Free Republic

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission authorized nearly $34 million in final design contracts Tuesday for an eight-mile stretch of the Mon-Fayette Expressway from Jefferson Hills to Duquesne. If final design goes as expected, construction could begin in 2022 for the first of three remaining segments needed to finish the last 14 miles of the highway from Jefferson Hills to the Parkway East in Monroeville at a projected cost of $2.1 billion. That’s more than the $1.68 billion cost of the first 60 miles of the highway, started more than 40 years ago in northern West Virginia. The commission’s action Tuesday increased...

The chairman of a Port Vue-based political organization said he was given an ultimatum — remove an “Impeach Obama” sign or vacate the quarters he rents in a shopping center along Washington Boulevard in the borough. Mon Valley Republican Committee chairman Brent Kovac said he did neither, so on Thursday his landlord Helen Siudyla-Totty painted over a sign that was painted on plywood posted after the political committee storefront was vandalized in October 2008. “We did that mural on the panels where our windows were,” Kovac said. Bricks and a tire were hurled through the storefront window a few weeks...