This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

All eyes might be focused on the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, but Republican state Rep. Lynda Schelegel Culver got a promotion this week when voters in the state’s 27th Senate District selected her to represent them in the legislature’s upper chamber. Culver defeated Democrat Patricia Lawton with nearly 70% of the vote.  A silver lining for Culver? She also gets to escape the chaos in the state House.

Gov. Josh Shapiro made two more cabinet appointments this week, picking a familiar and a fresh face to lead two state agencies. Shapiro re-nominated Lucas Miller as the state’s inspector general, while picking Reggie McNeil, chief operating officer of the School District of Philadelphia, to lead the Department of General Services. Next stop – confirmation hearings.

The mayor of Chester has been sequestered. As the city deals with its bankruptcy filing, a Commonwealth Court judge has granted Michael Doweary, Chester’s state-appointed receiver, permission to strip the city’s elected officials of their administrative powers. Doweary filed the suit after alleging the city’s elected officials acted unethically and obstructed his office from doing its job.

We’ve reached the stage of campaign calamities in Philadelphia’s mayoral race. Just days after protesting The Union League for awarding its highest honor, the Gold Award, to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former City Council Member and mayoral candidate Helen Gym was spotted at the Union League chumming with executives at the General Building Contractors Association’s annual meeting. Backlash from progressives and grassroots activists led to Gym issuing an apology on Twitter.

Some PPL Electric Utilities customers received a bit of a shock recently in the form of higher-than-usual energy bills, with people reporting rates that had doubled and tripled, per WGAL. PPL has apologized to customers, and the snafu has prompted the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to investigate the billing problems.

An ambulance company leader was arrested late last month for the alleged sexual assault of a teenager at the EMS station. Douglas Allen Shields, of Mount Holly Springs, has been charged with statutory sexual assault after an old clock and a Snapchat conversation connected him to the assault. State troopers investigating the assault saw the same wooden clock at Shields’ home that the 15-year-old girl claimed to had seen, according to court documents.