that the state owes the federal government $3.87 billion it has borrowed to pay jobless claims because of the recession. There seems to be little disagreement about how to pay back the money: Legislators are likely to pass a bill that will allow the state to float a bond. "This is akin to refinancing your house," said Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor Julia Hearthway.

The more things change… We had reason to hope that, after years of neglect, the city's parks had turned a significant corner in 2008 when the city (and its voters) saw the wisdom in combining the city's parks and recreation departments. This fixed an illogical division between passive parkland, overseen by a commission unattached to city government, and recreational facilities, managed by a city department. The merger dissolved the Fairmount Park's ruling board and created a new commission made up of people who actually had expertise or a stake in the parks.

Jordan Smart's name is perfect for a scholar. Or, for that matter, for the recipient of a scholarship. A cerebral Sicklerville resident who plans to become a mechanical engineer, Smart, 23, is among four Camden County College students awarded $1,000 each from the Riletta T. Cream Scholarship Fund. "I can't thank [them] enough," Smart says. Cream, a longtime educator who served for 17 years as a Camden County freeholder, was married to Arnold Cream, the boxing champion better known as Jersey Joe Walcott.

Chesapeake Energy's meltdown has crippled its share price and that of a subsidiary. It's a case study in how risky it can be to invest in one stock. It also shows how energy exchange-traded funds can help blunt the effects of one company's implosion. As is now well-known, Chesapeake Energy's chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, took out more than $1 billion in shrouded personal loans backed by assets of the public company — and investors have demanded he step down as chairman.

Five years ago, as soon as her breast-cancer treatment ended, Mindy Cohen put on the pink. She e-mailed everyone she knew, asking whether they'd walk in her name at the annual Race for the Cure. By that first race day, Team Mindy was already a juggernaut. About 120 people marched by her side to raise money for the cause - so many that they won an award from the race organizer, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, for assembling the largest entrant in the event's friends and family division.

WASHINGTON - Congress is producing little this election year that will become law, yet both parties are churning out bills designed to make the other side look bad. Take a look at separate measures that would protect women from violence, keep student loan rates low, and build roads and bridges. Each is a widely shared goal and seemingly easy to enact. But the proposals are caught in pitched battles, each party adding language that infuriates the other. As a result, the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-run House are writing legislation that dies right away or is assured of going nowhere in the other chamber.